February 2022 Edition of Blackwell’s Almanac is now available
Click on the link or the image below to read the current edition. Blackwell’s Almanac – February, 2022
Archive
You are currently browsing the archives for the Photos category.
Jan
30
Jan
29
Weekend, January 29-30, 2022 – THEY CONTINUOUSLY WORK TO MAKE NEW YORK SAFE FROM DISEASE
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, JANUARY 29-30, 2022
THE 585th EDITION
From Health Officer of the Port to Disease Detectives:
Public Health Workers in New York City
Katie Ehrlich
NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES
More than 250 years ago, the sole responsibility of New York City’s first public health workers, as they could be called, was keeping disease out of the city. It is a function essential to a rapidly-growing metropolis. Centuries later, we are again face-to-face with it, even as New York in 2020 bears almost no resemblance to the port city at the lower tip of Manhattan it once was.
Until the late 19th century, the role of public health was largely to react to outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and yellow fever. A Health Officer of the Port enforced the quarantining of ships coming into New York Harbor when there was a known or suspected contagion.
Group portrait of 17 sanitary inspectors, 1870-1873. NYC Municipal Archives.
In 1805, a designated board of the mayor and legislators was tasked with overseeing the health of city residents. Officials kept increasingly robust counts of the dead in an attempt to stem these diseases. The city’s sanitary inspectors, part of the nascent Board of Health, worked to ensure the streets were free of garbage and rotting animals and vacant lots were unsoiled.
The population of Manhattan skyrocketed mid-century with the arrival of Irish and German immigrants, more than doubling the population between 1840 and 1860. Yearly outbreaks of cholera were exacerbated by tightly-packed housing quarters where these newcomers resided in neighborhoods such as the Five Points. Efforts to manage the health of the population became a more pressing issue for city government.
| Aerial view of Hoffman Island, off Staten Island, once used to quarantine incoming immigrants, circa 1934-1945. Mayor LaGuardia Collection. NYC Municipal Archives. The state created a new board of professionals to oversee health in New York City and its immediate surrounding areas in 1866. This was followed by a full-fledged Department of Health, staffed by doctors and other professionals in 1870. New York City opened the first city-controlled diagnostic laboratory in 1892, employing bacteriologists who mitigated outbreaks of infectious diseases over the years through testing and producing antitoxins and vaccines. The city’s public health lab continues this work to this day.Additional waves of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe around the turn of the century and reforms in the social, educational and labor realms ushered in the public health nursing movement. In 1902, the New York City Department of Health created the first public health nursing program in the country. City nurses were installed at schools and paid home visits to millions of families and new mothers to tackle high infant mortality rates. Baby health stations popped up around the five boroughs. Public health nurses advised and examined pregnant women and mothers of young children, gave referrals, instruction on early child care and breast-feeding, information about access to city services and provided low-cost, quality milk. |
Nurse visiting patient, possibly with tuberculosis, in tenement apartment, ca. 1910. Department of
1910. Department of Public Charities Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Fleet of “healthmobiles” employed by the Department of Health in the late 1920s to promote information about diphtheria and offer free toxin-antitoxins. NYC Municipal Archives.
Through the Great Depression to the post-World War II years, federal and private money funded an expansion of health services. Physicians and nurses staffed new district health centers. More food inspectors examined more establishments. And the city increased resources focusing on child health by bringing dentistry into the fold of city services.
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia with Department of Health Commissioner John Rice touting the plunging city death rate to under 10 per 1,000 of population for the first time, 1939. Mayor LaGuardia Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Baby Health Station under elevated tracks at Gun Hill Road and White Plains Road, Bronx, circa 1940s. NYC Municipal Archives.
The Department of Health struggled and contracted under Mayor John Lindsay’s superagency reorganization plan and subsequent economic crisis of the 1970s only to take on renewed importance when HIV appeared and devastated the city. The city was able to secure outside funds to bolster staff and much-needed tracing, research and outreach programs. City health workers continued the uphill fight against HIV/AIDS on a community basis. They tackled tuberculosis outbreaks and lead poisoning among vulnerable populations into the 2000s.
Technicians at work in a Department of Health laboratory, circa 1940s. NYC Municipal Archives.
As the city launches its contact tracing and testing program for Covid-19, it is important to remember this work has a history in New York City.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the Department of Health’s Dr. Josephine Baker was instrumental in tracking down asymptomatic carrier “Typhoid Mary” Mallon.
Department employees, sometimes with the help of volunteers, have used detective methods of sorts to track, refer and follow up on cases of tuberculosis, venereal diseases and later, HIV/AIDS.
At the threat of a smallpox outbreak in 1947, city health workers and volunteers vaccinated an astonishing 6.3 million New Yorkers in a month!
In 1978, staff epidemiologists tracked the source of the city’s first outbreak of Legionnaires Disease. The city continues to disperse health workers to New Yorkers’ homes, schools, restaurants and other businesses to monitor the city’s health on numerous fronts.
Providing direction for New Yorkers coping with the Covid-19 pandemic is the latest example of the city’s public health workers fulfilling a centuries-old imperative.
WEEKEND PHOTO
SEND YOUR ANSWER TO:
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
OR JBIRD134@AOL.COM
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
CLAUDE MONET’S HOME AT GIVERNY, FRANCE
LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT!!
