Best known as a pioneer in screenprints, Max Arthur Cohn was born to Russian immigrants in London, in 1903, and moved with his family to New York City in 1905. He got his first art-related job creating commercial silkscreens when he was seventeen. Cohn began to experiment with silkscreening on his own and later exhibited his prints in New York City and Washington, D.C., in the 1930s and ’40s. During the Great Depression, he also worked as an easel painter for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program that supported artists by providing them with a small stipend. In the 1950s, Cohn owned a graphic arts business in Manhattan, and is credited with teaching silkscreen techniques to a young Andy Warhol. Cohn coauthored several books on silkscreening, including the influential 1958 book Silk Screen Techniques, written with J. I. Bielgeleisen.
Max Arthur Cohn, Coal Tower, ca. 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.4
The London-born artist Max Cohn often painted New York industrial scenes like this one, showing the men and machines that kept the great city working. In this painting the viewer looks up from a pier at the dark silhouette of a coal tower standing over a coal-laden barge. The windows of the tower glow golden, showing that men are inside running the giant scoop that unloads coal from the barge and drops it onto a conveyor belt within the tower. From there the coal that has just arrived by barge from Pennsylvania or New Jersey goes to power one of New York’s electrical generating stations or factories. Cohn spent time among the docks and coal towers where he learned how men worked to provide fuel for the city. With a striking combination of light and dark, lines and masses, the artist describes the grimy dockside world. Cohn’s paintings reveal his fascination with the rough, modern geometry of New York’s barges, tugboats, warehouses, and factories and the men who worked in them.
Max Arthur Cohn, Bethlehem Steel Works, 1938, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. Max Arthur Cohn, 1978.41.1
Max Arthur Cohn painted Bethlehem Steel Works in 1938, during the Great Depression and a few short years before America’s entry into World War II. The artist depicted one of the massive steel factories owned by Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania. Bethlehem Steel, now defunct, was once one of the largest steel producers in the United States. It produced the steel used in numerous American structural icons, most notably San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. It also built 1,127 ships during World War II. In a letter about the painting, Cohn recalled being arrested in Bethlehem City, Pennsylvania, under suspicion of being a Nazi spy while painting a scene similar to this one in the summer of 1939 (The artist, to Harry Rand, February 20, 1978, The American Art Museum curatorial file).
Max Arthur Cohn, Easton Railroad Yards, watercolor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1984.63.2
Max Arthur Cohn, Harlem River, screenprint, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1984.63.4
Max Arthur Cohn, Harlem River, 1934, watercolor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1984.63.1
Max Arthur Cohn, Railroad Bridge, opaque watercolor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1984.63.3
B. ALTMAN & COMPANY DEPARTMENT STORE FIFTH AVENUE AND 34TH STREET ARLENE BESSENOF, GLORIA HERMAN AND NINA LUBLIN GOT IT!
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OK. I admit it. I like the Empire State more than the Chrysler Building. Always have. So sue me.
I particularly like the Empire State’s history, standing on the foundation of two grand hotels – the Waldorf and the Astoria – built by feuding members of the Astor family.
The Astors acquired the land in the 1820s and redivided it among relatives until in 1893 William Astor, motivated in part by a dispute with his aunt Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, built the Waldorf Hotel next door to her house, on the site of his father’s mansion at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street.
Then the Astoria Hotel opened in 1897 next door to the Waldorf. A feud – throwing hotels at each other rather than bricks – but with shared tastes. Both hotels were designed by the same architect, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (Hardenbergh also did the Plaza Hotel and the Dakota), both in the same “German Renaissance” style and both appealed to the same upper crust New York crowd. The hotels housed celebrated restaurants, huge ballrooms and glamorous suites. Famous dishes were invented in their kitchens (Waldorf salad, Eggs Benedict, Thousand Island dressing) and famous drinks (Rob Roy, Bobbie Burns) conceived in their bars.
Interesting and, we shall see, somewhat prescient, the Waldorf was initially a laughing stock with its large number of bathrooms, called “Astor’s Folly”, and appeared destined for failure.
Ultimately the two merged, creating the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (the two parts connected by a long corridor, “Peacock Alley”). The combined hotel was the largest in the world and the second most valuable parcel of land on Fifth Avenue, after the B. Altman and Company Building site. Over the years, the grand hotel aged, competitors nipped at its heels, and its fame dwindled. In 1929, the site was sold to a property developer for approximately $16 million. The Waldorf-Astoria was by no means finished, however. It migrated to Park Avenue, with its own Peacock Alley (and the loveliest, most accessible restrooms in the City).
Meanwhile, in the late 1920s, a new passion swept the City. Who would build the world’s tallest building?
At the center of this storm was Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation. He wanted to build the world’s tallest building – not a monument to one of the largest auto firms in the world, but a monument to himself. Indeed, Chrysler paid for the building out of his own pocket, to provide a unique inheritance for his children, he said.
His rival was not the Empire State, which would come later, but rather the Bank of Manhattan Building at 40 Wall Street (now known as the Trump Building) whose architects intended to build up to 925 feet tall, 85 feet taller than the plan for the Chrysler Building. When Chrysler found out about 40 Wall’s plans he decided to add a surprise 186-foot spire to his building. 40 Wall finished construction first in April of 1930, celebrated for being the tallest building in the world, without knowing that they were about to be surpassed. Less than two months later, workers at the Chrysler Building hoisted 4 parts of the secret spire to the top and riveted them together in 90 minutes. At 1,046 feet high, the Chrysler Building became the world’s tallest building.
Not for long.
John J. Raskob of General Motors also aspired to build the world’s tallest building. A few months before the Chrysler Building was completed, Raskob purchased the Waldorf-Astoria site. Construction of the new building began in March of 1930 and moved quickly. The original drawings for the Empire State Building were finished in only two weeks. Starrett Brothers and Eken, the General Contractors, began excavation for the new building in January, even before the demolition of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was complete. The company had pioneered the simultaneous work of demolition and foundation-laying a year earlier when building 40 Wall.
Despite the colossal size of the project, the design, planning and construction of the Empire State Building took just 20 months from start to finish. The contractors used an assembly line process to erect the new skyscraper in a 410 days. Using as many as 3,400 men each day, they assembled its skeleton at a record pace of four and a half stories per week—so fast that the first 30 stories were completed before certain details of the ground floor were finalized.
Construction of the Empire State Building (Credit: Daniel Ahmad/Wikimedia Commons)*
The Empire State Building was the first commercial construction project to employ the technique of fast-track construction, a common approach today but very new in the early 20th Century. This means starting the construction process before the designs are fully completed in order to reduce delays and inflation costs.
Less than six months after construction began the Empire State Building is 3/4 complete. NYPL Digital Gallery.
But would it be high enough to make it the tallest in the world? Not to be outdone by Chrysler, Raskob put a hat at the top of his building – a spire, making the Empire State Building a soaring 102 stories and 1,250 feet high. The tower was viewed as an image of the future, a mast as a docking port for ocean crossing dirigibles. Passengers would exit via an open-air gangplank, check in at a customs office and make their way to the streets of Manhattan in a mere seven minutes. It didn’t work. Winds near the mast rooftop prevented dirigible pilots from connecting to the mast. The airship plan was abandoned.
A postcard of the Empire State’s mooring mast and how it would work.
Notwithstanding this disappointment, the building was completed in May 1931 and became the world’s tallest building, a title it would hold for nearly 40 years until the World Trade Center was completed in 1970.
The Empire State and the Chrysler buildings differed in another critical way. The Chrysler Building was built privately by Walter Chrysler who wanted to boast a headquarters building in New York City despite the fact that his corporation was mainly based in and around Detroit. The Empire State Building, on the other hand, was built as a consortium between the New York State Government and private industry in an attempt to economically rejuvenate a part of midtown Manhattan that had never really taken off, and was an attempt to attract private industry to build more buildings in and around the new record-breaking tower. Raskob rounded up a group of well-known investors that included Coleman and Pierre S. duPont, Louis G. Kaufman and Ellis P. Earl to form Empire State, Inc. He appointed former Governor of New York and Presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith to head the group But the Empire State Building was essentially a flop. Just a year after it opened to commercial office tenants, the New York Times named the Empire State Building the “Empty State Building” – echoing the earlier “Astor’s folly” on the same site. Little research had been done in advance to determine whether New York City needed another giant office tower at a time when the Great Depression was deepening, not to mention that at the time, the 34th Street location was a kind of no-man’s land – too far north of the Financial District downtown and too far south of the new heart of midtown which was quickly becoming the area between 42nd St and 50th Streets. Few tenants signed leases. Building management told employees to ride up and down the elevators during evenings and at night to turn lights on and off in empty offices to convince the public that the building had tenants throughout.
