Last week I had the opportunity to visit the archives at New York Medical College. (NYMC) NYMC has had a long affilitation with the Homeopathic Hospital on Wards’s Island which later relocated to Blackwell’s Island was re-named Metropolitan Hospital. It was located to the site of the former lunatic asylum, opening in 1895. The Met was on the island until1955, when it relocated to East 97th Street, where it remains today.
The archives were mostly collected by Dr. Jay Tartell who has had an interest and extensive collection of materials from the 1700’s on. Dr. Tartell has donated much of his collection to the NYMC and recently hung art and there are display cases of his collections. His collections include medical instruments history and William Cullen Bryant,
The archives include yearbooks and annuals from Metropolitan Hospital School of Nursing, which were held at the hospital until the library closed. Luckily some of the collection was preserved but much I assume was discarded.
This is the original check to pay James Blackwell for the purchase of the Island by the City of New York for $13,900- in 1828. This was half the payment.
The hallway and halls are full of historic artifacts and memorabilia from the many collections.
Nic Webb stand in front a a wonderful display of Metropolitan Hospital images just installed in one of the study rooms, (no libraries, just cubicles for laptops is the look of modern medical schools)
Many oil painting also donated by Dr. Tartell decorate the stairways.
New York Medical College Proudly Displays Donated Portrait of William Cullen Bryant
Historical Portrait of NYMC Founder and Longtime President of the Board of Trustees Adorns Medical Education Center
New York Medical College (NYMC) co-founder and revolutionary, William Cullen Bryant, is back at the College–in oil painting form. The portrait of the long, gray-bearded founding father is hung prominently in the Blanche and Albert Willner, M.D. ’43 Atrium and Lobby in the Medical Education Center, where hundreds of students pass each day and can now be inspired by the man who laid the College’s foundation. Jay D. Tartell, M.D. ‘82, gifted the College “Portrait of William Cullen Bryant,” which was painted by Ferdinand Danton Sr., in 1877.
“William Cullen Bryant’s often forgotten contributions to the ascent of America and the vitality of New York need to be understood and remembered today,” said Dr. Tartell in a statement. “Bryant’s role in the founding of NYMC is of obvious interest to the College community. But his role as a ‘Renaissance Man,’ advancing our country on multiple fronts – including science, art, politics, literature, world awareness and moral principles – can serve as an even greater inspiration to our students.”
The archives at at the NYMC campus in Valhalla, NY., adjoining the Westchester County Medical Center. NYMC is now part of Truro College and has a long history of being part of Grasslands Hospital and Flower Fifth Hospital.
Nicolas Webb has just acquired a medical instrument collection that he is busy researching and cataloging . The work of an archivist never ends. Thanks for a great visit to see our history.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
ED LITCHER AND GLORIA GOT IT RIGHT (SEE ABOVE)
CREDIT
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Blackwell’s Almanac: Valentine’s Day: From Religion to Romance Old New York: Part XI— NYC Post WW II (1945–1960) I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for… Häagen-Dazs
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
The Municipal Archives photograph collections are renowned and widely valued for their comprehensiveness. For example, the tax photograph series includes pictures of every house and building in all five Boroughs circa 1939 and 1985. As useful as they are, however, they depict only building exteriors. Pictures of building interiors are less well represented in the collections. There are interior views in New York Police Department crime scene and Housing Preservation and Development collections for example, but they are relatively few in number.
Savoy Ballroom, 598-614 Lenox Avenue, Manhattan, Entrance, July 2, 1952. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
This week, For the Record takes a look at some remarkable pictures in an unprocessed collection, the “Condemnation Photograph Files.” They consist of excellent quality exterior and interior pictures of all types of buildings—apartments, stores, factories, restaurants, theatres, garages, tenements, taverns, warehouses, filling stations—in short, the entire urban landscape of mid-century New York. They even include the legendary Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.