SOURCES
NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES BLOG
Funding Provided by:
Roosevelt Island Corporation Public Purpose Funds
Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD
Text by Judith Berdy
Edited by Deborah Dorff
ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2022 (C)
PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Jan
28
Friday, January 28, 2022 – IMAGES OF THE PRIVILEGED IN GILDED AGE NEW YORK
FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022
The 584th Edition
The Crossroads
of
Gilded Age Life,
as Seen by a
Little-Known New York Painter
THEODORE ROBINSON
from Ephemeral New York
&
Smithsonian American Art Museum
By 1895, just about all of Manhattan was urbanized. Central Park, completed only 30 years earlier far north of the main city, was now centrally located. In three years, the consolidation of Greater New York would be complete, and the city would take the shape we know today.
| But the heart of the Gilded Age city was still Madison Square, a crossroads of business, shopping, nightlife, and culture. Above, artist Theodore Robinson painted the corner of Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street with all the action and activity to be expected in the mid-1890s. Missing from Robinson’s painting is the Flatiron Building, of course; the iconic skyscraper didn’t open until 1902. But to the left in the foreground is the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the meeting place of business and political movers and shakers. Farther up is Marble Collegiate Church, built in the 1850s and one of the city’s oldest most elite congregations. |
| from THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART Theodore Robinson was born in Irasburg, Vermont, but at the age of three his family moved to Wisconsin. Robinson’s earliest art study was done at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1869. Soon thereafter, he went to Paris where he continued his studies with conservative masters Carolus-Duran and Jean-Léon Gérôme. Broke and hungry he returned to New York, where he found friendship and employment with John La Farge. Financial considerations recurrently obliged him to teach, a chore he never enjoyed. This may have been because from childhood he suffered severe asthma attacks, which seriously depleted his energy and ultimately led to his premature death.During these early years a persistent theme emerged in his work. He often painted realistically rendered rustic genre scenes of single female figures in landscapes somewhat in the earlier manner of Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson.In 1884, Robinson returned to France where he remained for eight years, moving soon to Giverny where he became a close neighbor and friend of Monet, frequently enjoying the hospitality and critiques of the aging master. There his painting acquired the attributes of the French impressionist school, the high color and flickering light, the broken brush stroke and repeated diagonal areas of mottled color, but never losing the form and structure of the American aesthetic.His skills and his proximity to Monet propelled him to the center of the American coterie at Giverny and gave him the authority and influence to communicate impressionist attitudes and techniques to his compatriots.In 1892 he returned to America to apply his impressionist vision to his native landscape. He worked with Weir and Twachtman at Cos Cob in Connecticut, painted the picturesque canals of New York State, and finally gravitated to a Giverny of his own in his home state of Vermont. But within four years of his return, ill health overcame him and he died alone and penniless. His final canvases, lacking patrons, were auctioned at an estate sale.Emery Battis Artist Biographies for the exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000) |
Horses power carriages along the paved avenue. Skirt hems skim the sidewalks. You can practically hear the conversation between the smartly dressed young man and the driver. Streetcars travel up and down 23rd Street, ferrying daytime shoppers to grand department stores like Stern Brothers and nighttime theatergoers.
Robinson is a new name for me. Born in Vermont, he came to New York in the 1870s and returned again after stints in Europe, according to the National Gallery of Art. His depiction of Union Square (above), also an important Gilded Age location, seems closer to his pioneering Impressionist style.
Robinson died in New York in 1896 at age 43 after a lifelong fight with severe asthma, per a New York Times review of an exhibit held in 2005. His name isn’t well known, but his work capturing the street life of the Gilded Age lets us feel the energy and excitement of the city on the cusp of the 20th century.
Theodore Robinson, La Vachère, ca. 1888, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1909.7.58
Theodore Robinson, Old Church at Giverny, 1891, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1909.9.6
| Old Church at Giverny was painted in the summer of 1891 and depicts the west elevation and conical tower of the Church of Sainte Radegonde in the French village of Giverny, located fifty miles from Paris on the River Seine. In the late nineteenth century, France was an international center of artistic training and production and was a popular destination for American painters and collectors. Typically, American artists would settle in Paris but also make regular excursions into the French countryside, where they could paint outdoors. Theodore Robinson was among a group of American painters who began to visit Giverny, where the French impressionist painter Claude Monet had settled in 1883. Robinson’s friendship with Monet greatly influenced his technique in this period and manifested itself most significantly in the loose brushstrokes that indicate color and light. The paintings made by Robinson at Giverny are notable for the absence of the modernity that was sweeping French cities and towns, and appear to emphasize Giverny as a place where man and nature can still live in harmony. |
- Theodore Robinson, At the Piano, 1887, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.90
- The shiny surface of the piano, the luminescent fabric of the woman’s dress, and the image of fingers stroking ivory keys conjures a variety of textures and sounds. Theodore Robinson painted this scene of a favorite model playing a piano in the Paris apartment of his wealthy friend “Archie” Chanler. Robinson was in love with Marie but never married her. The two spent a great deal of time together in Giverny, where their relationship sparked much gossip among American tourists staying at the elegant Hôtel Baudy. One lodger wrote to her friend the Boston painter Philip Leslie Hale: “By the way, dear, it looks very strange but Mr. Robinson has a model down here who has a little daughter … Everyone says that … the little girl is the daughter of Mr. Robinson [and] the child looks very like him.” (Johnston, In Monet’s Light: Theodore Robinson at Giverny, 2004)
UPCOMING PROGRAM WITH THE NYPL
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/02/15/clone-rihs-lecture-footsteps-nellie-bly
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND ANSWER TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
FORT WADSWORTH, AT THE FOOT OF THE VERRAZANO BRIDGE IN STATEN ISLAND
ARON EISENPREISS, ANDY SPARBERG, LAURA HUSSEY, GLORIA HERMAN AND HARA REISER 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:
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
Tags: Fifth Avenue Hotel New York City, Gilded Age New York City Painters, Gilded Age NYC Paintings, Madison Square Gilded Age NYC, Madison Square New York City, Street Life Gilded Age New York, Theodore Robinson Painter
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Jan
27
Thursday, January 27, 2022 – WHERE THOSE WHO SERVED DEPARTED FOR THE FRONT
FROM THE ARCHIVES
THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2022
THE 583rd EDITION
BROOKLYN ARMY
TERMINAL:
NEW YORK CITY AT WAR
STEPHEN BLANK
We don’t think of New York City as a giant military base. Other than Fleet Week and the recruitment center in Times Square, active military personnel are fairly rare in the City. We should recall, of course, that several of the most critical battles of the Revolutionary War were fought here, and perhaps we have wondered at the antique forts which ring our harbor. New Yorkers of my parents’ generation, however, adults during World War II, were certainly aware not just of German submarines menacing American shipping outside our door (and the widespread fear of German bombers), but of New York City as one of the largest military facilities in the world.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is the most famous military instillation in the City, remembered for the many warships constructed there as well as for being an enormous employer during WWII. Another vast miliary installation is not from the Navy Yard and has received much less attention over the years, the Brooklyn Army Terminal.
