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
WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY SEND YOUR SUBMISSION TO: ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
AIR VENT OPPOSITE SUBWAY STATION
JAY JACOBSON, & ED LITCCHER 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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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
Turner Valley
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!!!
HESCO BARRIERS TO PREVENT FUTURE FLOODING OUTSIDE COLER
GLORIA HERMAN, NINA LUBLIN, LAURA HUSSEY, ALEXIS VELLEFANE, ALL 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 All image are copyrighted (c)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
SEND US YOUR FAVORITE NEIGHBORHOOD AND PLACES OF YOUR CHILDHOOD.
WHAT WAS YOURS?
I spent 12 year in Forest Hills, thru Jr. high and high school. Can’t believe it was 50+ years ago.
Stratton was a popular neighborhood place to dine.
“The Gardens” exclusive, where the residents hated the US Open when it was played there. They also put stickers on your windshield if you parked there.
Get small theatre named after the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 World’s Fair!!
Alumni:SIMON AND GARFUNKEL, RON CHERNOW, BOB KESHAM AKA CAPTAIN KANGAROO, JERRY SPRINGER, THE DIONNES……Most are way before or after my time there.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
WIKIPEDIA
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
George L. K. Morris, Posthumous Portrait, 1944, oil on fiberboard and plaster relief, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.67
Posthumous Portrait is Morris’s eulogy for the Paris he knew before the Germans occupied the city in World War II. The collage style recalls the heady days when Picasso and Braque experimented with Cubism and broke the old rules of art. By 1944 the freedom that they, Morris, and a generation of artists and writers had known was gone.
Morris’s abstract shapes suggest a great, helmeted head in a space filled with smaller soldiers and two stick figures of falling bodies. The sharp-edged rectangle on the right side of the face, and a much smaller one above, suggest bayonets. Bits of words cut off by these elements appear to spell “Boulangerie d’Alençon,” perhaps a favorite bakery from Morris’s Paris days.
Morris made several abstract paintings about the war in Europe. Like other artists who had been politically active in the 1930s, he felt he could do little but watch the devastation unfold. This work is a protest against Germany’s brutality, but it is also a retreat-—a poignant memory of better days when he and other Park Avenue Cubists enjoyed the pleasures that only Paris could provide.
Home Art + Artists Artists George L. K. Morris Copyright unknown
Name George L. K. Morris Also Known as George Lovett Kingsland Morris
Born New York, New York Died Stockbridge, Massachusetts born New York City 1905-died Stockbridge, MA 1975
Active in Paris, France Nationalities American Linked Open Data Linked Open Data URI
A writer and editor as well as a painter and sculptor, George L. K. Morris used various publications as platforms for advocating abstract art during the 1930s and 1940s. He believed that abstraction offered limitless possibilities for the twentieth century and set about to interpret new forms and ideas in historical terms so they would have special meaning for an American audience. “There is nothing new,” he maintained in a 1937 article, “about the quality that we have come to call abstract.… In great works of the past there has always been a dual achievement—the plastic, or structural, on the one hand, and the literary (or subject) on the other.” When “the veil of subject-matter had been pierced and discarded,” he continued, “the works of all periods began to speak through a universal abstract tongue.”
Morris came to his understanding of modern movements firsthand. His frequent trips to Europe and close association with leading Parisian painters and sculptors gave him special authority when arguing the historical basis of their art.
Often described as a ” Park Avenue Cubist,” Morris came from a privileged background. He attended Groton and graduated from Yale in 1928, where he studied art and literature and edited the Yale Literary Magazine. He spent the fall semesters of 1928 and 1929 at the Art Students League; in the spring of 1929 he went to Paris with Albert Gallatin and stayed after Gallatin’s departure to take Léger’s and Ozenfant’s classes at the Académie Moderne. In Paris he became a confirmed abstractionist; in his work illusionistic space in figurative paintings yielded to uptilted planes and increasingly to a Cubist fracturing of the picture plane.