NBC Television (International) Theatre, Entrance, Columbus Circle, May 4, 1953. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
NBC Television (International) Theatre, General View of Theatre from stage, February 24, 1953. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Hertzberg & Son, 2300 Fifth Avenue and West 140th Street, July 14, 1952. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Further examination of the collection revealed some rather noteworthy pictures. Given that property owners would be compensated not just for the building structure, but also for the value of equipment and fixtures inside the building, it makes sense that there are many interior scenes. In some instances, the pictures include people—shoppers in a store, patrons at the bar, and factory workers at desks and operating machinery.
Another feature of the pictures is their quality. They were taken by professional photographers and consist of well-composed large-format 8×10-inch black and white prints. Each image is captioned with a location and date. The Rutter Studio took almost all of the sample pictures in this article. The Rutter Studio is familiar to City archivists because the Borough President of Brooklyn contracted with them in the 1910s and ’20s to document construction of the Coney Island Boardwalk and other public works in the Borough; many have been digitized and are available in the gallery.
Hertzberg & Son, 2300 Fifth Avenue and West 140th Street, Private Office, Main Floor, July 14, 1952. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Sinclair Refining Co., NE corner Broadway and 225th Street, General View of Station, November 1, 1948. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Of particular interest in the Condemnation series are pictures of the legendary Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. There are not people in the pictures (apparently the photographer worked during closing hours) but they do include the ballroom, bar area, murals, cloakrooms, etc. It is also interesting that the pictures date from 1952 and the building was not demolished until 1958/59. Whether this speaks to the time frame of the condemnation proceeding, or to protests against demolition of the Harlem landmark, will require further research. The Ballroom made way for the Delano Housing Complex, renamed the Savoy Park Apartments in 2017.
Further research will also be necessary to answer other questions about the condemnation process; e.g. what entity commissioned the pictures? The Court, the City, or the law firms representing the owners? Did the people in the pictures know the building was slated for demolition? Further research in MA collections might reveal answers. In the meantime, here is a selection from the series.
Sinclair Refining Co., NE corner Broadway & 225th Street, Office, November 1, 1948. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Savoy Ballroom, 598-614 Lenox Avenue, Manhattan, Entrance Lobby, July 2, 1952. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Savoy Ballroom, 598-614 Lenox Avenue, Manhattan, Easterly side of Ballroom, July 2, 1952. Photographer: Rutter Studio. Condemnation photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Included in this Issue: The Schetlin Story Conclusion Part IV • A Recollection of Family Life on Balckwell’s/ Welfare Island Eleanor Schetlin 2002 PART IV • The Florence Nightingale Pledge • Eleanor Schetlin at the Central Nurses Residence 1956-1963 • Eleanor, The Last Schetlin on the Island, Leaves the Island • Eleanor and the Roosevelt Island Historical Society • Background Report
Leisure time at the lighthouse
Artists rendering of CNR facing north.
Tennis courts that later became our second community gardens.
View of CNR and central laundry building in foreground
View looking north from Storehouse Elevator building
View from terrace at CNR with Chapel of the Afflicted in the distance.
Cement Batching Plant at East River Drive at 61 to 62 Street
Eleanor and Judy at the time of her presentation at the RIHS in 2000.
Reading Eleanor’s story for the first time in years reminds me of the importance of paper archives and photographs. There is something about looking thru notebooks, binders, scrapbooks that brings the story to life. Eleanor visited our island again in 2006. We held a reunion at the newly opened Octagon apartments. Bruce Becker, the developer was a wonderful host to the women who studied and worked in the building. I have photos of that event but they are in the RIHS office in the Octagon.
I hope you have enjoyed this series. Please send me your comments.
I look up at my bookshelf and want to acknowledge some of the reference materials and books I have used to write the 30 FROM OUR ARCHIVES articles:
NEW YORK RISES – EUGENE DE SELIGNAC NYC Municipal Archives
ARTHUR TRESS FANTASTIC VOYAGES Arthur Tress
SERT- JOSE LUIS SERT J.P. Rovera
NEW YORK 1960 Robert A.M. Stern
AMERICAN NOTES Charles Dickens
I KNEW THEM IN PRISON Mary Belle Harris
MYSTERIOUS MANSIONS Mary Dickerson Donahey
STONE AND STEEL Bascove
PITIGLIANI Letitzia Pitigliani
This list is only published books. Our archives have over 200 binders of individual subjects from Almshouses to Zoolander. Feel free to contact us for any information you need. If we don’t have it, we can point you in the right direction to find it.