So the Chrysler Building was the more successful enterprise. Even in 1935, the midst of the Depression, tenants occupied 70% of the Chrysler, while the Empire State struggled with an occupancy rate of only 23% and only became profitable until after World War II when companies flooded Manhattan and space became scarce.
FYI: The Empire State Building will host its annual Run-Up this fall. This is the world’s first and most famous tower race, challenging runners from near and far to race up its famed 86 flights, 1,576 stairs. The fastest runners have covered the 86 floors in about 10 minutes. See you there?
NEW VIEWING PIER OVERLOOKING THE WEST CHANNEL IN SOUTHPOINT PARK (WE ARE SURE THE BENCH PLACEMENT IS NOT PERMANENT) ALEXIS VILLEFANE AND JAY JACOBSON 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
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Welcome to the official website of Irene Rice Pereira (1902-1971). I. Rice Pereira, as she was known, was one of the foremost modernist artists of the 20th Century. Her paintings can be found in museums around the world. The purpose of this website is to direct inquirers to her paintings, publications about her, museums and galleries exhibiting her work, archives and relevant websites. Correspondence and original appreciations of Irene Rice Pereira’s work and life are invited. Images of Pereira works in museums are now on the Gallery page.
Courtesy Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Born Irene Rice, she took the name of her first husband, the commercial artist Umberto Pereira. She adopted the name I. Rice Pereira because then as now discrimination beset women in the arts. By the time war broke out Irene had divorced Pereira and married George Wellington Brown, a marine engineer from a prominent Boston family. Brown was an ingenious experimenter with materials, and he encouraged his petite new wife in their mutual passion for experimentation. Pereira in the 1930s was drawn to ships, not only because of George Brown, but because of their intricate machinery, their functional beauty. The inside-out infrastructure of the Pompidou museum in Paris amused Pereira, although she thought it art-historically tardy.
Pereira visited Morocco briefly in the mid-1930s. The desert changed her life, filling her mind with pure light and purer forms, and had a crucial impact on her work when she returned to the United States to help found the Works Progress Administration Design Laboratory. The interactions of light and shadow among the dunes, playing in and around the intrinsically Cubist architecture of the Magreb, instilled in her a lifelong concern with optics, the way the mind perceives light and interacts with paintings.
Irene Rice Pereira was a lovely, fragile being. Her presence was hushed. She spoke almost in a whisper and listened far more than she spoke. She was a prodigious autodidact and a spellbinding lecturer. The main body of her metaphysical library today resides in the Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Her papers and the manuscript for her still unpublished book, Eastward Journey, are available to scholars in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard.
Pereira won recognition for her abstract geometric work, particularly her jewel-like works on fluted and coruscated layers of glass, throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. In 1953 the Whitney Museum, then in Greenwich Village, gave her a retrospective exhibition with Loren MacIver, and that same year Life magazine published a centerfold photo examination of her work.
By the late 1950s Abstract Expressionism had swept Manhattan, flattening such nascent movements as Geometric Abstraction. Such artists as Stuart Davis, Stanton MacDonald Wright, George L.K. Morris, George Ault, Jan Matulka, Richard Leahy, Philip Guston and many others were eclipsed. Pereira believed that a European angst, brought to our shores in the wake of the Holocaust, had introduced a cynicism and a profoundly anti-female sensibility that boded ill for art in America. Rightly she pointed out that even when the works of women were acquired by museums they were rarely shown, a disgrace that persists to this day. The women who did achieve success, she said, were often collaborators with more famous male artists and tastemakers.
Pereira died in 1971 in Marbella, Spain, ill and broken-hearted. She had been evicted from the Fifteenth Street studio in Chelsea where she had painted for more than thirty years. Suffering from severe emphysema, she could barely negotiate a few stairs.
But by the 1980s a new generation of women scholars and curators had begun to resurrect her stature. A considerable following has formed to honor a pioneer artist who cared about other artists and willingly paid the price to denounce what others feared in silence. Indeed when Pereira sold a painting she had two immediate impulses: buy a new hat, and give the money to an artist friend in trouble. She loved hats but loved to help fellow artists even more.
I. Rice Pereira, Untitled (Boats at Cape Cod), 1932, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Djelloul Marbrook, 1988.80
I. Rice Pereira, Sketch for Machine Composition #2, ca. 1936, pencil and crayon on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.73
Sketch for Machine Composition #2 was inspired by the view from the artist’s studio window. “I used to look in at a power house on 16th Street where I was living, to get the feeling of power house; and then made my own.” Fascinated by their functional beauty, Pereira made machines the central focus of her work in the 1930s. In this study for a painting, she presents devices that appear to have been taken apart and reassembled into a fantastic, abstract creation. Although she appreciated the potential of mechanization to transform society, this drawing has menacing overtones that suggest ambivalence.
I. Rice Pereira, Machine Composition #2, 1937, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.72
I. Rice Pereira, Heart of Flame, n.d., oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Max Robinson, 1981.184
Boat Composite, 1932, Oil on Linen, Whitney Museum of American Art
Seven Red Squares, 1951, Oil on Canvas, 40×50 inches, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Deborah and Ed Shein
Light is Gold, 1951, Glass, Acrylic, Laquer, Casein, and Gold Leaf, 30 1/8 x 23 1/4 inches, Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy
Long Island Buddha, 2010-2011 Zhang Huan (Location: Joseph Lau & Josephine Lau Roof Garden)
Zhang Huan is internationally recognized for his visceral and confrontational endurance performances in the 1990s and later sculptures and paintings that explore themes of memory and spirituality in relation to Buddhism. This sculpture was inspired by Zhang’s trip to Tibet in 2005, where he discovered fragments of Buddhist sculptures damaged during the Cultural Revolution. Rather than a religious image, this monumental Buddha head reflects on the history of human conflict and the preservation of culture. Included as part of ASHK’s inaugural exhibition Transforming Minds: Buddhism in Art in 2012, this sculpture now sits at the Center as a permanent installation.
ED LITCHER GOT IT, AFTER MUCH RESEARCH!!
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 IRENERICEPEREIRA.COM
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Dong Kingman, Bridge over River, 1936, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.189 When I stumbled upon Dong Kingman’s Bridge over River (1936), the gleaming sliver towers of a yet-to-be-finished Bay Bridge transported me home. Much of my childhood was spent on that bridge, shuttling back and forth between my grandparents’ home in San Francisco and mine in Oakland. I hunched over my computer screen, greedily drinking in every inch of Kingman’s watercolor and yearning for the omurice or chawanmushi that my grandmother would inevitably have waiting for me at the end of my journey across the bridge.
Dong Kingman was an outstanding watercolorist, who, in addition to teaching art at Columbia University and Hunter College, worked for decades as an illustrator in Hollywood, designing set backgrounds for scores of blockbuster films. He also served as a cultural ambassador and international lecturer for the U.S. Department of State. In 1936 Kingman was hired as an artist to work under the auspices of the Federal Arts Project (FAP), The FAP was a branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) dedicated to financially supporting thousands of artists across the country who were struggling under the economic and social turmoil of the Great Depression. Yet as with many of the relief programs created by the Roosevelt Administration—from Social Security to Unemployment Insurance—the benefits were unequally distributed. White men benefited most, often at the exclusion of women and people of color. This pattern of exclusion held for many of the federal arts programs.
Kingman was one of the few known Asian American artists to be hired by the WPA. The astounding absence of Asian American artists relative to their white counterparts can be in part explained by the requirement of citizenship, which became a prerequisite for employment by the WPA in 1937, two years after the program’s founding. The histories of Asian Americans are marked by exclusion, most obvious of which is the century-long denial of citizenship for Asian immigrants. Significantly, SAAM’s collection includes the works of other Asian American artists employed by the WPA, most of whom worked for the program before the citizenship requirement was adopted. These artists include Bumpei Usui, Fugi Nakamizo, Isamu Noguchi, Chee Chin S. Cheung Lee, Kenjiro Nomura, Sakari Suzuki, Chuzo Tamotzu, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Both Kingman and Noguchi were born in the United States and were thus able to continue to work for the WPA even after the citizenship requirement was adopted by the agency.
