As anyone who has ever taken a walk through a city park knows, New York is rich with beautiful bronze statues.
Typically they grace a public space, often on a decorative pedestal or base and in a setting that underscores their importance (or their importance at the time the statue was completed).
Then there are the statues you come across in an unexpected place, say an ordinary city block. That was my curious introduction to this stunning sculpture of Polyhymnia, which sits behind a fence in a courtyard on East 87th Street steps from Fifth Avenue.
Poly who? Polyhymnia is the Ancient Greek goddess of lyric poetry. One of the nine muses, she’s a daughter of Zeus and also the goddess of music, song, and dance.
Here she stands on a marble base amid orange flowers and a wall of ivy; in front of her is a wrought-iron fence and gate. Clad in Classical garb and with a child beside her, she looks pensive, her eyes cast down toward the child. She appears to be holding a lyre.
So how did Polyhymnia end up on one of the most luxurious townhouse blocks in Manhattan? Her story begins in 1895 with the establishment of a group called Der Liederkranz Damen Verein.
The German name translates into “The Liederkranz Ladies’ Club.” This was an all-female auxiliary organization that supported the philanthropic and social activities of the Liederkranz Club—a singing society formed in New York City in 1847 for men of German descent.
In the decades before the Civil War, German immigrants came to New York by the thousands; in 1860, they comprised a quarter of the city’s population. Groups like the Liederkranz Club offered fellowship and culture for German newcomers as they navigated life in a not always welcoming metropolis.
“During the period preceding the Civil War, German American singing groups sprang up all over America, preserving German musical tradition and keeping the culture alive,” explained the website for the Liederkranz of the City of New York, the group’s current name. “Interest in the music of Germany was at its height.”
By the late 19th century, the group had hundreds of members. William Steinway, of Steinway Pianos fame, then became president of the Liederkranz. He helped guide members to raise funds for a clubhouse that was eventually built at 111-119 East 58th Street (below photo).
Two years after the Damen Verein formed, members commissioned sculptor Giuseppe Moretti to create the statue of Polyhymnia. It was presented as a gift for the clubhouse in 1897 to honor the Liederkranz Club’s 50th anniversary.
Facing a decline in membership after World War II, the Liederkranz sold the East 58th Street clubhouse. In 1949 members purchased the former Henry Phipps mansion—a 1904 granite and limestone Beaux Arts jewel built by this steel magnate turned philanthropist—at 6 East 87th Street.
When the Liederkranz moved to the Upper East Side, Polyhymnia came along, situated ever since in the small courtyard behind the wrought iron fence.
While the Liederkranz is still sponsoring music events and supporting cultural and social exchange, Damen Verein disbanded in 2009. Polyhymnia “serves as a permanent reminder of the spirit and generosity of the Damen Verein,” states the website.
And she’s a wonderful, slightly mysterious muse who will stop you in your tracks if you happen to find yourself on East 87th Street.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
SUMMER OF 1912
CREDITS
Fifth photo: MCNY, X2010.11.5555] Tags:German Singing Group NYC Liederkranz, Giuseppe Moretti Polyhymnia statue, Greek goddess polyhymnia 87th Street NYC, History of Liederkranz Club NYC, Liederkranz Club 58th Street NYC, Liederkranz Club NYC, Polyhymnia statue 87th Street, Polyhymnia statue Liederkranz Club Posted in Music, Uncategorized, Upper East Side | Ephemeral New York
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The houses at 208–218 East 78th Street in Manhattan, New York, United States, are a group of six attached brick rowhouses built during the early 1860s, on the south side of the street between Second and Third Avenues. They are the remnant of 15 built along that street as affordable housing when the Upper East Side was just beginning to be developed.
They are distinctive for the round-arched windows and door openings on their north (front) facades, an unusual trim for houses otherwise firmly in the Italianatearchitectural style common for urban buildings of that era.[2] They are the second oldest group of buildings on the Upper East Side after the East 78th Street Houses a block to the east, but unlike that row they retain more of their original appearance. In 1978 they were designated New York City landmarks,[2] and in 1983 they were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The row is on the south side of East 78th, between Second and Third avenues. The block is residential, with many similar, taller rowhouses on both sides of the tree-lined street. The neighborhood is just outside the Upper East Side Historic District, close to the southern edge of Yorkville.
Each house is three stories high and two bays, only 13 feet 4 inches (4.06 m) wide on a raised basement. All are trimmed with carved stone elliptical arched surrounds. The entryways and the adjacent first-story windows have an additional keystone molding. The upper windows also have corbeled sills. The flat rooflines have projecting cornices with vertical brackets. Stoops with iron railings lead to the sidewalk from the entryways, all located on the east bay of the front facades.[1]
There are a few deviations from these standards. The house at 214 has had shutters added, and it and 216 have had some of their original ironwork replaced. At 218, the original brownstone stoop has been replaced with a modern concrete one.[1]
Third Avenue Car Barn at 65th Street
History
The construction of the Third Avenue Railway in 1852 allowed residents of what was then the village of Yorkville to commute to jobs in what is today Midtown and Lower Manhattan. The present area of East 78th Street was still an undeveloped section of Yorkville nine years later, in 1861, when Howard Martin bought 200 feet (61 m) of frontage along the block to build speculative housing.[1]
In accordance with a New York Supreme Court decision a year earlier, Martin paid $128 ($3,410 in 2023[3]) to the city for the opening of 78th Street. He had subdivided it into 15 lots, numbered 206–234 East 78th, and had begun building when he sold the properties to William Brower in 1862. Brower retained the builders, Warren and Ransom Beman and John Buckley, a likely reason for the uniformity of the resulting buildings.[1]
Construction was delayed somewhat by the difficulty of getting materials during the Civil War, but Brower had sold all the houses by the time construction was finished in 1865. Since then, number 206 on the west end of the row and 220–234 on the east have been demolished to build the neighboring, taller apartment buildings.[1]
Other than the alterations noted above, they are as they were when originally built. All five have remained private residences. In 2010 a real estate listing for 208 East 78th gave its rent as $15,775 a month.[4]
PHOTO OF THE DAY
SUMMER OF 2012
CREDITS
WIKIPEDIA
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City Landmarks Five Garment District Buildings Ahead of MajorChanges in Midtown
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
6sqft Devon Gannon
Issue # 1508
The Furcraft Building on West 30th Street. All photos courtesy of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Midtown South could look a lot different in the coming years, with a neighborhood rezoning imminent, but at least five buildings will remain protected. The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on Tuesday voted to designate five buildings that not only are unique architecturally, but also reflect the development of the Garment District and the importance of the fashion industry to New York City. The designation comes as the City Council prepares to vote on the Midtown South Mixed-Use plan this week.