The Brooklyn Army Terminal is a large warehouse complex on the East River in Sunset Park. It occupies more than 95 acres between 58th and 63rd Streets west of Second Avenue, on Brooklyn’s western shore. The complex was originally used as a United States Army Supply Terminal called the Brooklyn Army Base or Brooklyn Army Supply Base. It is now used for commercial and light industrial purposes.
The Terminal was built during World War I to be a center where incoming trains met outgoing ships, to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies to Europe. Designed by Cass Gilbert, who was responsible for some of the City’s most important buildings – the Woolworth Building, the Supreme Court, and the New York Customs House – it consists of four million square feet of warehouses, offices, piers, and railroads. The whole complex was constructed in just 17 months, completed in September 1919, but 10 months after the war had ended. It was the largest concrete building in the world, said to contain as much building material as the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and longer than the Woolworth Building is tall.
| The central atrium — a massive, four million cubic foot space — is lined with concrete balconies, staggered to allow loading and unloading of goods from rooftop cranes. Covered sky bridges connect the complex’s buildings, and the installation of 96 centrally controlled, push-button elevators was the largest of its time. Freight trains could run directly into the building and unload their cargo onto the loading docks. Two 5-ton traveling electric cranes spanned overhead, each able to move the width and length of the space on a track. Each could lower a cable that would then be attached to items unloaded from the trains. The offset balconies were designed so that this overhead crane can deposit cargo in each level and each sector of the building. Once deposited into the warehouse, cargo could be moved through the buildings by means of a network of connecting skybridges, and eventually moved down onto three enormous waterfront piers and loaded onto ships. |
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/brooklyn-army-terminal-building-b
The Terminal was indispensable during WWII, employing 56,000 military and civilian personnel. It was the headquarters of the New York Port of Embarkation, a vast network of warehouses, piers, supply depots and camps scattered across the region that moved 3.2 million troops and 37 million tons of supplies to army outposts around the globe during the war, more than any other port in the country.
Hundreds of thousands of men passed through the terminal on their way to serve overseas, arriving by trains that dropped them off a few paces from the ramps of outgoing ships. Nearly 5 million then returned home through New York, making it both the largest embarkation and debarkation point in the nation. The Terminal was set up to be a joyous reception, with bands playing to greet returning ships, and the piers and warehouses along the Narrows were painted with signs reading “Welcome Home.”
https://turnstiletours.com/100-years-refuge-brooklyn-army-terminal/
But not all the soldiers came back alive, and the Terminal had an important and solemn duty receiving the remains of those killed in the Western theaters. World War I was the first overseas conflict in which large numbers of American dead were repatriated, and in World War II, the American Graves Registration Service was established to identify and repatriate American remains. Of the 400,000+ Americans killed in the war, the service was able identify and secure the remains of approximately 281,000 (most of the remainder were lost at sea), and the families of 180,000 requested that their bodies be brought back to the US. Of this total, more than 140,000 were shipped through the Brooklyn Army Terminal
After the war, the facility remained active. Supplies and servicemen again passed through the Terminal during the Korean War. In July 1956, survivors of the collision between the ocean liners Andrea Doria and Stockholm were brought to the Terminal, as were thousands of Hungarian Revolution refugees in 1957’s “Operation Mercy.”
On September 22, 1958, the most famous soldier-in-transit, Elvis Presley, shipped out from the Brooklyn Army Terminal with other members of the Third Armored Division to begin an 18-month duty in Germany. Elvis was the only army private who scored a press conference at the Terminal before he embarked.
https://www.elvispresleyphotos.com/elvis-sails-brooklyn-army-terminal-1958.html
In 1964, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara identified the Brooklyn Army Terminal as one of 95 military bases now unnecessary for national defense and thus should be closed to cut costs. By the end of 1966, all cargo and passenger traffic had been diverted to Bayonne, New Jersey.
During much of the 1960s and ‘70s, the facility decayed. The terminal was briefly used by the United States Postal Service and the Navy and then in 1981, New York City bought the complex from the federal government. The idea was to find a developer to refurbish it for commercial and light industrial use. When that collapsed, the City began its own renovation under the management of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The final phase was completed in 2003, making a total of 2.6 million square feet available for use. Now, the Brooklyn Army Terminal houses over 70 tenants from the arts, sciences, finance and technology.
This legacy of the site, providing safe passage to survivors of disaster, was revisited when the Terminal’s sole remaining pier was opened to help ferry people out of Manhattan on September 11, 2011.
The Brooklyn Army Terminal has used for many tasks beyond the military. One of particular note: During Prohibition, the terminal was used to house a sea of confiscated liquor. When the spirits ban passed in 1920, federal agents began seizing booze and brews across the country. They ultimately confiscated millions of gallons. Construction of the Brooklyn Army Terminal had been completed in 1919, and in 1922, the Bureau of Prohibition began using Building A to stash some of the appropriated alcohol. At any given time, it is estimated that it held around $20 million worth of contraband – well over a quarter billion dollars in today’s money. And much of it, to the chagrin of drinkers everywhere, was dumped—some right over the railroad tracks in the atrium, but most of it straight into New York Harbor.