To say that I stumbled upon Kingman’s work is not precise; it implies that I encountered it by happenstance. Since coming to SAAM last year as a Luce Curatorial Fellow, I have constantly searched the collection for the presence and the traces of Asian American makers. I do this not because I hope to find the “me stories” in SAAM’s collection (although that is certainly true), but because I know that the histories of Asian American artists open spaces for critical interrogation. These histories unsettle the tidy stories of American art — a sweeping narrative, dominated by a few artistic geniuses, who are always white and always men, that unfolds from the beautiful landscapes of Albert Bierstadt to sublime color fields of Barnett Newman. These are the histories I learned in college and graduate school and the ones I am trying to grapple with now. I am trying to think beyond and refuse the logics and instructions of art history that taught me what to value as beautiful and who and what to prioritize as subjects worthy of scholarly inquiry.
My abiding companions in this rethinking— the scholars Lisa Lowe, Mae Ngai, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Michael Omi, Gary Okihiro, Manu Karuka— have helped me understand that absent a deep and layered study of our history, we cannot begin to understand the histories of American and global capitalism, the nature of American imperialism and militarism or how logics of democracy, citizenship, and immigration function in the United States. Studying Kingman and the other Asian American artists of the WPA is not merely about adding them into an existing canon of New Deal artists. The immense joy I find in studying these artists is in the myriad ways their work unsettles our understanding of artistic production during the New Deal period, illuminating the complexities, contradictions, and conflicts that reside at the heart of the stories of American art.
Grace Yasumura, the Luce Curatorial Fellow, earned her Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from the University of Maryland in 2019. Her dissertation examined the different ways racialized identities were created and contested in New Deal post office mural
Bumpei Usui, Dahlias, 1938, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.90
Bumpei Usui, Portrait of Yasuo Kuniyoshi in His Studio, 1930, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Regis Corporation, 1984.92
Fugi Nakamizo, Central Park Plaza, ca. 1940, watercolor on paper mounted on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the General Services Administration, 1974.28.251
Fugi Nakamizo, Clown Elephants, 1940, watercolor, brush and ink, crayon and pencil on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the General Services Administration, 1974.28.293
Chee Chin S. Cheung Lee, Portsmouth Square, 1936, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Jean Nichols, 1974.38.44
Kenjiro Nomura, The Farm, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.36
A farm scene with green trees would seem to be a positive view of the American scene, but Kenjiro Nomura’s painting suggests a hidden threat. Clouds gather and darkness fills the barn and sheds while the foreground road is in shadow. Not a figure or animal is to be seen.
In the Seattle area where Nomura lived, many of his fellow Japanese Americans made their living as fruit and vegetable farmers. Since 1921 they had been subject to anti-alien laws that prevented foreign-born Japanese Americans and other aliens from owning or leasing land. Those born in America who could own farmland still suffered from prejudice. During the Great Depression many Japanese American farmers barely managed to survive, living only on what they grew themselves. It is no wonder that Nomura’s view of a farm during this period is disquieting.
As other Americans emerged from the Great Depression during World War II, Nomura and other Japanese Americans were victimized again by being removed from their homes, businesses, and farms to be interned in camps. Like his PWAP painting, Nomura’s images made in internment camps feature dark skies and deep colors that evoke the shadow of injustice.
Sakari Suzuki, Maverick Road, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.150
Chuzo Tamotzu, Cats, ca. 1935-1937, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Evander Childs High School, Bronx, New York through the General Services Administration, 1975.83.89
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Carnival, 1949, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Harry W. Zichterman, 1978.74.3
Copies are available at the RIHS Visitor Center Kiosk, $35- (members get 10% discount). Kiosk open 12 noon to 5 p.m. Thursday thru Sundays
On July 9, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read for the
first time in New York in front of George Washington and his troops.
In reaction to what had been read, soldiers and citizens went to
Bowling Green, a park in Manhattan, where a lead statue of King George
III on horseback stood. The mob of people pulled down the statue, and
later the lead was melted down to make musket balls, or bullets for
use in the war for independence.
Painting by Wiliam Walcutt, 1857
ANDY SPARBERG, GLORIA HERMAN, ED LITCHER AND ROBIN LYNN 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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
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Film buffs know that the movie industry began in New York City, and many know that Fort Lee was the next center of film-making. During the 1910s, D.W. Griffith shot nearly 100 pictures there. This is where Mary Pickford made her film debut and where Theda Bara, “Fatty” Arbuckle, and Douglas Fairbanks all worked in the rows of great greenhouse studios that sprang up in this film boomtown and where tax revenues from studios and laboratories filled municipal bank accounts.
And then there was Astoria.
Hopefully you have visited the Museum of the Moving Image at the Kaufman Astoria Studios. This is where many important films of the 1920s were made, where stars met and deals done. So find a comfy seat, open the popcorn, relax and enjoy the story.
First thing. The industry didn’t come to Astoria from New York or Fort Lee. It migrated back east from Hollywood. The film industry began to move to California before World War I. The Fort Lee phase of the industry ended in the winter of 1918-1919 with terrible cold, coal rationing and the rising specter of the flu pandemic. In sunny California, you could shoot outdoors year-round, where land and labor were cheaper and where film companies were further away from Edison’s toughs chasing down patent infringements.
But not everyone wanted to go west. Richard Koszarski in his The Astoria Studio and Its Fabulous Films, writes “Reaction against Hollywood as a cultural wasteland and factory town began in earnest right after the war… Many who had the clout simply refused exile to California, and others did their best to escape back East.” As Louise Brooks wrote, “There was no theater, no opera, no concerts – just those god-damned movies.”
Moreover, Hollywood was a long way from Broadway, and many film stars couldn’t manage the stretch. Broadway actors starring in films needed to be close enough to the Great White Way so that after a day of filming they could make it to the theaters for their evening performances.
With the end of wartime restrictions on building, studio construction in the New York region boomed. D. W. Griffith moved back east to escape studio control. He settled on Mamaroneck, paying $375,000 for Satan’s Toe, land that jutted into Long Island Sound (the former estate of oil baron Henry Flagler, who lent John D. Rockefeller start-up funds for Standard Oil in exchange for a piece of the profits). Mamaroneck obviously inspired Griffith, who directed such silent classics there as Broken Blossoms, Way Down East (both starring Lillian Gish), and Orphans of the Storm (starring Lillian and Dorothy Gish).
William Randolph Hearst transformed Sulzer’s Harlem River Park and Casino into the Cosmopolitan Studios, and Vitograph, Goldwyn, Metro and Fox all returned to the City. Some commentators said that California was “all filmed out”. At this moment, critics said, New York was the center of the fledgling film industry. And Astoria was the Mecca of the Silent Era.
Astoria was the home of the Famous-Players Studio, the most important eastern studio, which opened in September 1920, at 36th Street between 34th and 35th Avenues.
The construction of Famous Players-Lasky Studios (Paramount Pictures) as seen in 1919. https://www.qgazette.com/articles/lights-camera-astoria-highlights-filmmaking-in-queens/
William Randolph Hearst transformed Sulzer’s Harlem River Park and Casino into the Cosmopolitan Studios, and Vitograph, Goldwyn, Metro and Fox all returned to the City. Some commentators said that California was “all filmed out”. At this moment, critics said, New York was the center of the fledgling film industry. And Astoria was the Mecca of the Silent Era.
Astoria was the home of the Famous-Players Studio, the most important eastern studio, which opened in September 1920, at 36th Street between 34th and 35th Avenues.
The Astoria story began with a Hungarian-born Jewish immigrant named Adolph Zukor. Working as a successful furrier, he invested in a penny arcade theater, or nickelodeon, on 14th Street in Manhattan. By 1908, 550 nickelodeons and movie houses operated in Manhattan. And on Christmas Day, they were all closed down. Progressives felt that this new entertainment undermined efforts to “uplift” the working class and immigrants who were the major consumers. Still, the new industry rolled on – the answer was not to eliminate but rather to regulate and censor films. And, of course, so begins another story.
Back to this one: Zukor teamed up with David Frohman, and became big names in the penny arcade business. They formed the Famous Players Film Company to produce and distribute full-length films. Their first success was The Count of Monte Cristo, released in 1913. Zukor merged with another successful film company, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Picture Play Company, which had made the first Hollywood movie, Squaw Man, directed by Cecil B. DeMille.
Lasky began his entertainment career in vaudeville after an Alaska adventure which yielded no gold. He became a booking agent – and rich. Lasky wasn’t always a success (he lost $110,000 producing the stage musical Folies Bergère) but he soon found his way to the motion picture industry where he thrived. In 1913 he, his brother-in-law Samuel Goldwyn, and Cecil B. DeMille became partners and founded the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.