“Designed by many of the city’s leading architects of the time, the buildings designated today are some of the Garment District’s most impressive examples of early 20th-century commercial architecture, which tell the full story of the Garment District’s historic development, the people who worked here, the labor history that grew here and spread nationally, and the industry that has been one of New York City’s most important economic and cultural engines,” LPC Chair Sarah Carroll said.
LPC started surveying the area, roughly 23rd to 42nd Street, and Fifth to Ninth Avenues, focusing on the blocks set to be rezoned. The research staff then developed a framework to illustrate the development of the Garment District, which had largely been left out of the previous designations in the neighborhood.
The five buildings “stand out architecturally and historically, and together tell the story of a time of great change for Midtown Manhattan,” a press release reads.
The Barbey Building at 15 West 38th Street.
The new individual landmarks include 15 West 38th Street, known as the Barbey Building. The oldest of the five, the 12-story tower was designed in 1908 by Delano & Aldrich and features a Renaissance Revival style, with a facade of red brick, terra cotta, and gridded windows. From 1985 to 2019, the building served as the corporate headquarters for Lord & Taylor.
The Fashion Tower
The Fashion Tower, located at 135 West 36th Street, is a 20-story tower designed by prolific architect Emery Roth in 1925. The building features a distinctive blend of Medieval, Renaissance Revival, and Art Deco styles, with colorful peacocks at the lobby and freight entrances and winged angels holding cutting shears and brushes.
At 242-246 West 30th Street, the Furcraft Building rises 14 stories. Designed by Henry I. Oser in 1926, the building is on what was known as “Furriers’ Street,” the heart of the city’s thriving fur industry. According to the commission, more than 85 percent of the nation’s furs were produced in New York City from the early 20th century through the 1970s.
The entrance to the limestone building is flanked by two fox sculptures. The facade of a Greek temple sits at the top, which was likely visible from Penn Station during its early years, as 6sqft previously reported.
The 29th Street Towers.
Also designed by Henry Oser, the 29th Street Towers include two buildings built for fur manufacturing, made evident at the entrance of the building, which features grotesques of beavers. As the LPC noted, the towers’ intact facade and terra cotta decoration represent a “standout example” of manufacturing buildings built to house the fur industry in the Garment District.
The Lefcourt Clothing Center.
The 27-story brick building at 275 Seventh Avenue, known as the Lefcourt Clothing Center, was also landmarked on Tuesday. The Art Deco building, designed by architect Ely Jacques Kahn, has setbacks starting on the 18th floor, textured brickwork, decorative metal window enframents at the second through fourth stories, which originally held showrooms. In the 1930s, one floor of the building was leased by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union to be used as a health care facility for workers.
This week, the full City Council will vote on the Midtown South rezoning, which is expected to be approved. The plan updates zoning rules for 42 blocks of the neighborhood to allow for roughly 9,500 new homes, 2,800 of which would be affordable. As part of the deal reached with City Hall and the Council, $120 million will be set aside to help protect and support the Garment industry.
As 6sqft reported, the city will connect local businesses with new resources via Midtown Made, create a local production fund to encourage designers to work with local manufacturers, and allocate $50 million to help find below-market space for the garment industry.
“Smart planning and preservation go hand-in-hand, and we’re utilizing all the tools at the City’s disposal to help Midtown South adapt and grow while protecting the neighborhood’s vibrant history,” DCP Director Dan Garodnick said.
“These architectural gems won’t just enliven the neighborhood for current and future residents, they also serve as a reminder of the continuous adaptation across historical eras in Midtown Manhattan.”
PHOTO OF THE DAY
NEW SAFETY BARRIERS AT OUR SUBWAY STATION
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6SQFT
DEVON GANNON
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Emily Post (1872-1960), one of America’s most influential figures in the field of etiquette, lived a life that combined a deep understanding of social protocol with the pulse of New York City’s energetic, ever-changing culture.
Though most famous for her book Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home (1922), her personal life and experiences — particularly during her time living in Greenwich Village — revealed a complex, multi-dimensional woman who balanced the traditional with the modern.
Emily Post was born into the well-established, socially prominent Price family in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 27, 1872, and educated at home in Baltimore and New York. At the age of 8, her family moved to Greenwich Village, where they resided at 12 West 10th Street.
Her father was Bruce Price (1845-1903), the architect behind Pierre Lorillard IV’s development, Tuxedo Park. This first-of-its-kind exclusive community development outside New York City eventually became known as the birthplace of that eternally fashionable garment, the Tuxedo.
Price also planned the American Surety Building on the corner of Wall Street and Pine in lower Manhattan, at the time the tallest building in America and an early example of the steel framing and curtain wall construction that paved the way for the modern skyscraper.
He is perhaps best known as the architect of a series of Chateauesque railroad stations and grand hotels for the Canadian Railway, and his signature project, the Chateau Frontenac, which defines the skyline of Quebec City to this day.
While Bruce Price designed the buildings, his wife Josephine, née Lee, the daughter of Wilkes-Barre coal baron Washington Lee and, by all accounts, a practical businesswoman, ran the enterprise.
By the end of Bruce’s career, with Josephine as his partner, Price had built a summer palace for the Emperor of Japan and the Georgian Court in New Jersey for George Jay Gould. Bruce Price was also a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (1890) and belonged to the Architectural League of New York.
While Emily Price Post’s life began in the rather conventional manner of a young woman in New York’s high society, she ultimately defied the traditional expectations of that set. The season of her debut, Emily Price met Edwin Post, her husband-to-be, at a ball in one of Fifth Avenue’s elegant mansions.
Following a fashionable wedding and a honeymoon tour of Europe, Mrs. Post’s first home with her new husband was near Washington Square. When her two sons were old enough to attend boarding school, she turned her attention to her passion: writing. Her romantic stories of European and American society were serialized in several popular magazines, and many were successfully published in book form.
Around the time her first novel, The Flight of the Moth (1904), was published, Emily’s marriage began to falter and she found herself in the middle of a scandalous divorce, its humiliating details splashed across the front pages of New York newspapers for months.
Traumatic though it was, the end of her marriage in 1905 forced Post to become her own person, and she turned her passion for writing into a profession. She would spend the next fifteen years as a published and prolific writer.