On his return to New York, Morris founded a short-lived cultural and literary magazine called The Miscellany, for which he wrote intelligent and informed art criticism. He continued to travel frequently, often accompanying Gallatin to Paris to buy work for the Gallery of Living Art. He became friendly with Jean Hélion, who provided introductions to Braque, Picasso, and Brancusi, and he wrote catalogue notes to accompany Hélion’s essayfor the catalogue of the Gallery of Living Art. In 1937 he joined forces with Gallatin, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Cesar Domela, to publish an art magazine called Plastique. There, and in the pages of Partisan Review—where he served as an editor between 1937 and 1943—Morris spoke of the cyclical nature of art history and placed contemporary art squarely within a framework of historical evolution. He wrote that during the nineteenth century, when art appealed to a growing middle class insufficiently sophisticated to understand its plastic qualities, it became stuck “in the mire of realism.” With Cézanne and Seurat, who analyzed objects as shapes in space, the modern era began. The time is ripe, Morris continued, “for a complete beginning. The bare expressiveness of shape and position of shape must be pondered anew; the weight of color (and) the direction of line and angle can be restudied until the roots of primary tactile reaction shall be perceived again.” Contemporary artists, he maintained, “must strip art inward to those very bones from which all cultures take their life.”
During World War II, Morris worked as a draftsman for a naval architect’s firm. After 1947, he devoted his time almost exclusively to painting and sculpture, although he continued to write occasionally. A founding member of the American Abstract Artists, in the late 1940s he also served as the group’s president, arranging exhibitions in Europe and Japan as well as in the United States. He continued to be active with the group during the 1950s and 1960s. In Morris’s own art, Léger served as an early model. Although his work never physically resembled that of his teacher, like Léger, Morris sought a synthesis of Cubist structure and primitive form. In Morris’s work this was reflected in the incorporation of American Indian imagery.
During the mid 1930s, he argued for the concrete, and in his paintings juxtaposed hard-edged circular and angular forms in completely nonobjective compositions related to Hélion’s work of the same time. In the early 1940s, he began to reincorporate figurative imagery in his art. In his Posthumous Portrait of 1944, Morris experimented with such non-art materials as tile and linoleum embedded in painted plaster compositions.
Although Morris exhibited with some frequency during the 1930s and 1940s, his paintings and sculpture received greatest recognition after the war. He remained steadfast in his devotion to his variant form of Cubism, even though many of his friends and colleagues turned to more expressionist styles in the postwar years.
George L. K. Morris, Industrial Landscape, 1936-1950, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of an anonymous donor, 1968.49
George L. K. Morris, Untitled, from the portfolio American Abstract Artists, 1937, offset lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.114.22
SUZY FRELINGHUYSEN
Suzy Frelinghuysen Suzy Frelinghuysen was born in 1911 in New Jersey and descended from a long line of clergymen and politicians. Her grandfather Frederick T. Frelinghuysen was Secretary of State under President Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Frelinghuysen was a Senator from New Jersey who opposed Jackson’s removal of the Cherokees from their land and ran as a VP candidate with Henry Clay.
Suzy was named Estelle, after her mother, but given the nickname of Suzy by her four brothers who thought their baby sister resembled a monkey they had just visited at the zoo. Suzy was educated at Miss Fine’s in Princeton and privately tutored in art and music and made childhood trips to Europe. In 1935 she married Morris who encouraged her painting and in 1938 became the first woman artist to have a painting placed in the permanent collection of the Museum of Living Art. Her principle interest remained music and after WWII she auditioned for the New York City Opera and became an instant success, singing the lead roles as a dramatic soprano in “Tosca” and “Ariadne auf Naxos” under the name Suzy Morris. She toured opera houses and recital halls in Europe and the United States. Her career was cut short with her retirement in 1951 after a bout of bronchitis. She began painting full time again, achieving some of her finest works. When asked how she reconciled the two art forms, singing and painting, she told an interviewer, “In painting, you’re concerned with the arrangement of forms. On the stage, which is your frame, you’re concerned with arranging yourself. It’s like a picture, only, of course, you’re moving.”
She died in 1988 in Lenox, Massachusetts and left instructions in her will that the house and art collection be used to further the understanding of abstract art in America.
Her work is intently sought after by private collectors and can be viewed in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Carnegie Art Institute.