We read that a New York judge ordered the destruction of 980,000 bottles of liquor held at the Army Terminal, but Prohibition officers complained that they lacked the manpower to carry out the order; that is, until one officer suggested placing the bottles into a mechanical rock crusher that could easily pulverize 100 cases per day (never mind the fact that it would still take 27 months to destroy all of this liquor with the rock crusher).
There were, however, loopholes to Prohibition’s alcohol ban. For instance, it was still legal to drink what you already owned. And another loophole allowed spirits to be sold pharmaceutically: like many states’ current stance on marijuana, it was acceptable to use alcohol for medicinal purposes, but not recreational ones. In line with this policy, the Brooklyn Army Terminal actually had a large testing lab to determine the purity and quality of seized spirits. If the alcohol passed muster, it was reserved for future medicinal use by the military. The rest? Into the harbor.
Perhaps you would like to have been in on the testing?
Happy New Year!
Stephen Blank
RIHS
January 8, 2022
ADDENDUMThe Brooklyn Army Terminal is alive and well. In recent years the Terminal has attracted all kinds of manufacturers, large kitchens and start up businesses. To see the Terminal and its great architecture take the NYC Ferry South Brooklyn route from Pier 11 and you will be at the Terminal. Enjoy visiting history in a new neighborhood!
FEBRUARY PROGRAM WITH NYPL
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/02/15/clone-rihs-lecture-footsteps-nellie-bly
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND YOUR ANSWER TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
455 CENTRAL PARK WEST AT 105 ST.
THE ORIGINAL HOME OF MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, NOW
CONDOMINIUMS
LAURA HUSSEY 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)
Sources
https://www.nycurbanism.com/blog/2019/10/2/brooklyn-army-terminal-1949
https://turnstiletours.com/100-years-refuge-brooklyn-army-terminal/
https://edc.nyc/article/raising-glass-brooklyn-army-terminal-past
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/brooklyn-army-terminal-building-b
https://urbanomnibus.net/2011/09/from-the-archives-brooklyn-army-terminal
https://turnstiletours.com/brooklyn-army-terminal-fortress-of-prohibition/
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Jan
26
Wednesday, January 26, 2022 – A NOTABLE ADDRESS WITH AN INTERESTING CAST OF CHARACTERS
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 2022
The 582nd Edition
THE BRENTMORE
88 CENTRAL PARK WEST
A BUILDING WITH
FROM DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
Can you spot the island connection? Send us a note when you discover it.
Judith Berdy
photo by Wurts Bros. from The World’s New York Apartment House Album, 1910
(copyright expired)
In 1910 The World’s New York Apartment House Album lauded the newly-completed Brentmore as “one of the most magnificent dwellings in the city.” Construction at the southwest corner of Central Park West and 69th Street had begun the previous year by the Akron Building Co. The architectural firm of Schwartz & Gross had deftly melded the neo-Renaissance and waning Beaux Arts styles to create the 12-story, brick, stone and terra cotta structure.
A light court gave The Brentmore the appearance of two identical buildings. The tripartite design sat upon a three-story, rusticated limestone base. The architects clearly defined the mid- and top sections with stone-and-iron balconies that girded the fourth and tenth floors. The apartments and residential hotels of Central Park West catered to the upper class, and The Brentmore was no exception. Apartments ranged from seven to nine rooms, with three apartments per floor.
The World’s New York Apartment House Album wrote, “The apartments of the Brentmore are arranged duplex, all of the sleeping rooms being on the floor above the parlors, drawing rooms, library and dining rooms.” The passenger elevators opened directly into the apartments. “A feature of the apartments in the Brentmore are the baths,” said the article, “in each one of which are windows quite as large as in any other room of the apartment.”
The interior appointments spoke to the well-heeled families who would live here. The walls of parlors and drawing rooms were lined with silk, custom designed chandeliers hung in each room, and the marble lobby was decorated with antique furniture.
The Brentmore filled with well-to-do families, like the Jacob H. Schoonmaker family. A member of Butler Brothers, he and his wife, the former Emma Wilson, would have two daughters, Muriel and Beatrice. On July 6, 1913 the New-York Tribune announced that the couple “sailed for Europe on Tuesday on board the Rotterdam for an automobile tour through Holland, France, Germany and Switzerland. They will return to New York in the fall.”
Other early residents were the wealthy Edwin E. Bernheimer, his wife, Etta, and their daughter, Isabel. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Bernheimer had moved his family to New York City in 1908. He was a partner in the stock brokerage firm Jerome J. Danzig & Co. The family’s summer home was in Deal, New Jersey. Edwin and Etta Bernheimer went on a drive to Long Island with a friend, D. F. Long, on October 19, 1913. Their tonneau–an automobile open to the air–was driven by their chauffeur, Carl Steadman.
The Bernheimers’ automobile would have been similar to this tonneau (which cost the equivalent of $41,000 today in 1909
The outing ended disastrously on the way home. Steadman was headed to the Queensboro Bridge when he swerved onto a set of trolley tracks to avoid a farm wagon that drove directly into his path. The New-York Tribune reported, “He did not see an eastbound trolley…coming toward him.”
Both the trolley and the automobile were badly wrecked. Steadman was “catapulted from his seat on to the front platform of the trolley car.” The Bernheimers and their guest were slammed against the front seat, and were “bruised, cut and shocked.” Their injuries were not serious enough to warrant treatment and they rented another automobile and motored home on their own. Their chauffeur was taken to the Flushing Hospital.
Rents in the Brentmore in 1915 were $3,750 per year for a nine-room simplex and $4,000 for a nine-room duplex. Both apartments had three bathrooms. The rent for the duplex would be just under $9,000 per month today.