She became a “traveling correspondent,” crossing the United States by car and touring Europe on the eve of World War I. Her stories were published in Vanity Fair, Collier’s, and McCall’s. In the process, she also became part of a burgeoning cultural transformation in New York City.
Greenwich Village during the early 20th century had become known for its embrace of artistic freedom and progressive ideas, and a bohemian haven. Post was somewhat of an anomaly within this crowd.
While the Village was often associated with avant-garde art, free love, and defiance of societal norms, Post was rooted in more traditional values. Yet, she was not out of place in the Village.
Her strong connection to the arts and literature brought her into proximity with some of the most notable figures of the time. Writers and artists frequented the neighborhood, and the post-Victorian, socially conscious Post was able to engage with a world that was increasingly interested in redefining what constituted proper behavior.
In 1922, Post wrote her most famous work, Etiquette, a comprehensive guide that not only offered advice on proper behavior for individuals and families, but also captured the essence of early 20th-century American society.
While it may seem paradoxical that someone with Post’s focus on manners and decorum lived in the Village — an area known for its intellectual and cultural rebellion — the book’s publication in 1922 coincided with a time when society itself was undergoing significant change.
The rise of the flapper, the shift toward more casual lifestyles, and the opening up of social spheres were all elements that Post had to reckon with while maintaining her steadfast belief in the importance of manners.
At her Greenwich Village home, Post would have witnessed the burgeoning of the Jazz Age, the early feminist movement, and the redefinition of what it meant to be a modern woman.
The world she inhabited was one of tension between established social rules and the desire for personal freedom — something reflected in the nuanced way Post balanced tradition with the evolving social landscape.
Emily Post’s life in Greenwich Village is a reminder of the personal and cultural intersections that influenced her work and legacy. Though she would go on to achieve international fame and her name would become synonymous with proper etiquette, her Greenwich Village years reveal the complexity behind the polished image she later projected.
Her life in the Village was not just about writing a book on etiquette; it was about engaging with the world and observing the social changes of her time.
Whether in her Village home, surrounded by her books and thoughts on civility, or in her public life as a consultant to high society, Post’s voice was always rooted in a belief that manners were a way to bring harmony to a rapidly changing world
PHOTO OF THE DAY
TIME FOR NEW TICKET VENDING MACHINES. THIS ONE AT ROCKAWAY PIER, IS IN SHODDY CONDITION AND CREDIT CARD VENDING DOES NOT FUNCTION
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK A version of the essay by Lannyl Stephens first appeared in Village Preservation’s Off the Grid Preservation Blog.
Founded in 1980, Village Preservation works to document, celebrate, and preserve the special architectural and cultural heritage of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. Learn more about them at their website villagepresevation.org
Illustrations, from above: Emily Post and her two sons, ca. 1897; 12 West 10th Street, Greenwich Village, home of Emily Post (courtesy Village Preservation); a black and white photo of illustrator C B Falls’ case stamp design for the binding of The Flight of a Moth, 1904; and Etiquette by Emily Post (1922).
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Art that captures a single moment of beauty and activity on New York’s streets is always captivating. But there’s something to be said for images that reveal something about Manhattan from a far away vantage point, showing a city not in the center but on the sideline
Leon Kroll, born in New York in 1884 and a contemporary of George Bellows, Robert Henri, and other social realists, gives us that sidelined city.
Kroll, who studied at the Art Students League and exhibited at the famous 1913 Armory Show, was known for his nudes and country or seaside landscapes, and he also painted Central Park, Broadway, and other city locations.
But he also depicted New York in the early 20th century from the outside in, illustrating the city’s rhythms from across the East and Hudson Rivers.
“Queensboro Bridge,” from 1912, the painting at the top of the page, is one such example. The majesty of the relatively new bridge (only three years old here) takes center stage, but the monolithic city looms behind it.
I’m not exactly sure where Kroll was when he painted the second image, 1920’s “Manhattan Rhythms,” the second image.
He presents us with a solid, impenetrable city high above the wharves and docks of the river, a metropolis that dwarfs the men who work there.
“View of Manhattan Terminal Yards From Weehawken” (1913) puts industry and commerce on display. The train tracks may be on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, but they and the boats sending smoke into the sky work to enrich Manhattan across the water.
“Terminal Yards,” the fourth painting (also 1913) gives us another, snow-covered view.
I love that the city skyline is barely in “Manhattan From Hoboken” (1915), another painting of the metropolis from the heights of New Jersey.
The vibrant colors and web of tree branches—not to mention the thick clouds and smoke coming from boats and trains beside the river—almost obscure the Empire State Building and the rest of the cityscape.
If you’re not there in the middle of it, New York is far enough away to feel like another country.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
ROCKAWAY BOARDWALK AT BEACH 108 ST 4 BLOCKS FROM NYC FERRY
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This 43-acre island straddles the border between New York and New Jersey and derives its name from the hunting activities that took place here during the Colonial Era. As New York grew into an industrial port, the island accommodated an oil refinery and shipyard during the 19th century.
Today, the island is owned by the Department of Parks and Recreation, with the Audubon Society managing wildlife research. Many prominent historical figures from George Washington to Theodore Roosevelt and Prince Henry of Prussia once made use of the island, with the former utilizing it as a location to drop off covert messages during the Revolutionary War.
Hoffman & Swinburne Islands
(Lower New York Bay)
This duo of artificial islands rests close enough to Staten Island’s shore that a proposal once existed to fill the gap between the landmasses to create a park. Such a proposal might not have existed if the planners had known that the islands originally hosted quarantine stations during the height of immigration into the U.S. in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.
Constructed entirely of iron in order to keep the structures as airtight as possible, the facilities on the islands included a crematory and a mortuary for the less fortunate patients. Advances in the medical treatment of infectious diseases led to the decline of such facilities, with these two closing in 1923. Having been owned by the Department of Parks and Recreation since 1966, the islands were ironically preserved in order to maintain the “natural” topography of New York Bay.
North & South Brother Islands (East River)
Another duo of islands, these brothers are common in name only. North Brother‘s backstory features elements that have become typical for the avid New York historian, with a history of housing the sick, the addicted, and the condemned in confined spaces away from the public. The tuberculosis pavilion has been documented by photographer Christopher Payne, and much literature has been written about the site.