THE WORKS OF THIS ARTISTIC COUPLE CAN BE SEEN AT:
Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio 92 Hawthorne St. Lenox, MA 01240
RETIRING SOON ONE OF MY FAVORITE RIOC RED BUS DRIVERS ANGEL TINOCO IS RETIRING SOON AFTER 28 YEARS WORKING ON THE ISLAND. ANGEL, ALWAYS QUIET, POLITE AND EAGER TO PLEASE WILL BE GREATLY MISSED. i AM SURE HE AND CARL CAN NOW DISCUSS THE METS BASEBALL GAMES!! BEST WISHES PAPACITO, JUDY BERDY
THE POWER PLANT ACROSS THE RIVER TESTING ITS FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM
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
Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
PHOTOS BY JUDITH BERDY / RIHS (C)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
The Fall River Line was a combination steamboat and railroad connection between New York City and Boston that operated between 1847 and 1937. It consisted of a railroad journey between Boston and Fall River, Massachusetts, where passengers would then board steamboats for the journey through Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound to the line’s own Hudson River dock in Manhattan. For many years, it was the preferred route to take for travel between the two major cities. The line was extremely popular, and its steamboats were some of the most advanced and luxurious of their day.
Origins
The origins of the Fall River Line can be traced back to Colonel Richard Borden, a businessman from Fall River who had established his fortune in the iron and textile industries. He had operated steamboats between Fall River and Providence as early as 1827. In 1846 Richard Borden completed the Fall River Railroad, which enabled a land route between Fall River and other cities such as Taunton, New Bedford, Providence and Boston. A direct rail line to South Braintree would also be added.
Observing the success of the steamboat line which ran between New York and Stonington, Connecticut, Richard Borden began regular steamboat service between New York City and Fall River in 1847, establishing the Bay State Steamboat Company, with its first steamer, the Bay State. The following year, the Empire State was launched. The Fall River Line was an immediate success. By 1850, it had paid six percent dividends per month, for ten consecutive months. In 1854, the Metropolis was added.
In 1863 the line was sold to the Boston, Newport and New York Steamboat Company, and the railroad was extended between Fall River and Newport, Rhode Island. For a short period after this, the rail connection was made at Newport for the trip to Boston. During this period, the new steamers the Old Colony and the Newport were added to the fleet. This was also a time of increased competition from other steamboat lines to New York City, including the Neptune Line to Providence as well as the Stonington Line. For a short time, Bristol, Rhode Island was also used as the ending point of the boat journey from New York.
In 1867, two new steamers, the Bristol and the Providence, were introduced. Jim Fisk became president of the company, and would declare himself “admiral”. In 1869 the line was sold to the Narragansett Steamboat Company. With Fisk still president, he returned the line’s terminus to Fall River, where it would remain until the line’s demise in 1937, although there were several winters where the connection through Narragansett Bay was not possible due to ice, so Newport was used instead
Maturity
The Pilgrim In 1872 the Fall River Line was completely reorganized and became part of the Old Colony Railroad, under the name Old Colony Steamboat Company.
In 1883, the Pilgrim was launched. The first modern liner of the fleet, she featured a double-hull for increased safety, was 370 feet long, and had sleeping quarters for 1,200 passengers. At the time of its launch it was the largest steamboat in the world. The Pilgrim could make the 176 mile trip between Fall River and New York in about 8.5 hours.
The Puritan was added in 1889, and would serve the line until 1908 when the Commonwealth was introduced.
In 1894, the Fall River Line launched the Priscilla, which at the time was the largest side-wheeler afloat, capable of accommodating 1,500 passengers.
Maritime historian Roger Williams McAdam referenced the ships as “floating palaces.” The interiors of the vessels were extremely ornate and luxurious. Introduced in 1908, the Commonwealth was the last and largest of the fleet, measuring 456 feet in length and 96 feet wide, and was 5,980 gross tons. She provided 425 staterooms for passengers and boasted a grand staircase, a dining saloon, barber shop, writing room, and a dance floor.
During its history, the Fall River Line was travelled by several U.S. presidents including Grant, Harrison, Cleveland and both Roosevelts, as well as dignitaries such as the Vanderbilts, Astors, Belmonts and Rockefellers. One Boston editor declared, “If you went on a trip to New York and didn’t travel the Fall River Line, you simply didn’t go at all.”
Although much of high society traveled with the Fall River Line, the middle class were also able to experience the gilded age of travel that the line had to offer. The romantic aspect of the ocean voyage was the subject of a popular 1913 song called “On the Old Fall River Line.”