The Bernheimers appeared in the newspapers twice in March 1915. The first incident occurred when Edwin attempted to cross Broadway on his way to the office on March 14. At Broadway and Wall Street, he stepped quickly in front of a southbound streetcar. He did not notice that a northbound car was just yards away. He was trapped on the strip between the tracks and “the northbound car caught him and wedged him in the narrow space.” Bernheimer appears to have been more emotionally affected by his close call than physically injured. “An ambulance from Volunteer Hospital carried him to his office, where it was found he was not dangerously hurt,” said the article.
Two weeks later a more shocking story appeared in the newspapers. Among the doormen of the Brentmore was Jimmy Murray, described by the Irish-American newspaper The Advocate as “a handsome and popular young Irish boy hailing from Lanesboro, County Roscommon.” On March 27 the newspaper began an article saying, “The sensation of the week in Irish circles was the marriage of Miss Isabel Bernheimer, the society girl, and heiress, of the Brentmore Apartments, No. 88 Central Park West, to Jimmy Murray.”
The article pointed out the stark contrast in the backgrounds of the Irish immigrant and his wife, saying Isabel “is the granddaughter of the late Jacob Rothschild, proprietor of the Hotel Majestic. Her great-uncle, Joseph Rothschild, is secretary and treasurer of the Rothschild Realty Company.”
The path to the altar for the love-struck couple had been rocky. Etta Bernheimer had hired a lawyer to derail the romance, but was told that there was nothing he could do. According to Isabel, “Then she consulted me, and arrived at the verdict that I was crazy.” Joseph Rothschild had offered Murray a “$100 to $1” bet that the couple would not last four months together (the boy did not take the bet). And it was no doubt the Bernheimers’ influence that got Murray fired.
The two were married in a civil ceremony with another Brentmore employee, Rosa Clarke, and a friend of the groom as witnesses. They moved in with Jimmy’s aunt in Brooklyn. When a reporter arrived there on March 26, Isabel told him, “My family disapproves of my choice of a husband to such an extent that they are going to cut me off. I don’t care.” She added, “As for Jimmy, he is going to get a job. He’s going to get a job right away. He can get one, don’t worry about that.”
At the time of the upheaval in the Bernheimer household, Max C. Anderson was living in the Brentmore. He had been in show business for around four decades. The New York Times reported on March 9, 1915 that he was “interested in or controlled between 150 and 200 theatres, principally in the middle West.” The newspaper place his fortune at the time at around $10 million–more than 26 times that much today.
When war broke out in Europe, the family of Mayer Swaab, Jr. responded. Mayer, according to The Pennsylvania Gazette, “Has been doing important war work in this country,” and sons Jacques Michael and Frank L. both enlisted.
Jacques entered the army in June 1917. (Frank, who was just 18, would have to wait a year before enlisting in the New York State Guard in 1918). The Evening World reported that Jacques received “his training in the aviation camps at Columbus, O., and Dayton, O. before sailing for France.” Once there, he finished his flight training in France and Italy.
He saw action on September 10, 1918. On his first flight over enemy lines “he engaged and shot down a Fokker machine,” said The Evening World. “Continuing his return flight he was attacked by a group of German plans, but shot one down in flames and forced another down out of control.” The article noted, “the air battle in which he downed the three Germans may have been his first.”
Lieutenant Jacques Michael Swaab. The Pennsylvania Gazette, April 11, 1919 (copyright expired)
It was not his last. On April 11, 1919 The Pennsylvania Gazette said, “Of living American Aces, he stands third, while of unassisted victories he stands second in the list of living American Aces.” His experience in war led to his serving as technical advisor to the 1938 film The Dawn Patrol, starring Errol Flynn and David Niven.
The Bernheimers’ bad luck with the Brentmore staff continued in June 1920. The couple was at their summer home when three of the four elevator operators–Peter Martin, William Brenner and Edward Blenstein–orchestrated a complex burglary of two apartments, the Bernheimers’ and that of retired merchant Henry Schwabacker. By sending the other elevator operator to the basement on an errand, they managed to sneak their accomplices, brothers Mont and Benjamin Ayarviaz, into the building unnoticed.
Hours later Brenner reported a break in. When detectives arrived at the Brentmore, they found Martin and Blenstein with “scratched faces bearing evidences of a struggle,” according to The New York Times on June 8. Both apartments had been ransacked and the 400-pound safe from the Bernheimers’ bedroom had been pried from the wall and taken away.
Detectives suspected this was an inside job, especially considering the fact that the burglars had taken their time. The New York Times reported, “The detectives found the apartments littered with broken furniture, empty liquor glasses, scores of cigarette and cigar stubs, an empty jam pot and sardine cans.” Under intense interrogation, Blenstein confessed, explained the elaborate heist, and his confederates were arrested.
The Bernheimers’ safe was located in a back room of the Dempsey Social Club on West 49th Street, still unopened. Inside were jewelry and Liberty Bonds that were returned to the couple. In Mont Ayarviaz’s furnished room, police found six suitcases “filled with furs, clothing and jewelry, which they estimated as worth $50,000,” said The New York Times. That amount would be closer to $645,000 today.
The Brentmore continued to house wealthy families, despite the difficulties of the Great Depression and World War II. Frank Cohen and his family, for instance, lived here in 1945 when his two-masted schooner Voyager II was lost during a storm off Cape Fear, North Carolina. The Cohens were not aboard, but the four man crew and retired Army officer Gifford Nitz, Jr. and his three children were. Happily, it was found on December 28 with all persons on board.
Stage and screen star Celeste Holm was, perhaps, the first entertainment celebrity to move into The Brentmore. She took an apartment in 1953.
The building was converted to a co-operative apartment in 1959.