For what South Brother lacks in foreboding tales of the infirm, it makes up for in humorous eyebrow-raising real estate ventures. Originally the property of Jacob Ruppert–the owner of the Yankees largely responsible for bringing Babe Ruth to New York–the island’s only structure burned down in 1909. After Rupper sold the island, the real estate transactions went something like this: private ownership to public ownership to private again to public again, with prices ranging from $10 from an investment firm in 1975 to $2 million of Federal Grant money in 2007.
Ellis Island’s Abandoned Southside Hospitals
While Ellis Island has become one of New York City’s top tourist attractions, drawing over two million visitors per year, the 22-building South Side hospital complex is hidden in plain sight, just to the left of disembarking passengers headed towards the Great Hall. Looking at its desolate, skeletal frame now, it’s difficult to imagine its backstory as one of the largest public health undertakings in American history.
Mau Mau Island (Mill Basin)
Islands have historically played strategic roles for nations and their militaries, and those in New York City are no exception. While the battles on Long Island and Manhattan have been well documented, the naval skirmish that took place on Mau Mau is a little less well-known. That might have had more to do with the post-battle bar hop, though.
r. The manmade island sits across from Marine Park golf course and has attracted little media attention–save for the construction of a bird sanctuary–since.
High Island (City Island Harbor)
A stone’s throw from New York City’s most treasured obscure landmass, City Island, High Island has also proved a cozy home, first for sharks and then for humans. The bungalow dwellers were kicked out in 1962 to make way for a radio transmission tower, which was hit by a small plane just one day before owner WCBS switched to an all-news format. A new tower has stood in place since the incident and has a daytime broadcast frequency range from Cape Cod to Cape May.
Isle of Meadows (Fresh Kills)
Image courtesy The City of New York and Freshkills Park by Daniel Avila
This 100-acre plot of land is as natural as they come, which is why the Audubon Society has fought so hard for its preservation over the years. Plans for its inclusion in the Fresh Kills Landfill were met with volatile opposition in the early 1990s, and today the island consists entirely of a nature preserve. Once declining populations of herons, ibis, and egrets now call the island home, and it has been considered one of the most crucial such refuges in the New York area.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
HOTEL ST. GEORGE, BROOKLYN, MORE NEXT WEEK
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK
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Every Monday, I find two articles from “Ephemeral New York” in my in-box. Many times we adopt the stories for From the Archive and give credit to Ephemeral New York.” There are so many sources of information and artiicles that further the knowledge including New York Almanack, NYHIstorical Blog, NYC Municipal Archives Blog and many more sources.
About Ephemeral New York
Ephemeral New York, founded and edited by native New Yorker Esther Crain, chronicles a constantly reinvented city through photos, newspaper archives, and other scraps and artifacts that have been edged into New York’s collective remainder bin. Here we remember forgotten people, places, and relics of the way New Yorkers used to live. We get a big kick out of present-day urban weirdness and idiosyncrasies too.
This site has given rise to two books, 2014’s New York City in 3D in the Gilded Age and The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910.The years between the Civil War and World War I were the most dynamic in the city’s history, and this is a favorite time period for readers of Ephemeral New York as well as the site’s creator.
The Gilded Age is when the physical city we view and experience today came together: five boroughs sharing a magnificent waterfront, threaded by bridges and subway lines, with an urban landscape marked by skyscrapers, parks, and brownstones.
The contradictions and extremes of the Gilded Age also make it such a fascinating era. Marble mansions lined Fifth Avenue a streetcar ride away from the airless flats of East Side slums. Upstate water piped into the receiving reservoir in Central Park offered fresh running water, yet it wasn’t until 1901 when tenements were required to have bathrooms in each apartment. Votes were purchased, prostitution was out in the open, and despite the wealth and glamour of Caroline Astor’s fabled 400, two brutal recessions made the Gilded Age one of bracing hardship for thousands.
The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910 is available on various book sites. Find out more about the book and Esther Crain on Amazon and Goodreads.
[Washington Square Village, 1970s. That slide is no longer there.]
Ephemeral New York focuses on all eras of the city’s history, but Crain herself vividly recalls the mid-1970s, when daily life for a kid in Greenwich Village meant stepping over winos to enter the Grand Union on Bleecker Street, a happily chaotic class packed with 35 other first graders at PS 41, and that Mays, not Whole Foods, was once the flagship shopping destination of Union Square. Sometimes wry and often wistful, she feels the presence of the city’s ghosts everywhere.
All comments and suggestions are welcome.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Eyesore abandoned truck soon to be removed from in back of Coler. Hopefully, more old equipment will soon be cleared from the area. The area is RIOC property and working with Coler should make the back of the hospital be cleaned up soon.
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EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
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William Davis Hassler, photographer. “Copy photo of an unidentified African American Woman,” undated. New-York Historical Society
Part of researching women’s history is learning how to navigate incomplete finding aids and descriptors. For example, the image below—from the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library’s William David Hassler Photograph Collection—shows a woman, arms resting on the back of a chair. She gazes intently beyond the camera lens, and invites a host of questions. The photograph is labeled as an “unidentified African American woman” and offers little else for us: Where did the image come from? What clues can we discern from the photograph? If this is a copy, where is the original? Most of all, can we puzzle out the identity of the woman pictured? It turns out, we can. Thanks to an abundance of newly digitized archives, photographs, and manuscripts, we now know this likeness is of Mary E. Shaw, an activist, philanthropist, and school principal who lived in Flushing, Queens. In fact, this very photograph hung for years in the Flushing branch of the Queensborough Public Library system. Finding the connection between these two copies of the same image, however, has only been made possible through recent efforts to make archival and library collections more widely available and accessible. This push to digitize archival collections—efforts which have accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic—offers new possibilities for historians and researchers and especially for those studying the experiences of women. This new landscape of digitized records also provides a rich pool of documents from which we can begin to reconstruct and understand the life of Mary Shaw, who at one point was one of Flushing’s most famous residents.
Mary Ann Elizabeth Hood appears in the historical record under several different name variations. She is sometimes listed in newspapers and other documents as Mary E., Mary Elizabeth, Mary Ann, and even Mary Ann E., reflecting a common challenge faced by researchers tracing the lives of 19th-century figures. Mary was born in Pennsylvania around 1852. She was the daughter of Lewis A. and Sarah A. Hood. Her father was actively involved in the Free Mason movement in Pennsylvania.