REFLECTION OF THREE CROSSES ON TOP OF GOOD SHEPHERD IN APARTMENT WINDOW.
RESPONSES WILL BE PUBLISHED WEDNESDAY
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)
WIKIPEDIA
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
In 1925, the New York Giants shared a stadium with the New York Giants. No, the other New York Giants. Back in the golden age of baseball in New York, the city hosted three teams: the Yankees, the Dodgers and the Giants. But there was also the football Giants, and both Giants teams shared a stadium at the long-gone Polo Grounds. But by 1956, they moved to the larger Yankee Stadium until the team announced that it would play in a brand new stadium in New Jersey. So over the next three years, the Giants jumped from Yankee Stadium to the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Conn., to Shea Stadium until finally moving to Giants Stadium in 1976.
THE ORIGINAL YANKEE STADIUM
ED LITCHER, ALEXIS VILLEFANE, HARA REISER, ANDY SPARBERG,JAY JACOBSON, M . FRANK,
FROM JAY JACOBSON: Yankee Stadium — the original one— laid out for football. Constructed for the second team that Brooklyn Dodger Fans loathed, the stadium was Used occasionally for major college football games (Army — Notre Dame, I remember). Later, in the late 1950s, the Stadium became the home for the New York Football Giants before that team moved to the New Jersey swamps. About 50 years ago, the Giants left New York and, by failing or refusing to change their name to the New Jersey Giants, insured the loss of a lifelong fan who now roots only for their opponents. (When the teams with New York names —Giants and Jets— play each other, I root for biblical rain storms to make conditions unbearable for the teams and for people going to support the apostates. ). At least when New York was deserted by the baseball Giants and Dodgers, those teams had the basic decency to adopt the names of the cities to which they had moved. No such luck in the football sphere. If you think I have a long sense of fury and outrage at having been abandoned, don’t get me wound up on the destruction of PS 87 and its replacement by a cleaner, newer, better elementary school building around the corner from Amsterdam Avenue and 77th Street.
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 Roosevelt Island Historical Society
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THE R.I.H.S. ARCHIVES JUDITH BERDY
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
The site of the new airport had been earlier occupied by the Gala Amusement Park. Developed by the piano magnate William Steinway, Gala boasted the first Ferris wheel on the East Coast. It was home to saloons, rides, carousels, a zoo, a bowling alley, concert venues, gambling, and a giant beer hall. “Electric lights, amusement piers and thrill rides were added, and fireworks displays, vaudeville acts and ragtime music sweetened the atmosphere,” the New York Times recalls. At night, “single young men and women drank beer, danced and caroused.” Prohibition closed the beer hall, and the amusement park’s beaches were overwhelmed with horrifying water pollution.
TWA DC-2 sitting at LGA in the late 1930s, with American Airlines Hangars 1, 3 and 5 in the background. (Jon Proctor Collection)
Building the airport was an enormous construction project for the time. It required that landfill be brought from Rikers Island and a nearby garbage dump, then laid onto a metal framework. It is said that the metallic presence still affects compass readings on aircraft departing on runway 13.
The airport leapt forward in October 1938 when American Airlines signed a long-term lease to locate its overhaul base and main office, then located in Chicago, at LGA. Finally dedicated on October 15 as New York City Municipal Airport, “La Guardia Field” was tacked on by a hyphen two weeks later. It would become, simply, LaGuardia Airport in 1947. The airport opened officially on December 2, 1939, when a TWA DC-3 from Chicago landed just minutes after midnight.
PanAm moved from Port Washington to a new facility at LaGuardia, the Marine Air Terminal. First called the Overseas Terminal, the art deco structure was designed in 1939 by William Delano and completed a year later. An overhead mural inside the terminal portrayed the history of man’s creation and involvement in flight. Titled “Flight” and created by James Brooks, it would be painted over in the 1950s due to some saying that its use of dark greens and reds gave it too much of a “communist” feel. It would later be restored in 1979-80.
The nation’s five largest airlines — Pan American Airways, American, United, Eastern Air Lines, and Transcontinental and Western Air — began offering flights from the new airport and, within a year, LaGuardia was the busiest airport in the world.