On May 2, 1970 attorney Jerome H. Adler and his wife, Barbara, left New York on a Dutch Antillean Airlines plane for San Martin. Adler was a trustee of the Music Performance Trust Funds of the Recording Industry. There were 63 passengers on board the airplane, which ran into trouble over the Caribbean. The pilots ditched the craft into the ocean. Barbara was among the 40 passengers rescued, but tragically, Jerome Adler perished.
Record producer and Columbia/CBS executive Clive Davis and his wife, the former Janet Adelberg, moved into a five-bedroom apartment around 1970. They paid, according to his 2012 autobiography The Soundtrack of My Life, $55,000. In it, he described, “It was spacious, and offered a number of terrific features. The elevator opened directly into the apartment, which had a large vestibule and dining room, and a huge living room overlooking the park, which became the site of many wonderful parties.” Davis estimated spending “an additional $10,000 to fix the place up.”
Like so many Central Park West buildings, the Brentmore continued to attract celebrities. In his 2005 book, Passion and Property in Manhattan, Steven Gaines writes, “When ‘broker to the stars’ Linda Stein was working with the pop star Sting on a $4.8 million apartment at 88 Central Park West, she gave him orders to shop for a conservative suit at Brooks Brothers for his board meeting and made him promise to ‘think Central Casting businessman and father,’ which he dutifully did.”
| The dining room of the Sting residence (above) and the staircase. photos by Halstead Property |
| The 7,000-square-foot, 18-room duplex Sting would buy had been home to newlyweds Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, until their pending divorce put it on the market. Sting (whose given name is Gordon Sumner) listed the five-bedroom, four-bath apartment in 2009 for $26 million. On June 7, 2012 fire in a lint-clogged drier sparked a fire in the fourth-floor apartment of Academy Award-winning actor Robert DeNiro and his wife, Grace Hightower, who had purchased the unit six years earlier. FDNY Battalion Chief Mike Meyers said the damages were confined to “three or four rooms” in the apartment, as well as “a few” apartments on the floor above. After half a century in her apartment, Celeste Holm died in there in 2012 at the age of 95. Her apartment was put on the market for $13.95 million. In reporting on the listing, The New York Times said, “Like its longtime owner, the right-room duplex possesses charisma–as well as enduring bone structure |
Unlike early 20th century apartment buildings in other parts of the city, those on Central Park West never declined. No exception, the Brentmore continues to attract the rich (and in some cases, the famous) more than a century after its doors opened.
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND YOUR ANSWER TO:
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
IF MESSAGE REJECTS SEND TO:
JBIRD134@AOL.COM
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
#CARTOON BY ROZ CHAST AS OFTEN SEEN IN THE
NEW YORKER.
NINA LUBLIN, HARA REISER, ARON EISENPREISS AND LAURA HUSSEY KNEW 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:
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Jan
25
Tuesday, January 25, 2022 – Her works showed humor at the human conditions
TUESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2022
581st Issue
Celebrating
PEGGY BACON
Painter, portrait painter, caricaturist,
illustrator, lithographer, writer, art
educator.
Peggy Bacon studied with John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Her sharp wit was evident in her contributions to the New Yorker and Vanity Fair as well as in the more than 60 books she illustrated, including several publications of her own short stories and poetry.
Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)
Peggy Bacon, Antique Shop, 1943, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.16
Peggy Bacon, Tired Eyes, 1935, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Ruth and Jacob Kainen, 1977.108.2
Peggy Bacon, George C. Miller, The Titan, 1929, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William S. Benedict, 1974.37.1
Peggy Bacon, Promenade Deck, 1920, drypoint, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Frank McClure, 1974.86.1
Peggy Bacon, Post Haste, ca. 1935, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.13
Peggy Bacon, The Supply Store, 1918, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.8
Peggy Bacon, Carrie, 1918, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.7
Peggy Bacon, Washington Square, 1918, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.9
It’s a very busy week for Nellie Bly. Tomorrow – January 25 (1885)—marks the date that her first newspaper article was published – The Girl Puzzle in The Pittsburg* Dispatch – namesake of the monument. It also the day in 1890 when Nellie Bly returned from her record-breaking race around the world. As you know, Thursday January 27 is the 100th anniversary of her death so this is some publicity around that as a celebration of her legacy.
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/02/15/clone-rihs-lecture-footsteps-nellie-bly
Tuesday Photo of the Day
SEND YOU RESPONSE TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
IF BOUNCED-BACK SEND TO JBIRD134@AOL.COM
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
TIMES SQUARE MURAL, 1997
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
TIMES SQUARE SUBWAY STATION INSTALLED 2002
LAURA HUSSEY AND GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT RIGHT!
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Jan
24
Monday, January 24, 2022 – A GREAT PUNCH OF COLOR FOR MID-WINTER
MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2022
580th Issue
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
POP ART
AT THE
SMITHSONIAN
POW!!
Roy Lichtenstein, Reverie, from the portfolio 11 Pop Artists, Volume II, 1965, color screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Philip Morris Incorporated, 1966.29.15, © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
Like other pop artists, Roy Lichtenstein hoped to eliminate the distinction between “high” and “low” art. He drew inspiration from cartoons and advertisements, adopted the look of mechanical processes, and often borrowed images directly from comic strips. In Reverie’s single frame, black outlines define fields of dots that mimic commercial half-tone printing, making a punchy and accessible image of a lovelorn songstress.