By the time she was 21 years old, Mary was working as a school teacher in New York City at a school supervised by prominent scholar and activist Charles L. Reason. Reason was the first African American college professor in the United States, a distinction he already held by the time Mary arrived at the school in 1873. As a working woman, Mary saved up enough money to open a bank account in the U.S. Freedman’s Savings Bank’s New York City branch that same year. It was during this time that she likely met her future husband.
In December of 1874, Mary Hood married John William A. (who often went by John W. A.) Shaw in New York City. By 1880, after spending some time in Washington, D.C., the couple had settled in Flushing—at that time an independent city—with their daughter, Ethel. The Shaw family flourished in Queens, where Mary worked as a teacher and John edited a newspaper. By 1887, Mary had become “head teacher” of the School for African American students. By the next year, she had succeeded Charles H. Thomas in the position of principal of the Colored School in that city. According to the Queens Public Library, the school was located at 86 State Street.
In Flushing, the Shaws became part of, and prominent in, a vibrant African American community–a community that was one of the earliest free Black settlements in what would eventually become New York City. The Flushing Free Library, which became a free circulating library in 1884, played an important part in supporting and nourishing the growing community, as various residents used it as a space for gathering, meetings, and lectures. For example, in September of 1887, the Lyceum Association, which consisted of young African American people, “filled the meeting room of the Flushing Free Library,” according to a Brooklyn paper. The group had connections to the A.M.E. Church, of which John Shaw was a minister. Both young men and young women participated. Mary and John Shaw likely had other connections to the library beyond what comes down to us in extant paper records, as the institution played a large enough role in their lives in Flushing to warrant a bequest of money upon Mary’s passing.
Mary was also active in the Queens County Teachers Institute. For example, in 1889, she sat in the audience and listened to Mr. Isaac H. Stout lecture on the best methods of teaching, noting that “male teachers seemed to be running out and their places filling up with women.” Mary Shaw was living proof of this observation. She worked tirelessly in her many roles as an educator in Flushing. At one Grammar School No. 2 graduation, a member of the Board of Education recognized her achievements, and said he “hoped she would remain as teacher in Flushing as long as she lived.”
Like his wife, John Shaw also cut an interesting and complex historical profile. Born in 1849 in Antigua, the British colony infamous for its sugar plantations and deadly labor conditions, he likely descended from formerly enslaved people. The British emancipated the people they enslaved there 15 years prior to John Shaw’s birth. Shaw immigrated to the United States when he was seven, and applied to be naturalized as a U.S. citizen 16 years later at the age of 23. At the time, he worked as a clerk and lived on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan.
Democratic Clubs were a ubiquitous form of political organizing and partisan infrastructure at the local level. This ribbon marked membership of its wearer in the Harlem Democratic Club.
Ribbon, 1888. New-York Historical Society.
Writing in 1903, John Shaw argued that the claims and needs of African Americans received “scant consideration” from both political parties and that in both the South and in the North “there is there was “a revulsion of sentiment… against the negro,” which rendered African American men politically powerless. Nevertheless, he wrote, “the negro must fight on.” John Shaw recognized, and was not afraid to point out, the hollowness of Northern claims to equality. In some ways, Shaw’s criticism foreshadowed the sentiments that activists and radicals like Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and Stokely Carmichael would also make. For Shaw, the future lay in the young African Americans people of the early 20th century who were the “sophisticated product of the schools with his awakened consciousness, involving social and political recognition.”
Mary Shaw, too, believed in the promise of racial uplift through education and “awakened consciousness.” However, unlike her husband who used politics to advance this vision, Mary pursued this goal through a lifelong commitment to teaching and education—amassing a small fortune for herself along the way. Her teaching resume included schools in White Plains, Delaware, New York City, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and, finally, Flushing. By the mid-1880s, Mary already had years of teaching experience to qualify her for an administrative role in the town’s school system.
Mary passed her love of education and pursuit of teaching to her daughter. Ethel was born in September of 1874, while the family was living in Washington, D.C. She later attended the West Newton English and Classical School (sometimes referred to as the Allen School), a model school in Massachusetts that, unique for this time, educated a racially integrated and co-ed student population. At the closing exercises, Ethel performed a piano solo. After graduating in 1891, she gained employment as a teacher at the prestigious Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Newspapers in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois printed the news and celebrated her appointment on the board of instructors, describing Ethel as “universally loved by teachers and fellow students.”
Ethel’s employment at Booker T. Washington’s Institute was just one of the ways that the family was deeply connected to Tuskegee and its mission. Both Mary and John were proponents of the kind of education that provided skills for economic, social, and moral development and uplift that was the ethos of Tuskegee under Washington’s leadership. John even composed a lecture titled, “A Tangled Skein,” which he called a “vindication of Booker T. Washington and his work.”
Frances Benjamin Johnston, photographer. History class, Tuskegee Institute. Tuskegee, Alabama, c.1902, around the time that Ethel Shaw was teaching at the school. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The small Shaw family experienced a devastating loss when Ethel passed away while teaching in Tuskegee. The exact date of her death is currently unknown, but it was likely between 1892 and 1903. While we don’t have records of how this loss impacted Mary, her actions in the years before her own death indicate that she was profoundly saddened and felt deeply the loss of her only daughter, of whom she was extremely proud.
Mary Shaw resigned from her role as Principal in 1894, and died 11 years later in March 1905 at the age of 53 in Philadelphia. Her funeral took place at the historic St. Philip’s P. E. Church on 25th Street in Manhattan. We can in some ways understand Mary Shaw’s worldview more fully through a particularly detailed and, luckily for us, digitized document: her will. In 1903, Mary drew up a thoughtful, practical, and comprehensive will in which she delineated where and how she wanted her estate distributed—in effect, constructing her own legacy
Eugene L. Armbruster, photographer. Image of Macedonia A.M.E. Church in Flushing. Image Courtesy of Queens Public Library.
The most striking detail to emerge from Mary Shaw’s will was her sizable bequest to the Tuskegee Institute. She bequeathed a total of $36,000 (though some sources say $33,000, and some even $50,000) to the Institute, specifying the amount be used to establish a scholarship fund for female students in memory of her daughter. According to the Boston Globe, it was the “largest bequest ever made by a colored person to Tuskegee Institute.” Mary Shaw’s generosity made national news, as editors reprinted the story across the states from South Carolina to Massachusetts to Indiana, from Florida to Illinois. This impressive sum spoke to both the capital that Mary had amassed as her own propertyby virtue of her status in the Flushing community and through years of teaching, the importance of Tuskegee and its mission to Mary, and her dreams for African American women. So noteworthy was Mary Shaw’s gift that a group of relations contested Shaw’s last will and testament, claiming that she was not of sound mind when making the generous bequest. Booker T. Washington sat in court the day Mary Shaw’s will was upheld. The New York Sun reported that he left the courtroom “very much pleased” at the decision to honor Shaw’s wishes.