Judith Berdy
CREDITS
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
A RECOLLECTION OF FAMILY LIFE ON BLACKWELL’S / WELFARE ISLAND ELEANOR SCHETLIN 2002 PART III
1912-1931
The Schetlins at the City Home The River Ice Fairyland Surrounded by the River
70 YEARS AGO. WHO IS ON THE PHOTO?
CREDITS
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
A RECOLLECTION OF FAMILY LIFE ON BLACKWELL’S / WELFARE ISLAND ELEANOR SCHETLIN 2002 PART II 1920’s -1930’s
Cottage Row,The Blackwell Mansion, The Quarry, The Farm Traveling by the Bridge Some Institutions on the Island
Trolley turned around and then back over the Queensboro Bridge.
The last fare was about 15 cents a ride
Cut stones from the quarry waiting to become building walls. Quarry was where 465 Main Street is located.
The Almshouse/City Home building all were located near the Chapel of the Good Shepherd.
The other way to get to Welfare Island. The Thomas. M.Mulry steamer left from East 78 St. and the East River to the dock by Metropolitan Hospital.
CREDITS
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
A RECOLLECTION OF FAMILY LIFE ON BLACKWELL’S / WELFARE ISLAND PART 1 Eleanor SCHETLIN 2002
EDITORIAL Yesterday we started our biography of Eleanor Schetlln. Today, you can read her historical story of her family and her life on the island. This story is 45 pages long, the most written, to my knowledge of any person who was a resident here. Eleanor kept in communication with me for many years and we have preserved her e-mails and all the materials she forwarded to the RIHS. This 3 inch thick notebook is a treasure trove of information, stories, legends, myths, tales and remembrances. Hope you enjoy the series.
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THE CARS ENDED UP AT THE KINGSTON TROLLEY MUSEUM. ONE CAR, #601 WAS SITTING IN THE OPEN, ABANDONED, LOOTED AND DETERIORATING UNTIL ABOUT 10 YEARS AGO. THE MUSEUM HAD NO INTEREST OR FUNDS TO RESTORE IT. EVENTUALLY IT WAS USED FOR SALVAGE AND ONLY THE MEMORIES REMAIN.
CREDITS
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
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Brooklyn‘s Sunset Park really is a park, on a hillside facing the sunset, but it’s also busy avenues, schools and churches and hospitals, thousands of homes, commerce and transportation hubs, down to and including the vast, flat, industrial waterfront of Bush Terminal (later Industry City).
The neighborhood adds up to more than the sum of all its many and diverse parts, its past and present and fast-arriving future, because all these parts interact. Everything is subject to change, and open to debate. Boundaries are moot, new names always lurking. The name came with the park in the 1890s, but wasn’t attached to the whole neighborhood until the 1960s, when real estate needed help.
Still, let’s start at the top, infrastructure at its most infra: not a hill so much as a ragged line of hills, the remains of a ridge, lying northeast to southwest, marking the southernmost advance of the last glaciers to cover Long Island.
The glaciers may have stood a thousand feet high. As they began to melt, and recede northward, they dumped boulders, gravel, and dirt. (People moving out always leave things they don’t want.) Down-running streams carried the smaller bits to enrich the flat, once-fertile fields of Dutch Gowanus, the southernmost reach of the old town of Brooklyn.
These are the Brooklyn Alps: Mount Prospect, 200 ft., on Eastern Parkway, next to the Brooklyn Public Library; Lookout Hill, 177 ft., at the south end of Prospect Park; Battle Hill, in Green-Wood Cemetery, 220 ft. and the highest point in Brooklyn; Sunset Park, 164 ft., the “peak” just west of 7th Avenue at 43rd St.; then slowly dwindling to Owl’s Head Park, 69 ft., in Bay Ridge, before bolting up across the Verrazano Narrows as Todt Hill, 401 ft., on Staten Island, the highest point in the five boroughs of New York City.