| Roy Lichtenstein, Modern Head, 1974/1990, painted stainless steel, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Jeffrey H. Loria in loving memory of his sister, Harriet Loria Popowitz , 2008.28A-F, © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein |
| The Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired the monumental sculpture Modern Head by Roy Lichtenstein, a major figure in the pop art movement, in 2008.Modern Head stands thirty-one feet tall and is made of stainless steel painted blue. The sculpture is part of a series Lichtenstein began in the late 1960s that explored the idea of creating images of human figures that look like machines. This concept pervaded the artist’s work throughout his career. Lichtenstein created the first Modern Head in 1974 out of wood that was painted blue. In 1989 he produced an edition of four in brushed steel. In 1990 the artist painted one a vibrant blue, making the sculpture in American Art’s collection a unique work. Silhouetted against the urban skyline, the flat planes and curvilinear geometric forms of the sculpture blend the streamlined industrial style of 1930s art deco architecture and design with references to Picasso and Apollo, the Greek god of the arts. In 1996, Modern Head was installed by the Public Art Fund of New York City in Battery Park City, one block from the World Trade Center. The sculpture survived the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with only surface scratches and was temporarily used by the FBI as a message board during its investigations. The sculpture was removed from the site on November 9, 2001, and was subsequently on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, New York, and at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida. The sculpture is installed on the grounds of the Museum’s main building at the corner of Ninth and F streets, N.W.Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008Modern Head is part of a series Roy Lichtenstein began in the late 1960s that explored the idea of creating images of human figures that look like machines. The flat planes and curvilinear geometric forms of the sculpture blend the streamlined industrial style of 1930s art deco architecture and design with references to Picasso and Apollo, the Greek god of the arts. On September 11, 2001, the sculpture, which was installed one block from the World Trade Center, survived the terrorist attack on New York City with only surface scratches. It was temporarily used by the FBI as a message board during its investigations.Smithsonian American Art Museum: Commemorative Guide. Nashville, TN: Beckon Books, 2015. |
Roy Lichtenstein, Sandwich and Soda, from the portfolio Ten Works x Ten Painters, 1964, screenprint on clear plastic, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1965.37.2G, © 1964, Wadsworth Atheneum
Roy Lichtenstein, Untitled, from the portfolio The New York Collection for Stockholm, 1973, color screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Woodward Foundation, 1976.108.124, © 1973, Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein, Sweet Dreams, Baby!, from the portfolio, 11 Pop Artists, Volume III, 1965, color screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Philip Morris Incorporated, 1966.29.23, © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
Send your answer to:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY
NORTHWEST ORIENT AIRLINES B377 STRATOCRUISER
ANDY SPARBERG, GLORIA HERMAN, LAURA HUSSEY, GOT IT RIGHT
CREDITS
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHSThanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS
CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Jan
21
Friday, January 21, 2022 – THE ARTIST THAT USED CRAFTS AND ESTHETIC IN HIS ART
Marcel Duchamp at the Walker Art Center, October 1965. Photo: Eric Sutherland
FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 2022
The 578th Edition
MARCEL DUCHAMP:
THE BARBARA
AND
AARON LEVINE COLLECTION
at the
HIRSHHORN
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection features the recent gift of more than fifty major historical artworks, including more than thirty-five seminal works by Marcel Duchamp, promised to the Museum by Washington, DC, collectors Barbara and Aaron Levine. The exhibition comprises an unparalleled selection of artworks, thoughtfully acquired over the course of two decades and offering a rarely seen view of the entire arc of Duchamp’s career.
The exhibition showcases a number of Duchamp’s most famous readymades, including Hat Rack, Comb, Apolinère Enameled, With Hidden Noise, L.H.O.O.Q., and Why Not Sneeze?, which together embody Duchamp’s then-radical idea that an artist’s ideas are more important than craft or aesthetics. Also prominently featured are a number of Duchamp’s unique drawings and prints related to his magnum opus, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), including Pendu Femelle, Studies for the Bachelors in the Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries, No. 2, Bride, and Nine Malic Moulds. Further insight into his unique working process is revealed by The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) and In the Infinitive (The White Box), which contain more than 150 facsimiles of Duchamp’s working notes for The Large Glass. His forward-thinking mindset can be seen in his later kinetic works, such as the Rotoreliefs (Optical Disks) and Cover of S.M.S. (Esquivons les ecchymoses des esquimaux aux mots exquis), which demonstrate the artist’s interest in creating works that call upon the brain to enhance, instead of merely process, the information received by the eye, deftly anticipating future experiments in film and Op art. The exhibition also includes portraits of Duchamp, as well as works by his contemporaries and those he influenced, including Man Ray, Tristan Tzara, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, and Irving Penn, among others. An educational resource room for visitors of all ages is included at the end of the exhibition, featuring books about Duchamp and his practice and hands-on making activities inspired by the artist’s work. An interactive chess table is also featured at the end of the exhibition—a nod to one of the artist’s favorite pastimes.
Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection is the first stage of a two-part exhibition on the life and legacy of Duchamp. The second stage of the exhibition, on view June 19–Oct. 15, 2020, examines Duchamp’s lasting impact through the lens of the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection, including significant works by a diverse roster of modern and contemporary artists.
Both exhibitions are organized by Evelyn Hankins, the Hirshhorn’s senior curator, and accompanied by a 224-page catalogue.
INSTALLATION AT THE HIRSHHORN
INSTALLATION AT THE HIRSHHORN
THE BOX IN THE VALISE
THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE BY THE BACHELORS, THE GREEN BOX
MARCEL DUCHAMP 1919/1964
UPCOMING PROGRAM WITH THE NYPL
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/02/15/clone-rihs-lecture-footsteps-nellie-bly
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND ANSWER TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SECTION OF THE CAISSON FOR THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE FOUNDATION
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island
Historical Society unless otherwise indicated:
HIRSHHORN MUSEUM
SMITHSONIAN
Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection has been made possible with support from the Hirshhorn International Council and the Hirshhorn Collectors’ Council.
This is a series of of articles on the history of Wall Street in the city of New York. You can read the entire series here.