Following the war, the Marine Air Terminal became the airport’s international departure point for land planes, but larger aircraft and a need for more space led carriers to move to Idlewild Airport. In the early 1950s, the Douglas DC-7 and Lockheed 1049 Constellation began flying nonstop across the country but, unable to take off heavily loaded from La Guardia, they flew from Idlewild. Many of us are all too familiar with LGA’s descent into what Joe Biden called a n airport “in some third-world country.”
Still, LGA is easily reachable from our Island – no bridges or tunnels, and many of us (me) became more or less used to it. But it will be fun to see what has happened there.
Thanks for flying with me!
SPECIAL MOTHER’S DAY SHOPPING AT RIHS KIOSK FRIDAY TO SUNDAY 12 NOON TO 5 P.M.
INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALS BUILDING JFK 1959 ED LITCHER , MITCH HAMMER 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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Our aviation neighbor. From my balcony, I can sometimes see 4 or 5 planes in a long row preparing to land on runway 4. I’m looking forward to a trip out of the newly redone LGA, but let’s pause before take-off.
Well before LGA, Long Island was home to many aerodromes. Indeed, over the 20th century, some 70 airfields were located on the Island, most in aviation’s “Golden Age” of the mid ’20s to late ‘30s. Largely small with only simple structures. But some are memorable. On the morning of May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field airport and pointed his airplane towards Paris, on way to a successful transatlantic flight. Flying for 33 1/2 hours and covering approximately 3,600 miles, Lindbergh was the first person to fly nonstop from the United States to France.
On June 28, 1939, Pan Am’s Boeing 314 Dixie Clipper lifted off the water in the Port Washington airport to begin the first regular trans-Atlantic passenger service to Europe. The aircraft carried 22 passengers on the southern route to Horta, Lisbon, and Marseilles. Later, on July 8, the Yankee Clipper would launch Pan Am service across the Atlantic on the northern route, carrying 17 passengers to England.
Aerial view of Floyd Bennett Field
Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn was New York’s first municipal airport. During the 1920s, air travel in Europe, with shorter distances between main centers, was more popular than in the United States which was still more enraptured with trains. Interestingly, while other localities such as Atlantic City and Cleveland had municipal airports, New York City had a multitude of private airfields, and felt no need for a municipal airport until the late 1920s. Newark was the main airport serving New York City into the 1930s.
But Lindbergh’s flight changed this. Billed as New York to Paris, Roosevelt Field was outside the city. New York City now wanted its own airport. A city panel selected Barren Island in Brooklyn as the location, and New York’s first municipal airport was named Floyd Bennett Field, honoring the pilot on Byrd’s 1926 North Pole flight. Dedicated on May 23, 1931, it was rated A-1-A, the highest classification of the Civil Aeronautics Board. It boasted concrete runways, fours hangers that could service the largest aircraft of the day, and an Administration Building that served as a terminal.
Floyd Bennett Field was the site of many adventures. In 1938, Douglas Corrigan planned to fly out for Los Angeles. But he somehow got turned around and ended up in Ireland instead, earning him the nickname “Wrong Way” Corrigan. Probably not really an error. Lacking funds and permission for a transatlantic flight to Ireland, Corrigan decided to take the matter into his own hands. With the owner’s unspoken support, Corrigan landed in Ireland, having consumed two chocolate bars and a couple boxes of fig bars on the way over. Despite his adamant assertion that he had made an honest mistake, the country knew the truth and cities from New York to Chicago threw ticker tape parades to honor the lovable rogue.
Floyd Bennett Field in the 1930s. Eagle postcard photo by Rudy Arnold
On Sunday July 10, 1938 at 7:20 PM, Howard Hughes and four companions lifted off from Floyd Bennett Field to try to break the record for a round the world flight. On July 14 at 2:34 PM, they returned to the same airport completing their tour in 3 days 19 hours 14 minutes and 10 seconds, less than half the time of Wiley Post’s record-breaking flight in 1933. Nothing new, however, for Floyd Bennett Field: Between 1931 and 1939, 26 around the world or transatlantic flights started or ended there.