The new company, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, was launched in 1916. In no time, they had eight film production companies under their wing, including a distribution company called Paramount Pictures, and were now the biggest players in the silent film business.
In 1920, they built their studio complex in the cheaper and roomier confines of Astoria. A few years earlier a Queens location would have been isolated and rural, but thanks to the Queensboro Bridge, which opened in 1909, the new complex was now only a short distance from the city’s theater district.
Astoria Studios produced over 100 films during the twenties. With its main stage and basement stages, it could support up to six feature films in production at the same time. Astoria Studios was where the moving picture industry actually developed; and was home to talented actors such as Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning American actress Gloria Swanson, sisters Dorothy and Lillian Gish, and Rudolph Valentino. Essentially, it was where many breakout stars had the opportunity to develop and display their talent.
Gloria Swanson said of making movies in Queens in her autobiography, Swanson On Swanson, “Every day we drove across the Queensboro Bridge to the new studio in Astoria in the borough of Queens. It was certainly not another Hollywood. The place was full of free spirits, defectors, refugees, who were all trying to get away from Hollywood and its restrictions. There was a wonderful sense of revolution and innovation in the studio in Queens.” And Louise Brooks noted, “When work was finished, we dressed in evening clothes, dined at the Colony or ‘21’ and went to the theater.”
The first all talking feature film shot at the studio, The Letter, received an Oscar nomination for actress Jeanne Eagels. The talking film debuts of Claudette Colbert, Edward G. Robinson and Tallulah Bankhead were filmed here. The Marx Brothers moved from Broadway to the silver screen in Astoria to produce their first two films, The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930). In fact, they shot “Cocoanuts” while simultaneously starring in the Broadway production of “Animal Crackers.” It is said that major stars like Charlie Chaplin, Eddie Cantor, Groucho Marx and Gloria Swanson rented or owned houses in Queens.
For those interested in the film industry (as well as movies themselves), recall that Famous Players-Lasky, under the direction of Zukor, is important for creating the vertical integration of the film industry and block booking practices – practices that shaped the Hollywood industry in its greatest mid-20th century years.
In 1942, during the start of World War II, the United States Army Signal Corps took over the studio to make Army training and indoctrination films. In 1970 the Studio Army declared it surplus property turned the studio over to the Federal Government. In 1982 the title to the Studio was transferred to the City of New York, and in 1982 real estate developer George S. Kaufman in partnership with Alan King, Johnny Carson and others, obtained the lease from the City. Kaufman renovated and expanded it into a comprehensive studio capable of handling any type, size and style of production.
Kaufman Studios today Wikipedia Kaufman Astoria Studios has had a long track record of success, and has been the location for major motion pictures including: The Wiz, The Warriors, All That Jazz, Arthur, Ragtime, Hair, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Radio Days, Money Pit, Ishtar, Fletch Lives, Glengarry Glen Ross, Scent of a Woman, Age of Innocence, and Carlito’s Way.
Stephen Blank RIHS May 4, 2021
BE PREPARED FOR EARLY VOTING
We’ve just come from a seven-hour seminar on how to fill out the 2021 mayoral-election ballot.”
FORMER STERN’S DEPARTMENT STORE ON WEST 23RD STREET
THOM HEYER, RICHARD MEYER, ALEXIS VILLEFANE, GLORIA HERMAN, VICKI FEINMEL, ARON EISENPREISS ALL GOT IT RIGHT…SEE THE STORY BELOW!!!
The Home Depot Building
Centered above the main entrance of The Home Depot, the giant home improvement store on West 23rd Street, there is a carving of a lion’s head just beneath a cartouche framing the letters “SB,” a monogram that provides a mute but eloquent clue to the building’s original purpose.
SB stands for Stern Brothers, and more than a century ago, when the area just south of Madison Square was New York’s golden shopping district, Stern’s was one of its grandest department stores. On the northern edge of what became known as Ladies’ Mile, it was for a time the largest department store in New York and one of the earliest to take advantage of a new invention called plate glass, installing huge street-level windows that allowed passersby to see inside, to “window shop,” as it were.
Originally on Sixth Avenue near 23rd Street, Stern’s was founded in 1867 by the brothers Louis, Isaac, Bernard and Benjamin. In 1878, in need of additional space, it opened at 32 West 23rd Street in a six-story cast-iron Renaissance Revival structure designed by Henry Fernbach, a German-born architect better known for his work on such houses of worship as the Moorish-influenced Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street. Five years later, Fernbach died at his desk, so when the Stern brothers desired to expand further, they called upon another German émigré, W. M. Schickel.
By 1892, Schickel had tripled Stern’s footprint, expanding westward to 40 West 23rd Street. Fernbach’s design was duplicated on the western wing and a central section with a new arched entrance united both wings. Together, the sections formed what still might be New York’s largest cast-iron facade. Painted white and stretching across eight city lots, the building dazzled onlookers on sunny days and was sometimes called “the big wedding cake on 23rd Street.”
Stern’s flourished, as did other retailers on the block, including Teller & Co. (the future Bonwit Teller) and Best & Co. The four Stern brothers were always on hand, at least one of them greeting customers and all of them decked out in cutaway tailcoats. Pianists perched on every floor provided music to shop by, a harbinger of sounds to come. By 1913, however, the city — and its top retailers — was heading uptown. Stern’s did too, moving to 42nd Street, opposite Bryant Park. It continued growing, opened two dozen branches in three states and eventually became part of Federated Department Stores. In 2001, its remaining locations were converted into units of Bloomingdales or Macy’s and Stern Brothers disappeared.
The building, however, did not, even though it was neglected for a while and its once-resplendent facade suffered the temporary indignity of a coating of pink. For most of the 1900s, with 23rd Street abandoned by prestigious stores, the structure housed manufacturing and shipping facilities for a variety of tenants. In 1968, its fortunes began to change. The property was acquired by Jerome M. Cohen, chairman of Williams Real Estate Co., and his partners, who launched a full restoration of the cast-iron facade. Soon, showrooms and offices filled the building.
In 1986, Hasbro, Inc., the multinational toy and board game company, moved in, conducted toy fairs and even inspired a scene filmed there for the Tom Hanks movie “Big.” Hasbro remained almost 20 years, giving way to Home Depot in 2004.
Home Depot is the building’s major tenant, but not its only one. A separate entrance at 40 West 23rd Street leads to the expansive offices and showrooms of the clothing designer Marc Ecko, a space now on the market.
Meanwhile, Home Depot has taken the building back to its original purpose: operating as a retailer with special appeal to New Yorkers. Because this is the company’s first store in Manhattan, its focus is on apartment and brownstone dwellers. Home Depot’s 108,000 square feet fill the entire street level, including space in 28 West 23rd Street, plus a mezzanine and a basement. It stocks 20,000 different products, a figure that climbs to 100,000 if special orders are included. And unlike its other units, this Home Depot has a doorman to welcome customers — a reminder of the era of the Stern brothers even though this greeter doesn’t wear a cutaway tailcoat.
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
Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture 1915-1928 (1990) Richard Koszarski, The Astoria Studio and Its Fabulous Films (1983)
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It has graced 23rd Street and Broadway for over a Century
One of Manhattan’s most famous landmarks — the wedge-shaped Flatiron Building — is getting an overhaul to attract an entirely new crop of office tenants.
The nearly 120-year-old tower near the foot of Madison Square Park is empty, with all of its space available for the first time in more than 60 years, while it undergoes a total renovation of its interior. The effort to fill it will be a test of demand for New York offices as the city emerges from the pandemic.
With Manhattan’s office supply at its highest level in at least three decades, the 21-story Flatiron Building will need to rely on its singular image to stand out. Asking rents are more than $100 a square foot. That’s pricier than the $77.46-a-square-foot average in the broader Midtown South area, according to data from CBRE Group Inc.
A commercial floor under renovation.Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg
“We don’t think that the current market conditions actually relate to this leasing program because three years from now, there won’t be any space in the Flatiron,” said Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive officer of the New York tri-state region at CBRE, the brokerage marketing the offices. Space like this “doesn’t come up all the time.”
A newly renovated commercial floor.
Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg
The tower at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, designed by architect Daniel Burnham, is among New York’s most enduring symbols and was one of the city’s tallest buildings upon its completion in 1902. It’s been empty since 2019, when Macmillan Publishers, its sole tenant for five years, moved downtown to the Financial District.