It is clear from the contents of her will that Mary Shaw hoped to construct alternative futures to the women who, like her daughter, devoted themselves to betterment through education. In addition to her donation to the Tuskegee Institute, Shaw invested her money and legacy in the community of women around her. She left considerable sums of money to her mother and her “dear friend,” Annie Johnson, with whom she resided at the time of her death. Among the other female family and friends included in her generosity were Ada Fisher, Helen Ethelda Smith, Kate Smith, and Bella Warick. The will stipulated that an additional $1,000 go to what was then the Flushing Free Public Library, which might explain why Mary Shaw’s portrait hung there for so many years. With the money, the library purchased books for a reference section, some of which still exist there today. Boundless in her philanthropy, she gave another $1,000 to the Hospital and Dispensary of the Town of Flushing and $2,000 to St. Philips Parish Home. To her husband who survived her, she left 50 dollars.
John Shaw lived a widower for four years. At the time of his death in July of 1909, he was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just down the street from Harvard’s campus, working primarily as an author.
Though overlooked in histories of women activists, Mary Shaw committed herself to the work of social and educational activism. Her Flushing community has not forgotten her for it: the library also formed a “Mary Ann Shaw Society,” that builds on Mary Shaw’s legacy of investing in education, books, and community. In 2018, the Queens Borough Public Library commissioned and revealed a portrait of Mary Shaw by artist Eddie Abrams. Like the 1890 photograph, the portrait of Mary Ann Shaw now lives in the Flushing Library, where a new generation of readers will soon recognize her familiar face.
To learn more about the history of women’s involvement in the creation and expansion of public libraries, check out the Center for Women’s History’s upcoming special exhibition, Circulating Control: Women’s Book Battles, 1880-1930 (July 26, 2024-November 30, 2025.)
PHOTO OF THE DAY
NEW FOOD OPERATOR AT CORNELL TECH WITH A LARGE MENU SELECTION OF PREPARED, SALAD & SANDWICH ITEMS.
CREDIT TO:
NEW YORK HISTORICAL Written by Hope McCaffrey, Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for Women’s History, with special thanks to Lori Rothsteinandthe Queens Memory Project.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
About 11,500 Americans lost their lives aboard British prison ships from 1776 to 1783. More soldiers, sailors and civilians died aboard the prison ships than in all of the Revolutionary War battles combined. It started with the Battle of Brooklyn (the Battle of Long Island).
The City of New York played an important role throughout the American Revolution. Not only was the city an important port of commerce, providing supplies and food to the Continental Army, but it served as a central communications route between the northern and southern states.
Without a large naval military, the Continental Army used privately owned ships to advance the patriotic cause, carrying supplies and messages from Boston to New York and down to the southern colonies.
New York’s importance as a strategic location during the American Revolution was not lost on either the British or the American patriots and would become the location of the first military engagement following the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
On August 27, 1776, just eight weeks after the colonies declared their independence from England, the Battle of Brooklyn began.
Although George Washington and his army were able to retreat and escape capture, an estimated 1,300 prisoners of war would remain in British custody. Continental soldiers only comprised a portion of the prisoners held captive by the British during the American Revolution however.
Civilians and privateers commissioned by the Continental Army who refused to pledge allegiance to the Crown of England were also arrested and held in New York’s two jails.
The number of prisoners held captive by the British quickly outgrew the jails, leading the British to use abandoned churches, warehouses, and ultimately decommissioned war ships known as “hulks” anchored off the Brooklyn coast.
During the war, at least 16 hulks, including the infamous HMS Jersey (a former warship built in 1736 and converted to a hospital ship before becoming a prison hulk), were placed by British authorities in the waters of Wallabout Bay.
Living conditions in the British prisons were unbearable, but none as much as on the prison ships. The ships were overcrowded; the prisoners were tortured; and, if fed, prisoners were given rancid food and unclean water.
In 1778, Robert Sheffield, one of 350 prisoners held in a compartment below the decks, escaped and told his story in the Connecticut Gazette:
“The heat was so intense that (the hot sun shining all day on deck) they were all naked, which also served well to get rid of vermin, but the sick were eaten up alive.
“Their sickly countenances, and ghastly looks were truly horrible; some swearing and blaspheming; others crying, praying, and wringing their hands; and stalking about like ghosts; others delirious, raving and storming, — all panting for breath; some dead, and corrupting [decomposing].
“The air was so foul that at times a lamp could not be kept burning, because of which the bodies were not missed until they had been dead ten days.”
Diseases, including smallpox and yellow fever, ran rampant on the ships. Captives on the ships died from malnutrition and disease at alarming rates of 10-12 prisoners a day. Their bodies were either thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves along the banks of the bay.
Historian Edwin G. Burrows writes that “by the end of 1776, disease and starvation had killed at least half of those taken on Long Island and perhaps two-thirds of those captured at Fort Washington – somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 men in the space of two months.”
Christopher Vail, who was held aboard HMS Jersey five years later in 1781, wrote:
“When a man died he was carried up on the forecastle and laid there until the next morning at 8 o’clock when they were all lowered down the ship sides by a rope round them in the same manner as tho’ they were beasts.
“There was 8 died of a day while I was there. They were carried on shore in heaps and hove out the boat on the wharf, then taken across a hand barrow, carried to the edge of the bank, where a hole was dug 1 or 2 feet deep and all hove in together.”
The prison ships held captives until 1783 when the British occupation of New York ended. It is estimated that approximately 11,500 soldiers, sailors, and civilians lost their lives aboard the prison ships from 1776 to 1783. More Americans died aboard the prison ships than in all of the Revolutionary War battles combined.
In the years following the war, the bodies of the prison ship martyrs would wash up on the shores of Brooklyn. Remains were collected and held in a small crypt near what is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
In 1808 that burial vault collapsed and the remains of those that died aboard the prison ships were re-interred in Fort Greene Park, on which a part of the Battle of Long Island had been fought.
A monument to memorialize the martyrs was created, but by the mid-1800s, the monument had fallen into disrepair and plans for a new monument to be located in the newly created Washington Park (now Fort Greene Park) were conceived.
The Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial
In 1867, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were hired to create a new design for what would become Fort Greene Park. At the insistence of The Martyrs’ Memorial Association, the large city park was to include a burial site and permanent monument for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.
Olmsted and Vaux’s design included a large crypt and elaborate memorial set into the stepped hillside in the northwest corner of the park.
The park entrance on the intersection of Canton Street and Myrtle Avenue opened onto a large public gathering space designed for public meetings and political speeches. From the open space, a tiered staircase would lead up the steep hillside to a saluting battery, refreshment house, observatory, and a set of open playing fields.
The design also included an elaborate monument for the prison ship martyrs halfway up the grand staircase with a crypt being located beneath the monument.
Construction on the Olmsted and Vaux plans began in 1868, but an economic downturn caused the Olmsted and Vaux’s elaborate plans to be cut short.
The open space and tiered staircase would be completed, along with a vault for the remains of the martyrs, but the monument itself and the observatory were never created. In 1873, 22 boxes containing the remains of the prisoners were interred into the vault.
In 1899, construction of new facilities at the Brooklyn Navy Yard uncovered additional remains and sparked new interest in creating a more significant monument to the prison ship martyrs and a new campaign for funding was initiated.
On June 30, 1902, Congress passed an act (32 Stat. 747) that provided $100,000 towards designing and constructing a large commemorative structure in Fort Greene Park to memorialize the martyrs. The act provided specifically that the contribution of the federal government was contingent upon the raising of a like sum by private subscription and by the State and City of New York.
In 1905, the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White was hired to design a new entrance to the existing vault and a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs.
The McKim, Mead, and White design transformed the existing grand staircase into a 100-foot wide staircase broken into three flights. The entrance to the crypt, located in the center of the middle flight of stairs, is a single bronze door. At the top of the staircase sits a large plaza with four bronze eagles set at each of the four corners.
The Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument, a 149-foot Doric column, is centered on the plaza on top of a two-tiered square base. The base of the column includes two bronze doors, identical to the crypt door and the column is topped with a 22-foot bronze lantern designed by Adolph Alexander Weinman (who also designed the plaza’s four eagles).
The McKim, Mead, and White design also modified several other areas of the original Olmsted and Vaux plan including the addition of a small comfort station to the north of the upper plaza and a redesign of the lower plaza (which was never fully implemented).
The McKim, Mead, and White Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument was completed and dedicated in a ceremony attended by President-elect William H. Taft in 1908.
Since the dedication ceremony, the Monument, grand staircase, and upper and lower plazas have been modified. Some alterations to the Monument, such as the construction of an interior elevator, were subsequently removed.
The upper and lower plazas have been modified twice since 1908: once in 1936 with a design by Gilmore Clarke, and the second through a 1972 design by A. E. Bye.
The upper plaza was expanded, branching out to the north and south, while the lower plaza was transformed to include a set of smaller open spaces including playgrounds, a comfort station, and seating areas.
The grand stair case retains its McKim, Mead, and White three-tiered layout, but has been modified with tree wells and planting beds. The underground crypt remains in its original location.
“Not of National Significance” Finding
In 2021, after a study and analysis of the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Memorial in order to have the site named a National Historic Landmark, the National Park Service determined that the site “does not meet the criteria for national significance for cultural resources through the application of national historic landmark criteria.”
NPS argued that while the monument is indirectly associated with a historic event, it did not exist during the time of the historic event and it memorializes a phase of history not associated with the site.
The criteria for National Park Service designation requires that sites not only have historical or cultural significance, but also a high degree of integrity of location, design, and setting.
Cemeteries and other properties that are commemorative of events unrelated to their sites, such as the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument, do not ordinarily qualify for designation.
NPS also determined that the Memorial did not possess national significance based on its own architectural or design values because it does not represent an exceptionally important design of either Olmsted and Vaux or McKim, Mead and White.
Visiting Fort Greene Park and the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument
Fort Greene Park and the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument are owned and operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The park is open daily from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. unless otherwise posted.
A staffed visitor center is located to the north of the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument and includes an exhibit on the prison ship martyrs’ and the history of Fort Greene Park within the context of the Revolutionary War. Restrooms are located within the visitor center and in a small comfort station on the lower plaza. Neither the Monument nor the crypt are open for public access.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE EAST COMMONS ARE SOON TO OPEN
CREDIT TO
NEW YORK ALMANACK Judith Berdy
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
This year I wrote about the Lampposts designed by Jsoseph H. Freedlander. It turns out there was much more to the story about Freedlander.
Joseph Freedlander (1870 – 1943) Mercury 18 x 9 x 6 inches Created 1931 Bronze on a marble base
In the late 1920s, Joseph Freedlander was asked by the City of New York to design a series of bronze light posts for Fifth Avenue. The first, completed in 1931, was installed at 41st and Fifth, and 103 others followed between 8th and 59th Streets.
Each traffic light was topped by a bronze statuette of Mercury. In the late 20th century, only several survived, two at the Museum of the City of New York, one in the offices of the Fifth Avenue Association, and a few in private collections.
If you go to the New York Times site and plug in “Joseph Freelander Mercury,” a detailed story by Christopher Gray will come up. The provenance of the sculpture is extraordinary.
NATIONAL HOME FOR DISABLED VOLUNTEER SOLDIERS JOHNSON CITY, TENNESSEE
VA History Tidbit – Joseph H. Freedlander, Architect – Beaux Artss architecture
– Mountain Home In celebration of National Preservation Month
VA’s earliest hospitals were built as branches of the National Home for Disabled Volunteers Soldiers. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, Congress established the National Homes to provide medical care, rehabilitation, and a “real home” for thousands of Union veterans who survived the war, but whose disabilities or lack of family prevented them from finding suitable jobs and housing. The National Homes were purposely designed to be beautiful and welcoming and many notable architects were involved in creating that first generation of national veterans hospitals and homes. They were built in spacious, park-like settings which provided lots of opportunities for veterans to take relaxing strolls, get fresh air, and commune with nature. The National Home’s Mountain Branch, which opened in Johnson City, Tennessee, in 1903, was designed by renowned Beaux Arts architect, Joseph H. Freedlander, and is unique among VA’s early hospitals.