Flushing Airport was one of New York City’s early airports and was located only a mile east of present-day LaGuardia Airport. Opened in 1927 on city-owned land leased to private operators, Flushing Airport was briefly New York City’s busiest airfield, until the much bigger LaGuardia superseded it. But ever since its closure by Mayor Koch in 1984, it has been largely forgotten, save by aviation and history buffs, and Queens old-timers.
In addition to LaGuardia and JFK, four Long Island airports continue to be active: Brookhaven Calabro (HWV), East Hampton (HTO), Long Island MacArthur (ISP) and Republic (FRG).
And LaGuardia. As a publicity stunt in 1934, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia refused to deplane after landing on a TWA flight from Pittsburgh to Newark, declaring that his ticket showed his destination as New York. TWA quickly agreed to fly the mayor and several reporters on to Floyd Bennett Field. The press conference that followed underlined that it was time for a new, modern facility closer to Manhattan. In conjunction with the City of New York and the Federal Works Progress Administration, ground was broken in 1937 to create a 558-acre airport in Flushing.
CONTINUED TOMORROW
SPECIAL MOTHER’S DAY SHOPPING AT RIHS KIOSK THURSDAY TO SUNDAY 12 NOON TO 5 P.M.
ANDY SPARBERG, ED LITCHER, SUSAN RODETIS, HARA REISER, GLORIA HERMAN, LAURA HUSSEY, VICKI FEINMEL ALL 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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Many of us have never heard of Stone Street until we have to go there to get our Senior Metrocards. @ Stone Street is the address that is really the back of 2 Broadway, where the MTA offices are located.
Stone Street is a short street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. It runs in two sections between Whitehall Street in the west and Hanover Square in the east. The street originally ran as one continuous roadway from Whitehall Street to Hanover Square, but the section between Broad Street and Coenties Alley was eliminated in 1980 to make way for the Goldman Sachs building at 85 Broad Street. The one-block-long western section between Whitehall and Broad Streets carries vehicular traffic, while the two-block-long eastern section between Coenties Alley and Hanover Square is a pedestrian zone.
Stone Street is one of New York’s oldest streets, incorporating two 17th-century roads in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. In 1658 it became the first cobbled street in New Amsterdam. Following the British conquest of the colony, the street was called Duke Street before being renamed Stone Street, for its cobblestone paving, in 1794. Many of the early structures around Stone Street were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1835, after which Stone Street was redeveloped with stores and lofts for dry-goods merchants and importers. Following many decades of neglect, Stone Street was restored in the late 20th century and the eastern section became a restaurant area.
1 Hanover Square is in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. It occupies the northeastern side of a block bounded by Stone Street to the northwest, Hanover Square and William Street to the northeast, Pearl Street to the southeast, and Coenties Slip to the southwest.The building carries the alternate addresses 2 Hanover Square, 60–66 Stone Street, and 95–105 Pearl Street.1 Hanover Square contains frontage of 72 feet (22 m) on Hanover Square, 123 feet (37 m) on Stone Street, and 114 feet (35 m) on Pearl Street.[5][6] The building is near 1 William Street to the northwest and the British Garden at Hanover Square to the northeast.[3]
The site was historically part of New Amsterdam, a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement in modern-day Lower Manhattan; the building’s site was acquired by Richard Smith in the 1640s.[7] By the next decade, the southern portion of the lot was sold to Evert Duyckingh (also “Duyckinck”), who developed a house on the site.[8] The northern portion was given to Abraham Martens Clock, who also developed a house on his site; after 1673, town official Nicholas Bayard bought the western end of Clock’s land and built a house there.[9] There were numerous buildings on the site by 1812, occupied by various dwellings and businesses.[4] These structures were all destroyed in the Great Fire of 1835, which leveled a large portion of the neighborhood.[10]
Dutch colonial era
Stone Street is one of New York’s oldest streets, having been built not long after the Dutch West India Company established New Amsterdam in 1624.[14] It contains parts of two colonial streets: Breuers Straet (literally “Brewers Street”), from Whitehall to Broad Streets, and Hoogh Straet (literally “High Street”), from Broad to Hanover Square. The streets formed a longer road running from Peck Slip Ferry at what is now South Street Seaport;[ they were originally connected by a bridge spanning an inlet in the middle of Broad Street.[18][20] The original street surface is about 6.5 to 7 feet (2.0 to 2.1 m) beneath the modern street.