The property was gutted over the past year. As part of the work, nearly 650 window air-conditioning units were removed to make way for a central system. The penthouse, still stripped to the bones, will have new, large windows and a private wraparound terrace. The building’s lobby will also be renovated, and the six tiny elevators will be modernized.
The marketing process for the Flatiron Building’s more than 200,000 square feet (19,000 square meters) of offices has just begun, and the brokers already have received three proposals — mainly from international firms looking for an outpost in the iconic property, Tighe said.
THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE AT THE FOOT OF CANAL STREET LISA FERNANDEZ, VICKI FEINMEL, NINA LUBLIN, ARLENE BESSENOFF, LAURA HUSSEY, ALEXIS VILLEFANE, GLORIA HERMAN, JAY JACOBSON & ED LITCHER WERE THE EARLY BIRDS TODAY.
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
BLOOMBERG
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The private homes of Manhattan’s wealthy citizens had moved northward before 1853 when the luxurious marble-fronted St. Nicholas Hotel opened on Broadway between Spring and Broome Streets. The exclusive hotel, which cost about $1 million to construct, would attract handsome retail stores around it.
In 1859 Homer Bostwick hired architect John Kellum to design an upscale emporium building across the street from the St. Nicholas, at Nos. 502-504 Broadway. Kellum had just dissolved his partnership with Gamaliel King, and was now partnered with his son as Kellum & Son.
The private homes of Manhattan’s wealthy citizens had moved northward before 1853 when the luxurious marble-fronted St. Nicholas Hotel opened on Broadway between Spring and Broome Streets. The exclusive hotel, which cost about $1 million to construct, would attract handsome retail stores around it.
In 1859 Homer Bostwick hired architect John Kellum to design an upscale emporium building across the street from the St. Nicholas, at Nos. 502-504 Broadway. Kellum had just dissolved his partnership with Gamaliel King, and was now partnered with his son as Kellum & Son.
The cast iron storefront of clustered columns and regimented arches was manufactured by the Architectural Iron Works. Its catalogue listed these capitals as “Gothic.” Above, the four stories of white marble were distinguished by two-story arches, separated by slim engaged columns which would later earn the style “sperm candle” because of the similarity to candles made from the waxy substance found in the head cavities of the sperm whale.
Kellum & Son stacked nubby, faceted blocks up the side piers, which provided a somewhat incongruous frame when compared with the otherwise gentle lines of the facade. Below the stone cornice a corbel table carried on the arched motif. High above Broadway two stone urns were the finishing touches.
While the building was completed in 1860, the Civil War prevented tenants from moving in until 1866. That year C. G. Gunther & Sons moved into the top floor. Described as “The oldest and largest fur house in the United States,” it was founded in 1820 by Christian G. Gunther at No. 46 Maiden Lane and remained at that location until now. The firm, now headed by C. Godfrey Gunther, not only imported raw furs and skins, but manufactured fur clothing and accessories.
In May 1866 china and “fancy goods” dealers John Vogt & Co. moved into the first four floors. Founded in 1852 it had been operating from William Street. In its new store, according to the History of New York in 1868, “may now be seen the most magnificent and choice stocks of merchandise” and “an endless variety of curious, chase, quaint, and elaborate designs, and combining superb beauty of shapes, colors, and embellishments with rare excellence of materials and most exquisite workmanship in respect to moulding, carving, etc.”
The first floor was the “Porcelain Ware” showroom. Here well-do-to female shoppers browsed among dinnerware, tea services, and “toilet ware.” The second floor contained “Bohemian and Belgian Glass Ware, Lava Wave, German China, and Parian Marble.” Reproductions of classical statuary suitable for Victorian parlors were available here. Among the copies available in 1868 were “Cupid captive by Venus; Sybilla, with guitar; Paul and Virginia (from that memorable and pathetic story); [and] Mounted Amazon attacked by a leopard.” The third and fourth floors were used for warehousing stock.
Only four months after John Vogt & Co. opened, disaster struck. On October 8, 1866 The New York Times reported “A destructive fire occurred in the marble building No. 502 Broadway, on Saturday night. The building was occupied by C. G. Gunther & Sons, furriers, and John Vogt & Co., dealers in china and glass.” The devastating fire roared through the floors and sparks set St. Patrick’s Cathedral several blocks away on Mott Street ablaze.
Damage to the church and “its interior adornments” were estimated at $150,000; while the Broadway emporium was gutted. The Times reported “the edifice was reduced to ashes.” The losses suffered by John Vogt & Co. and C. G. Gunther & Sons was around $350,000–approximately $5.4 million in 2017.
The History of New York noted “the whole edifice underwent a thorough and costly refitting and adornment.” Undaunted, both companies moved back into the restored building.
By 1872 John Vogt & Co. had left and C. G. Gunther’s Sons had expanded throughout the lower floors. Formerly a wholesale house, it now opened both a men’s and a women’s store. On December 28, 1872 an advertisement in Harper’s Bazaar offered “Ladies’ Furs,” an “elegant assortment of seal-skin fur, in all the leading styles of sacques and turbans.”
Choosing its audience carefully, C. G. Gunther’s Sons placed its ad for menswear that same month in the Army, Navy, Air Force Journal & Register. The advertisement gave a hint of the wide variety of items manufactured and sold here. Well-to-do patrons were offered “caps, collars, gloves, gauntlets, etc., including the latest styles in seal skin fur.” There was also a “large and elegant stock of fur robes and skins for carriage and sleigh use” and “seal coats and vests.”
Earlier that year, in October, the New-York Tribune dedicated an article to C. G. Gunther’s Sons. It described the luxurious pelts used to create items worn by Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens. “The most costly furs are those made from the Russian and ‘Crown’ Sable, which always have been and always will be fashionable.” The article explained that the term “Crown” sable indicated these were the skins used by the Czar.
The prices quoted were an indication of the C. G. Gunther’s Sons’ carriage trade customers. “The price of a set, consisting of muff and boa, or collar, varies from $115 to $1,000. The darker the fur the more expensive, other things being equal.” The cheapest price mentioned would be equal to about $2,300 today; the most expensive about $20,000.
The Tribune’s article included mention of the extraordinary number of furs–a list that would shock readers today. Included were fox, chinchilla, mink, ermine, seal, beaver, monkey, marten, bear, buffalo, wolverine, lynx and wildcat. The writer decided “the purchasers who cannot find their wants immediately supplied must be difficult to please.”
A would-be burglar was attracted to the expensive goods within the store early on a September morning in 1874. Michael Moreno, described by The Times as “an Italian living at No. 59 Crosby street,” was noticed loitering outside by the night watchman. The guard used a forceful incentive to prompt the Moreno to move on; but was trumped. “The watchman caught hold of the Italian and drew his club, as if to strike him, when the latter drew a revolver.”
Hearing the commotion, Police Officer Corey rushed in. He grabbed Moreno by the collar, only to find the revolver now pointed at him. For his bold move Moreno received a “stunning blow on the forehead” by the policeman’s baton.
The blow was severe enough that the next morning he was moved from his jail cell to Bellevue Hospital. But he had not learned his lesson about 19th century law enforcement yet. The newspaper reported that he was “so threatening” that an officer was called in to help the nurses undress him. Finally he was placed in a strait-jacket.
If the authorities had searched Moreno for weapons, they missed his knife. He managed to escape from the strait-jacket then attacked the police officer with the knife. The policeman “was obliged to use his club to protect himself.” It all ended badly for the combative would-be burglar. “At a late hour last night Moreno was lying in a dangerous condition in the hospital,” reported The Times on September 19, 1874.
Although C. G. Gunther’s Sons had returned to the building after the ruinous fire a decade earlier, it would no do so in 1876. The conflagration of February 8 quickly became known nation-wide as the “Great Broadway Fire.” The Tribune described it in florid Victorian prose saying “The air rushed into the vortex of the ascending flame from every direction, and lifted the fire in gigantic billows that rolled aloft in roaming surges to a great height.”
Structures along Broadway collapsed during the massive fire. Harper’s Weekly, February 1876 (copyright expired)
Choosing its audience carefully, C. G. Gunther’s Sons placed its ad for menswear that same month in the Army, Navy, Air Force Journal & Register. The advertisement gave a hint of the wide variety of items manufactured and sold here. Well-to-do patrons were offered “caps, collars, gloves, gauntlets, etc., including the latest styles in seal skin fur.” There was also a “large and elegant stock of fur robes and skins for carriage and sleigh use” and “seal coats and vests.”