Joseph Henry Freedlander was born on August 18, 1870 in New York City to Jewish immigrants who migrated from Germany. His father was a hat wholesaler and his mother was a homemaker. He attended public schools and was later accepted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he graduated in 1891 with a degree in architecture at the age of 20. He then became one of the first Americans to attend the prestigious Écoles des Beaux Arts in Paris and graduated in 1895. Beaux Arts was a distinctive design style that embellished classical revival architecture with lavish and ornate details. The Écoles des Beaux Arts was regarded as one of the superior fine arts school in the world, at the time, and its artistic influences spanned from the early 19th century until the mid-1930s.
After graduation, Freedlander returned to New York where he set up his private practice as a Beaux Arts atelier. In 1897 he was selected to design the St. Louis Club in St. Louis, Missouri—it was his first major work. In 1901 a national competition was announced by the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers’ Board of Managers for someone to design their new branch which was to be built in Tennessee. Out of six designs submitted, Freedlander’s design was selected in July 1901. He was 30 years old and newly married at the time and one of the youngest architects in the country.
In 1914 Freedlander was selected as Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion of Honor by the French Government—a distinctive order established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802. During his career he was president of the Société des Architectes Diplomés’ American group, the Fine Arts Federation of New York, chairman of the annual Paris prize committee for the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects, trustee of the Museum of French Art, and associate of the National Academy of Design. He was an active and distinguished member of architecture circles, including the American Institute of Architects and National Sculpture Society, where helped to promote and expand the presence of Beaux Arts architecture in America. He went on to design other significant public buildings including the Harlem Hospital in New York (1907), the Perry Memorial in Put-in-Bay, Ohio (1912), the French Institute (1929), the Fifth Avenue traffic towers (1929), Museum of the City of New York (1930), and the Bronx County Courthouse (1934). He also designed numerous private residences. He died of a heart attack near Madison Square Garden on November 23, 1943 at the age of 73.
Joseph H. Freedlander’s magnificent work from 112 years ago still stands at the former National Home’s Mountain Branch, which today is known as the James H. Quillen VA Medical Center. Its unique architecture and significant role in our country’s history earned its designation by the Secretary of the Interior in 2011 as one of America’s National Historic Landmarks. Please enjoy these images of Freedlander’s beautiful work at Mountain Home:
Built in 1900, this Beaux Arts-style building was designed by Arthur Dillon of Friedlander and Dillon to serve as the home of the exclusive St. Louis Club, which remained in the building until 1925.
PERRY MEMORIAL PUT-IN-BAY, OHIO
In October 1911, a “Program of a Competition” was announced and 147 architects and firms submitted designs. The winning drawing was awarded to Joseph H. Freelander and Alexander D. Seymour Jr. of New York City.
The History of the Monument
“Don’t Give Up The Ship.” Spoken by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to his troops as they defended this area against the British in the Battle of Lake Erie, this words remain stirring to this day. Despite being heavily unnumbered, Perry was victorious in taking control of Lake Erie. This was a crucial turning point for the War of 1812 and the US went on to win the war. The British fleet fought the Battle of Lake Erie in the waters near South Bass Island. Soon after, Oliver Hazard Perry sent the fleet back to Great Britain and celebrated the American victory.
Buried at the base of the column are six soldiers who perished during the batter. Both American officers and British officers are remembered at Perry’s Monument. The names of all the soldiers slain in the battle including Commodore Perry are also etched inside the grand rotunda.
After this war, relations between the US and England remained peaceful ever since. The monument is a symbol of this lasting peace, its construction a multi-state effort to “inculcate the lessons of international peace by arbitration and disarmament.”
The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is a history and art museum in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It was founded by Henry Collins Brown, in 1923 to preserve and present the history of New York City, and its people. It is located at 1220–1227 Fifth Avenue between East 103rd to 104th Streets, across from Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, at the northern end of the Museum Mile section of Fifth Avenue.
The red brick with marble trim museum was built in 1929–30 and was designed by Joseph H. Freedlander in the neo-Georgian style, with statues of Alexander Hamilton and DeWitt Clinton by sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman facing Central Park from niches in the facade.The museum is a private non-profit organization which receives government support as a member of New York City’s Cultural Institutions Group, commonly known as “CIG”s. Its other sources of income are endowments, admission fees, and contributions.[Wikipedia]
The Bronx County Courthouse, as seen from the south end of the Grand Concourse on a June 2022 afternoon. Architects Max Hausle and Joseph H. Freedlander collaborated with a bevy of noted artists and sculptors (Charles Keck, Adolf A. Weinman, James Monroe Hewlett, and Joseph Kiselewski were among those who contributed works) on this massive civic temple that was built over three years beginning in 1931 as a prominent local example of the large-scale public works projects that provided welcome job opportunities to designers and builders during the Great Depression, and of which then-New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was especially fond. The building’s Monumental Neoclassical style has been described by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as “a characteristically American version of a style which was also popular in Europe, seen for example in the new section of Rome” in which “bold, simple geometric massing… is combined with ornamental detail and sculpture which derive inspiration primarily from ancient Greek and Roman models”. This, however, is combined with subtle but timely Art Deco flourishes such as the streamlined aesthetic that’s noticeable especially in and around the entrance porticos. Belying its name, the building houses not only the judiciary but all organs of the borough government, and its inauguration in 1934 coincided with the the 20th anniversary of the splitting off of the Bronx as a separate county. The dedication ceremonies included speeches, a military parade and band concert, and luncheons at the nearby Concourse Plaza Hotel. It was nominated as a New York City Landmark in 1976, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places both in its own right (1983) and as a contributing property to the Grand Concourse Historic District (19
ANDREW FREEMAN HOME
The Andrew Freedman Home is a historic building in the Bronx, New York City. Constructed by the estate of the millionaire Andrew Freedman, it has been renovated into an artists’ hub consisting of an interdisciplinary artist residency, an incubator space, workforce development and community services.[1] It is a New York City designated landmark. The money to build it was bequeathed by Freedman. Located at 1125 Grand Concourse in the Concourse neighborhood, the Andrew Freedman Home was designed as a retirement home for wealthy individuals who had lost their fortunes.
The trust that operated the Andrew Freedman Home ran out of money in the 1960s. The home was reopened in 1983 for all elderly individuals, regardless of past financial status. As of 2012, the Andrew Freedman Home serves as a day-care center and event space
BARON DE HIRSCH TRADE SCHOOL (?)
PHOTO OF THE DAY HONEYMOONERS VISIT KIOSK CONGRATULATIONS TO JAVIER AND EYLUL ON YOUR MARRIAGE
CREDIT TO
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Judith Berdy
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