Western section of Stone Street (originally Breuers Straet), looking toward Broad Street Breuers Straet (renamed Straet van de Graft in 1655 and Brouwer Straet by 1668) was named after the breweries along the street.David T. Valentine subsequently wrote that, from the occupations of the residents, “it is to be inferred that this was one of the best streets of the town”.[In March 1657, residents of Breuers Straet filed a petition to pave the street with cobblestone, funding the project with their own money.The petition was approved and, in 1658, Breuers Straet became the first cobbled street in New Amsterdam.
Hoogh Straet was so named because it was on a low embankment flanked by the East River to the south and a swamp, called Bloemmaert’s or the Company Vly, to the north.[ Hoogh Straet continued northeast of Hanover Square, along what is now the northern side of Pearl Street, to modern-day Wall Street; On Hoogh Straet, the Dutch West India Company had laid out two rows of land lots by 1642, which were granted to property owners including Wessel Evertsen, Thomas Willett, and Richard Smith.[14] Around 1656, Hoogh Straet was shifted about 20 to 25 feet (6.1 to 7.6 m) northward, to align it with Breuers Straet.[Some time afterward, Hoogh Straet was paved, although the date of this paving is unknown. The Castello Plan of 1660 indicated that many structures on both streets were gable roofed houses.[
TO BE CONTINUED
MOTHER’S DAY GIFTS FROM THE R.I.H.S. VISITOR CENTER KIOSK
SPECIAL MOTHER’S DAY WEEK HOURS WEDNESDAY, MAY 5 THRU SUNDAY, MAY 9 12 NOON TO 5 P.M. DAILY
Perfect for mom our QUOTABLE ELEANOR, COOKIES FOR ELEANOR, ROOSEVELT ISLAND AND OUR ZINE….ALSO A GREAT MODGY VASE AN FLORAL POUCH.
A dog lovers gift APRON, POUCH AND NOTEBOOK
For someone with Queens roots………….GREAT BOOKS ON OUR NEIGHBOR BOROUGH
We remember our friend, neighbor and WIRE editor Dick Lutz. NINALUBLIN, VICKI FEINMEL, ALEXIS VILLEFANE AND JAY JACOBSON REMEMBERED DICK
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
WIKIPEDIA
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
at the Kiosk Wed-Sun 12-5 p.m. See details in tomorrow’s edition
TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2021
The
354th Edition
From Our Archives
ALFRED MIRA
ARTIST OF OUR CITY SCENE
FROM EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
The Greenwich Village vision of artist Alfred Mira Alfred S. Mira and his realistic, gritty, intimate Greenwich Village street scenes should be better known. [“Seventh Avenue, Greenwich Village”]
Born in 1900 in Italy to a carpenter father, he left school and began working for an interior decorator, dreaming of going to art school but without the 50 cents a day it cost to attend.
Alfred S. Mira (on left, with arms crossed) at the Grand Central Art Galleries with Associate Director Claude Barber (on right) [photograph] / (photographed by Peter A. Juley & Son)
He did make a career out of painting though; he listed his address as East 8th Street and his occupation as painter in the 1940 census. And he sold his work at the Washington Square outdoor art exhibit, a heralded event decades ago.
Though he painted scenes from all over the city, Mira focused his work on the sites and monuments of Greenwich Village: the Washington Arch, MacDougal Street, and Seventh Avenue South. His inspiration seems to come from the urban realists who made a name for themselves in the early 1900s, such as George Bellows and George Luks.
Rainy Day in Washington Square Park
“Mira painted angled, bird’s eye viewpoints, thereby creating what one critic categorized as ‘moving camera eye impressions,’” explains gallery Questroyal Fine Art LLC. He died in 1980 or 1981, depending on the source, and his work still inspires. It also still sells, with several paintings going for thousands of dollars at top auction houses.
60th STREET LAMPPOST BASE THAT WAS REMOVED WHEN TRAM WAS BUILT. THE SECOND AVENUE EL WAS ON THE AVENUE AND A ROW OF BROWNSTONES ON 60th STREET. (WILLIAM H. JACKSON COMPANY) Vicki Feinmel 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
Sources
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
PHOTOS BY JUDITH BERDY / RIHS (C)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