Earlier that year, in October, the New-York Tribune dedicated an article to C. G. Gunther’s Sons. It described the luxurious pelts used to create items worn by Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens. “The most costly furs are those made from the Russian and ‘Crown’ Sable, which always have been and always will be fashionable.” The article explained that the term “Crown” sable indicated these were the skins used by the Czar.
The prices quoted were an indication of the C. G. Gunther’s Sons’ carriage trade customers. “The price of a set, consisting of muff and boa, or collar, varies from $115 to $1,000. The darker the fur the more expensive, other things being equal.” The cheapest price mentioned would be equal to about $2,300 today; the most expensive about $20,000.
The Tribune’s article included mention of the extraordinary number of furs–a list that would shock readers today. Included were fox, chinchilla, mink, ermine, seal, beaver, monkey, marten, bear, buffalo, wolverine, lynx and wildcat. The writer decided “the purchasers who cannot find their wants immediately supplied must be difficult to please.”
A would-be burglar was attracted to the expensive goods within the store early on a September morning in 1874. Michael Moreno, described by The Times as “an Italian living at No. 59 Crosby street,” was noticed loitering outside by the night watchman. The guard used a forceful incentive to prompt the Moreno to move on; but was trumped. “The watchman caught hold of the Italian and drew his club, as if to strike him, when the latter drew a revolver.”
Hearing the commotion, Police Officer Corey rushed in. He grabbed Moreno by the collar, only to find the revolver now pointed at him. For his bold move Moreno received a “stunning blow on the forehead” by the policeman’s baton.
The blow was severe enough that the next morning he was moved from his jail cell to Bellevue Hospital. But he had not learned his lesson about 19th century law enforcement yet. The newspaper reported that he was “so threatening” that an officer was called in to help the nurses undress him. Finally he was placed in a strait-jacket.
If the authorities had searched Moreno for weapons, they missed his knife. He managed to escape from the strait-jacket then attacked the police officer with the knife. The policeman “was obliged to use his club to protect himself.” It all ended badly for the combative would-be burglar. “At a late hour last night Moreno was lying in a dangerous condition in the hospital,” reported The Times on September 19, 1874.
Although C. G. Gunther’s Sons had returned to the building after the ruinous fire a decade earlier, it would no do so in 1876. The conflagration of February 8 quickly became known nation-wide as the “Great Broadway Fire.” The Tribune described it in florid Victorian prose saying “The air rushed into the vortex of the ascending flame from every direction, and lifted the fire in gigantic billows that rolled aloft in roaming surges to a great height.”
Buildings collapsed, others were gutted. Nos. 502-504 Broadway was heavily damaged. The tailor’s trimmings firm of Lesher, Whitman & Co. took advantage of catastrophe by quickly purchasing the building. Three days later, even while The Times remarked “The public interest in the ruins of the buildings destroyed by fire Last Tuesday night was unabated yesterday,” it reported “Messrs. Lesher, Whitman & Co. yesterday purchased the premises No. 502 and 504 Broadway, at present occupied by Messrs. C. G. Gunther & Co. as a fur store.”
The article explained that Lesher, Whitman & Co. would take over the building “as soon as Messrs. Gunther & Co. shall have removed.” One month later C. G. Gunther’s Sons moved into “the new and capacious building No. 184 Fifth avenue” at 23rd Street.
According to a 1943 New York Times article, 104 patients were evacuated in accordance with an order by Mayor LaGuardia to close childcare institutions in order to conserve oil during World War II. LaGuardia noted that if Neponsit Hospital closed, 300,000 gallons of oil would be saved, which would lead to a 10% reduction of New York City’s fuel oil. Two years later in 1945, the hospital reopened, but mainly to veterans. The US Public Health Service leased the hospital to treat veterans with tuberculosis for five years. In 1952, the Queens Hospital Center was created through the merging of Queens General Hospital and Triboro Hospitals, and Neponsit Beach Hospital was absorbed into this new medical center. Yet despite talks of expanding Neponsit into a general hospital, Neponsit closed in 1955, as tuberculosis cases declined significantly in the 1950s.
For the next few years, many New York agencies struggled to discover the best use for the building. New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses proposed expanding Jacob Riis Park onto the hospital land, replacing hospital buildings with sports fields and a swimming pool. The New York City Planning Commission actually approved this expansion unanimously, but the Board of Estimate overturned the plan. In the meantime, others proposed converting the hospital into housing, while others proposed turning the building into a nursing home. By 1959, construction began on the main building and the nurses’ residence, and in 1961 the Neponsit Home for the Aged was opened.
Lesher, Whitman & Co. conducted business from the restored building with little fanfare for more than a decade. The only upheaval seems to have been the ongoing battle with the New York District Rail Company in 1886 and 1887. The company proposed to build a “railroad underneath Broadway.” Stephen R. Lesher, head of the firm, vehemently fought against it.
It was not until 1889 that trouble came; not through business troubles, but through love. Stephen Lesher’s son, Charles S. Lesher, was 20 years old at the time and still lived in the family’s handsome house at No. 330 Madison Avenue. He was employed by the insurance firm Weed & Kennedy on Pine Street.
The young man became enamored with 28-year old Leonore Mitchell, described by The Times as “a handsome woman.” Shockingly, Lenore asserted that the two were “on intimate terms,” and Charles admitted, according to the newspaper, “that he had spent a good deal of his time in her company.”
But, according to Leonore, he became fiercely jealous. It came to a climax when he called on her at her home at No. 21 West 31st Street on March 4. During the preliminary hearing she declared he “induced her to drink a glass of wine in which he poured a quantity of digitalis.” Soon afterwards she became ill and “was compelled to call in a doctor, who saved her life.”
Lesher was arrested for attempted murder. His accuser appeared in the courtroom on May 14 “fashionably attired and was accompanied by a colored maid, Laura Paul.” She told the court that when he called on her a few days after the incident, he admitted to poisoning her; “but said that he had been drinking, or he would not have done it.”
Lesher insisted it was all a lie and that Leonore was simply attempting to blackmail him. He claimed to have a letter from her in which she confessed to attempted suicide. His father provided the $1,000 bail pending his court case.
More heartbreak came to the Lesher family six years later when Charles’s older brother Stephen visited the family’s ranch at Rockwood Station, Texas. While riding there his horse stepped into a prairie dog burrow and fell, rolling on top of Lesher. He suffered internal injuries and decided to return to New York “to get competent advice.” Doctors gave him morphine to ease the pain on the trip.
There was no railroad connecting Texas and New York; so Lesher boarded the steamer Neuces. According to other passengers, when the 35-year old went to his berth at 11:00 on the night of June 18, he was “cheerful.” But when Stephen Lesher, Sr. met the Neuces in New York Harbor four days later he would not be greeting his son, but retrieving his body. The 35-year old had been found dead in his berth, the apparent victim of an overdose.
At the time Wertheimer & Co., makers of gloves, was also in the Broadway building. On Christmas Eve 1891 Bloomindale’s ran an advertisement noting “Special–We have secured the entire sample stock of Lined Gloves from Wertheimer & Co…Ladies’ and Men’s, with and without fur tops.” The department store announced that although they were normally priced at up to $2.98 per pair, “We shall put these out as a great Holiday Special at 79c. per pair.” The store warned “Only 1,200 pairs; lingerers may be losers.”
Lesher, Whitman & Co. would remain in the Broadway building until 1900. In the meantime, other firms leased space. Benjamin & Caspary, cloak makers, were here by 1897. The firm sent a letter to the Citizens’ Union headquarters in October that year, endorsing Seth Low for reelection to mayor. It said in part “We wish to inform you that we are enthusiastically in favor of the election of Seth Low.”
The endorsement may not have been totally unbiased. Seth Low owned the Broadway building at the time and was, therefore, Benjamin & Caspary’s landlord. The property values along Broadway were an undergoing astonishing boom. In 1898 502-504 Broadway was valued at $250,000 and a year later at $300,000.
As Lesher, Whitman & Co. moved out, D. Jones & Sons moved in. The wholesale shirt makers were best known for their “Princely” and “Emperor” brands. In January 1901 The American Hatter insisted “No shirt buyer can afford to miss this line. Everything that is desirable in plain, fancy and negligee, or any variety of shirt, is here.”