Not the Swiss Alps, to be sure, but in Brooklyn, we are proud. Some of us even climb them all.
At least one internet travel site is convinced that Sunset Park is the high point of Brooklyn, but no one can dispute that the views compete with any other B-Alp. Just to the north, the cemetery rises as a tree-covered hill and forms one natural boundary of the neighborhood. A second, plainly, is the harbor to the west, on gorgeous view.
Buildings block the eastward prospect, and whether in that direction Sunset Park ends at 7th Avenue, or down the hill at 8th or 9th, before becoming Borough Park, depends on whom you ask. The southern view along the ridge line, also limited, does not extend to the expressway cut below 64th St., the practical border of Bay Ridge, formerly the westernmost portion of New Utrecht, founded in 1657.
Like almost every other hill in Brooklyn, the ridge was chopped and graded and gridded, starting in the 1830s, as streets of houses replaced farms. The top of the hill became — and surely will remain — residential.
In 1891, seven years before the merger with New York City, the City of Brooklyn bought some land around the greatest elevation, and from there the park slowly grew and developed, over two decades, to its present dimensions, bounded by 5th and 7th Avenues, 41st and 44th Streets. Once there was a carousel, and six holes of golf. On a hillside.
The modern age of Sunset Park began 80 years ago, thanks to the Works Progress Administration (WPA), with a redesign, new park buildings, and a large public pool that opened in 1936 — one of an astounding 11 public pools to open in New York City that summer.
The local economy endured some alpine drops in the decades that followed, but the place and park endured, and people climbed back up. The City rebuilt the pool, plumbing, and playgrounds again in the 1980s, and the Sunset Play Center, as it’s called now, goes on.
You should see for yourself. From any direction, you’re looking up at it, and that’s appropriate. The faces have changed with time, but Chinese families and Latino families and Jewish families and hipster families and whoever else passes through Sunset Park, continue to enjoy and benefit from what’s here and largely unchanged. A nice place to gather. Swimming lessons and tai chi.
Through an era of “urban renewal” that often failed to renew, the Sunset Play Center has done what it was meant to do, it helps hold the place together. It belongs at the top of the hill. It is aspirational.
THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEW YORK ALMANACK
This essay by Marc Kirkeby was first published on the New York City Municipal Archives Blog. The Municipal Archives preserves and makes available New York City government’s historical records. Records include office documents, manuscripts, still and moving images, vital records, maps, blueprints, and sound recordings. Learn more about historical records the Municipal Archives at their website.
Illustrations, from above courtesy NYC Municipal Archives: Undated photo of Sunset Park showing the main swimming pool and one of the smaller semi-circular pools. When the pool opened, it had a separate diving pool on one end and a wading pool on the other; rendering, proposed Sunset Park swimming pool, signed C.M. Flynn, Del, ’34; R.C. Murdock, Landscape designer; M.A. Magoon, Architectural designer. January 5, 1935; Brooklyn’s Sunset Park under construction in 1935; and Brooklyn’s Sunset Park Sunset Play Center entrance, November 2016 (photo by Marc Kirkeby).
FRIDAY MORNING ON VANDERBILT AVENUE
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
We posted the image below of a 1930’s map of the south end of the island a few days ago.
Here are images of the structures on the map. This is the area of the island that is in the current Southpoint Park. You can see that the island ends at the Smallpox Hospital. All land south of that point is landfill.
Judith Berdy
Smallpox Hospital, converted to New York Training School for Nurses
City Hospital: Large one-story extension to Reception Pavilion. Wood pier.
City Hospital: Patients’ Waiting Room in Reception Pavilion.
City Hospital District: Long 3-story brick building; male dormitory.
Three-story stone building with porch in City Hospital area.
Maternity Pavillion
Building with columns
Strecker Laboratory
City Hospital closed in 1955
CREDITS
THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