Meinhard-Cozzens offered a variety of elegant women’s collars. Fabrics, Fancy Goods and Notions, December 1905 (copyright expired)
Headed by Dramin Jones, the firm included sons Joseph, Morris and Henry. Calling itself “the largest producers of popular priced shirts in the world” in 1902, it maintained a massive factory in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
The company was joined in the building on January 1, 1904 by Meinhard-Cozzens Company, makers and sellers of ladies’ neckwear and belts. “Neckwear” for women in 1904 referred to the high, stiff collars indispensable to a fashionable Edwardian wardrobe.
By 1909 another women’s neckwear company had moved in. Klauber Bros. & Co. advertised “Embroideries, Laces, Neckwear, and Novelties.” In November 1911 when Seth Low sold the building to Charles Lane, the three tenants were still here. D. Jones & Son was now known as Phillips-Jones Co.; but was still selling its highly-successful Emperor Shirts. Lane paid Low $251,000 for the property, a price the astonished Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide pointed out was “$194,000 less than the assessed value.”
Lane quickly resold the building a month later. On December 23 the Record & Guide hinted “The buyer is said to be the Coca-Cola Co.” The rumor was colorful but false. The purchaser was William H. Browning of Browning, King & Co. clothiers. He told reporters he had not decided what he would do with the property and “that the purchase was merely for investment.”
Throughout the next nine years the building continued to house apparel manufacturers. Philips-Jones employed 150 men, and 23 women in their shirt making shop. In 1917 another shirt manufacturer, Goodman, Cohen & Co. took 12,500 square feet of space; while Everett, Heaney & Co. dealt in fabrics.
For the first time in decades Nos. 502-504 Broadway was home to just one company when S. Blechman & Sons leased the entire building in July 1920. Listed in directories as “dry goods distributors,” the firm produced hosiery, underwear and other knit goods. And it found itself at odds with the labor unions several times over the next few years.
In 1934 management won a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying picket signs in front of the building. When the union refused to comply, S. Blechman & Sons went back to court, asking for a contempt of court ruling. In a case of deja vu the firm was back in court in 1937 when the union “flouted the injunction which restrained it from carrying signs…asserting that S. Blechman Sons, Inc…was unfair to labor.” The union was fined $250 for that offense.
The following year Simon Blechman commissioned architect Harry Hurwit to design the company’s new $65,000 building. Then in what was apparently a sudden change of mind, it purchased the old Rouss Building at Nos. 549-555 Broadway.
The building was home to Canal Jeans on a much-changed Broadway. photo by Edmund Vincent Gillon from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
The stretch of Broadway had not been the shopping district of the carriage trade for decades. Until the last quarter of the century its once-elegant buildings would be overlooked and abused. With the renaissance of the Soho neighborhood, Canal Jeans leased ground floor of 502-504 Broadway in 1992.
Through it all, little changed to Kellum & Son’s striking 1860 facade. In 2003 Bloomingdale’s leased the former Canal Jeans store in the building where 112 years earlier it had purchased an entire line of gloves.
WHY 502?
Who would be interested in this building? I am. My father’s business was located in 502 for some years in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In those days, a rowboat was in front of the building filled with jeans that were sale in Canal Jeans.
My father was always in the textile business. Lower Broadway was full of manufacturers, converters, wholesales, jobbers and related industries. These cast iron buildings have immerse floor strength and could support die presses and heavy industrial equipment.
502 was a vast building going thru to Crosby Street and was far from a glamorous address in those years.
My father’s textile businesses ranged from manufacturing brassieres in the early years and then inside linings for men’s neckties. Like all our self taught manufactures of the past he could take on a new product easily and continue the small manufacturer business that are vanishing in New York.
The Photos are FEMALE INSANE PAVILLION, LIGHTHOUSE SMALLPOX HOSPITAL, AMUSEMENT HALL ALMSHOUSE CHAPEL, STEAMER LANDING WARDEN’S RESIDENCE BLACKWELL MANSION, VISITOR PROMENADE
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 Sources
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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Mickey Marcus: Two-Time War Hero and Roosevelt Island
Stephen Blank
David “Mickey” Marcus never lived here, but he had an exciting and important link to our Island. Read on. Marcus was a 1924 West Point grad, up from a tough youth on the Lower East Side. At West Point, he lettered in boxing and football, and graduated in 1924 as an infantry second lieutenant. During his first assignment, on Governor’s Island, Marcus studied law at night school and married. Rather than take up his next duty assignment, in Puerto Rico, Marcus resigned his Regular Army commission and went to work as a law clerk in New York. A year later, he received a degree from Brooklyn Law School.
First War.
Marcus had maintained a Reserve commission and in 1940, Lt. Col. Marcus’ Guard unit was federalized. After the onset of war, Marcus sought a field command, but instead became chief of planning for the War Department’s Civil Affairs. Here, he served as a legal and military government adviser at some of the war’s most important conferences – Cairo in 1943; Dumbarton Oaks, where the UN was born; and Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. According to the citation for his Distinguished Service Medal (an unusually high service decoration for a colonel), Marcus played a key role in the ‘negotiation and drafting of the Italian Surrender Instrument, the Instrument of Unconditional Surrender of Germany, and the international machinery to be used for the control of Germany after her total defeat.’
He did make one trip to the front. In early May 1944, he got himself to London ‘to provide liaison and act as observer in the implementation of military government policies for France.’ Then he disappeared. Without telling anyone, he had wangled his way onto a plane and parachuted into Normandy with the 101st Airborne Division – although he had never jumped from an airplane before. Once on the ground in Normandy, Marcus led several patrols, engaging in firefights with German units and freeing a group of captured US paratroopers. Back in Washington, his boss finally had to issue the order: ‘Find Marcus. Arrest him if you have to–but send him back!’ Shortly after that, Marcus was on a plane to the United States, still in his dirty field uniform.
Their faces displaying a variety of emotions, these paratroopers from the 101st Airborne prepare to take off in a C-47 “Skytrain” on D-Day.
Immediately after the end of the fighting in Europe, Marcus worked with the occupation and became head the Pentagon’s War Crimes Division, responsible for selecting the judges, prosecutors and lawyers for the major war crimes trials in Germany and Japan. Marcus turned down a promotion to brigadier general and an assignment military attach at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to return to civilian life.
Second War But soon, Marcus began a new task, to help organize and train the army of the soon-to-be-born Israeli state. Reporting directly to future Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, Marcus’s recommendations would help transform a largely underground organization into an effective strike force. Once again, he moved from staff into the front line. Marcus was instrumental in building a new road under fire from Tel Aviv to beleaguered Jerusalem. His actions won him a promotion into the top most ranks of the Israeli army
Road to Jerusalem Burma_Road_(Israel)
The night before the cease-fire that would end the war took effect, Marcus and his staff held a celebration in the ancient village of Abu Ghosh, some eight miles east of Jerusalem. In the early morning hours, Marcus went for a walk and was shot dead by a sentry who failed to recognize him. Marcus became the first soldier buried at West Point who had died fighting under another nation’s flag.
OK. An interesting, brave guy. But what about Roosevelt Island? Here’s the connection
Between 1930 and 1934, Marcus was an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York. When La Guardia became New York mayor on a reform ticket in 1934, he appointed Marcus deputy commissioner of corrections. One of Marcus’ first actions was a special police raid on the corruption-ridden and prisoner-controlled penitentiary on Welfare Island.
(SB: Much of the next paragraphs come from TIME’s coverage of the raid – TIME at its absolute best, delightful, bare knuckle reporting.)
“Early one morning last week several carloads of men, led by New York City’s thin, purse-lipped new Commissioner of Correction Austin Harbutt MacCormick and his stocky aid David Marcus, descended the elevator from the Queensboro Bridge, made Welfare Island a surprise visit. By sundown Commissioner MacCormick had lifted the lid off Welfare Island and given city, state and nation a terrifying glimpse into the nether depths of prison life. ‘The worst prison in the world,’ pronounced Commissioner MacCormick, whom new Fusion Mayor LaGuardia had enlisted from the Federal Bureau of Prisons to clean up penal scandals left by years of Tammany rule. ‘The most corrupt prison in the country, physically and from every other standpoint. . . . A vicious circle of depravity that is almost beyond the ability of the imagination to grasp!’”
First stop on MacCormick’s raiding party was a cell-block tenanted by narcotic addicts who whimpered in their blankets, begged their visitors for “just a little shot.” In their littered cells were found electric stoves, pots, pans, hatchets, butcher knives, lengths of lead pipe, needle-pointed stilettos… To the police it looked more like a hop house than a prison.
“The dregs of the prison’s life were still howling disconsolately among the debris of their possessions when the raiders turned their attention to the prison’s hierarchy. Sixty-eight prisoners…virtually ran Welfare Island. They cowed their guards through outside political influence. They sold to some 500 inmates the best of vegetables and meats… Since the food was looted from the prison commissary, the other 1,200 prisoners virtually starved on greasy cold stews.
In addition, the ring sold narcotics, provided monied prisoners with clothing filched from newcomers, even had a strong voice in the granting of paroles. Divided between an Irish and an Italian gang, the hierarchy lived soft in two hospital wards, while men who should have been hospitalized—100 drug addicts, more than 100 venereal cases, 13 insane patients and one man suffering with sleeping sickness—roamed at large through the prison spreading demoralization and infection.”
Irish leader was Edward Cleary, a “graduate” of Sing Sing…. “Italian leader was a big swarthy gunman named Joie Rao, kept sleek and well-pressed by his underlings. Rao, onetime boxer, was shaving when Marcus ordered him to get along with the rest of his henchmen to solitary cells. Prisoner Rao insolently remarked that he would when he finished his toilet. Deputy Marcus, a boxer in his time at West Point, made short shrift of that kind of talk.
But Commissioner MacCormick had not sounded the most deplorable depths of Welfare Island until he went to the mess hall at noon. In fluttered a huge chorus of perverts, their lips and cheeks blushing with rouge, their eyes darkened with mascara, their hair flowing long. In their cells were found heaps of feminine underclothes, nightgowns, perfume, lipsticks, suntan powder. They were confined to the laundry during work hours, but at other times were not segregated. Unless close watch was kept on these tainted characters, other prisoners would fight as desperately for their favor as they would for a woman’s.”
How can you top this stuff? The New York Times gave top front page billing to the raid, headlining “Welfare Island Raid Bares Gangsters Rule Over Prison; Weapons, Narcotics Found”. Extensive, meaty, but not quite the bombastic heights of TIME.
The warden’s house included an in-ground swimming pool
Ah, but the story doesn’t quite end here.
On July 17, the Times reported that “a large patch of marijuana weed, a plant from which a narcotic smoked in the form of cigarettes is derived, was found, growing wild yesterday in the ground of the Welfare Island penitentiary…. It was believed that the weeds were being grown by prisoners assigned to duty outside the cell blocks. After yesterday’s discovery Deputy Commissioner David Marcus ordered Warden Lazarus Levy to assign workmen to destroy the weeds. The workmen, prisoners at the penitentiary, carefully pulled up every weed and burned it.” That must have been a very enjoyable task. So that’s the story of a tough, smart kid from the LES, a hero in two wars and a key figure in our Island’s history.
PS – Ted Berkman’s book Cast a Giant Shadow: The Story of Mickey Marcus Who Died to Save Jerusalem was made into a film by the same name starring Kirk Douglas. Neither got great reviews.
Stephen Blank RIHS May 12, 2021
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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) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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Aaron Bohrod, Junk Yard, 1939, oil on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.8
b. Chicago, 1907 – d. Madison, WI, 1992
Aaron Bohrod was born on Chicago’s West Side in 1907, the third child of Jewish immigrant parents. He gravitated toward art as a child, recalling that, at the age of nine or ten “it was fun to scribble.” After a brief attempt at training through a correspondence course, Bohrod pursued formal study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC): initially in a Saturday morning children’s class and later, from 1926–28, as a full-time student. Both the classroom instruction and his exposure to the museum’s collection and library had significant effects on his development. During this time, Bohrod also earned a living as a commercial artist in the advertising art departments of local stores, including the discount retailer the Fair Store.
Drawn toward “the mecca for all young artists,” Bohrod relocated to New York City, where he studied at the Art Student’s League from 1929–32 with notable American artists and instructors John Sloan, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Boardman Robinson. Bohrod credited Sloan’s insistence on humble, everyday subjects, and on “vitality in painting” as key underpinnings for his own art.
After his return to Chicago in 1932, Bohrod put Sloan’s teachings into practice by seeking out a wide range of urban locales for his paintings: “backyards and alleys and garage eaves and rooftops, and the parks, and the setting for the life of everyday people.” Working from his studio on North Avenue, Bohrod quickly established himself as a vital member of the city’s artistic community. He gathered with fellow residents and artists Francis Chapin and Davenport Griffen for sketching classes and lively discussions, embraced the “Chicago School’s” living connection to its audience, belonged to the Chicago Society of Artists, and maintained an active local exhibition schedule. He continued to take occasional courses at SAIC until 1937, and taught there briefly in the early 1940s.
Street in Oklahoma (1932) and Burlesque at the Rialto (1935) are typical of the artist’s work from this period, and reveal his engagement both thematically and stylistically with American scene painting. In the former, Bohrod depicted a rural townscape. Although the prominent sign in the foreground marks its location along Route 66—the “Main Street of America”—the deserted road and the sinister expanse of sky convey desolation and despair. A Texaco station and a few boldly colored structures line the forlorn thoroughfare, devoid of human presence with the exception of the lone figure reclining against the building to the right. The eerie quality of the scene is emphasized by the blackened windows and doors of the buildings, the skewed perspective of the telephone poles and wires, and the white headlamps of the parked car, which stare vacantly at the viewer. Above, the roiling, darkened clouds suggest an impending storm, perhaps one of the “black blizzards” of swirling dust that ravaged the Great Plains during the 1930s. The spontaneity of the brushstrokes and loose handling of the paint further enhance the simplicity and rural character of the setting.
By contrast, Burlesque at the Rialto revels in a vibrant, densely populated scene of urban spectacle in a more ordered, tighter style characteristic of Bohrod’s work beginning in 1934. In the foreground, heads and shoulders of the overwhelmingly male viewers are packed into neat rows, framed by the rigid geometry of vertical stripes and arches on the left wall and the forceful beams overhead. A muted palette of grays, browns, and flesh tones suggests a murky, smoke-filled haze. Bohrod set the stage in dynamic opposition to the audience’s space: the luminous, writhing female performers create a sinuous pattern of flesh-colored arabesques against a striking blue curtain, punctuated with bursts of brilliant yellow, green, purple, and orange. The movement and bold sensuality of their nude bodies is at odds with the staid, drably garbed seated men. Bohrod’s technique is more controlled in this painting, with a greater attention to detail in the figures and architecture that is softened with a glimmering surface effect. The burlesque show enjoyed great popularity during the 1930s and served as an alluring subject for several important American artists, most notably Reginald Marsh. Bohrod’s Burlesque at the Rialto bears a striking affinity to Marsh’s numerous canvases featuring performances such as Star Burlesque (1933, Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis).
Throughout the Depression, Bohrod managed to support himself as a full-time artist. He sold a number of watercolors for up to $35 apiece through the Chicago gallery of Mrs. Increase Robinson. Robinson, who served as State Director of the Federal Art Project in Illinois between 1935 and 1938, facilitated commissions from Bohrod for three WPA murals for post offices in Clinton, Galesburg, and Vandalia, Illinois. The artist’s professional achievements in the 1930s also included two consecutive Guggenheim Fellowships (1936–37 and 1937–38), which funded trips to the West, and the South and Northeast, respectively. In 1939 Bohrod was accepted into the Associated American Artists group, whose membership included such luminaries as Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton. This New York-based gallery marketed art to the middle classes and employed artists to produce affordable lithographs during the Depression. In 1941 Bohrod was appointed a visiting artist at Southern Illinois University, a post that he vacated in 1942 to serve in the Army War Art Unit during World War II. In 1948, he was appointed artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where Bohrod remained until his retirement in 1973.
Despite his success as an American scene painter, Bohrod’s work shifted dramatically in 1953, when he abandoned the themes of his earlier work and devoted his attention to precisely detailed trompe l’oeil paintings. The artist earned recognition and praise for this new genre, and his work appeared widely in magazines, galleries, and museums over the ensuing decades.
Patricia Smith Scanlan
Street in Oklahoma
Burlesque at the Rialto
Aaron Bohrod, Street in Joliet, n.d., gouache on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of International Business Machines Corporation, 1969.133
Aaron Bohrod, Associated American Artists, Church in Luxembourg, ca. 1946, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.38
Aaron Bohrod, Ogden Avenue Viaduct, 1939, gouache on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the General Services Administration, 1985.65.12
Aaron Bohrod, Revery, 1929, etching, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1972.12
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OOPS……I have not been able to list the correct answers to the weekend and Monday and Tuesday photos, due to taking a few days off the island. I will have to discipline my staff!!!
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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)
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