Illustrations: Colonial two shilling currency from the Province of New York (1775); the Walton House on Pearl Street, home of the Bank of New York from 1784 to 1787, by artist Abraham Hosier; the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street, erected in 1929–1930 and now known as the Trump Building; and the tricolor cockade used by the Democratic-Republicans and in the French Revolution.
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Jan
20
Thursday, January 20, 2022 – WHO SAID ART WAS DULL IN BLACK AND WHITE?
FROM THE ARCHIVES
THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 2022
THE 577th EDITION
MARTIN LEWIS
ARTIST OF
DRYPOINT AND ETCHINGS
Martin Lewis, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0001865
Born in Victoria, Australia, Martin Lewis was a printmaker who is known for his scenes of urban life in New York during the 1920s and 1930s. As a youth Lewis held a variety of jobs that ranged from working on cattle ranches in the Australian Outback, in logging and mining camps, to being a sailor. In 1898, he moved to Sydney for two years where he received his only formal art training. During this period he may have been introduced to printmaking; a local radical paper, The Bulletin, published two of his drawings.
Lewis left Australia in 1900 and first settled in San Francisco. He eventually worked his way eastward to New York. Little is known about his life during the following decade except that he made a living as a commercial artist and produced his first etching in 1915. Lewis’ skill as an etcher was noticed by Edward Hopper, who became a lifelong friend. In 1920, dissatisfied with his job, Lewis used his entire savings to study art and to sketch in Japan. He returned to New York after a two-year stay and resumed his commercial art career, but also pursued his own work as a painter and printmaker.
During the Depression, Lewis moved to Newtown, Connecticut, but later returned to Manhattan, where he helped establish a school for printmakers. From 1944-1952 Lewis taught a graphics course at the Art Students League in New York.
During his thirty-year career, Lewis made about 145 drypoints and etchings. His prints, like Shadow Dance and Stoops in Snow, were much admired during the 1930s for their realistic portrayal of daily life and sensitive rendering of texture. The artist’s skill in composition and his talent in the drypoint and etching media have received renewed attention in recent years. Lewis is one of the few printmakers of this era who specialized in nocturnal scenes. Some scholars consider his print Glow of the City his most significant work because of the subtlety of handling. A minute network of dots, lines, and flecks scratched onto the plate creates the illusion of transparent garments hanging in the foreground, while the Chanin Building, an art deco skyscraper, towers over the nearby tenements.
[This is an excerpt from the interactive companion program to the videodisc American Art from the National Gallery of Art. Produced by the Department of Education Resources, this teaching resource is one of the Gallery’s free-loan educational programs.]
Martin Lewis, Dock Workers Under the Brooklyn Bridge, ca. 1916-1918, printed 1973, aquatint and etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Frank McClure, 1975.82.2
Martin Lewis, Circus Night, 1933, drypoint and sandpaper ground on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.155
Martin Lewis, At the Wall, 1949, aquatint, sandpaper ground, soft ground etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.158
Martin Lewis, Quarter of Nine–Saturday’s Children, 1929, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Page Cross, 1971.50
Martin Lewis, Subway Steps, 1930, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1971.345
Martin Lewis, The Great Shadow, 1925, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.150
FEBRUARY PROGRAM WITH NYPL
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/02/15/clone-rihs-lecture-footsteps-nellie-bly
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND YOUR ANSWER TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY DOLLY MADISON
Laura Hussey got it!
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Jan
19
Wednesday, January 19, 2022 – MATTHEW BRADY ALSO PHOTOGRAPHED WOMEN
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19, 2022
The 576th Edition
Storied Women
of the
Civil War Era
from
THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
A SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM
My favorite museums in DC are the National Portrait Gallery, that shares it’s building with the American Art Museum. These are not giant edifices on the Mall, but two gems on G Street a few blocks away. Next trip, save some time and visit. You will not be disappointed.
Judith Berdy
Storied Women of the Civil War Era
| May 24, 2019 – March 20, 2022A number of women rose to national prominence during the Civil War era. Some, such as First Ladies Mary Todd Lincoln and Julia Dent Grant, became public figures when their husbands’ careers thrust them into the spotlight. Others—such as abolitionist Anna Elizabeth Dickinson, actress and theater manager Laura Keene, and Union spy Pauline Cushman—achieved recognition on their own terms. Despite traveling different paths to fame, these women had at least one thing in common: they each visited one of Mathew Brady’s photography studios in New York City or Washington, D.C., and posed for a portrait in the popular, new carte de visite format.Similar in size to a European calling card, the carte de visite originated in France in the mid-1850s and was introduced to the American market in the late summer of 1859. Inexpensive to produce and collect, they fueled the rapid growth of a mass market for affordable photographic portraits. Americans not only collected images of their friends and family members but delighted in filling parlor albums with pictures of men and women of note. When the vogue for collecting such likenesses took hold, Mathew Brady’s studios met the demand by producing thousands of cartes de visite, including portraits of many of those women who captured the public’s imagination during the Civil War era.The exhibited photographs are modern prints made from original Brady carte de visite negatives in the National Portrait Gallery’s Frederick Hill Meserve Collection. |
| ABOVEKate Bateman 1842–1917 Born Baltimore, Maryland Just four years old when she made her acting debut, Kate Bateman enjoyed great success as a child prodigy until she outgrew such roles at the age of fourteen and briefly retired from the stage. She reemerged in 1860 in the title role of Evangeline, a dramatization of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s celebrated poem. She soon confirmed her status as a bona fide adult star with her portrayal of Julia in the 1862 production of The Hunchback. Her most famous role, however, was that of Leah in Leah, the Forsaken—a melodrama adapted specifically for her by playwright Augustin Daly. When Leah opened in New York City in 1863, Bateman’s stirring performance received a wildly enthusiastic reception from the public. Although Bateman would play many parts during her long career, the story of Leah, a Jewish maiden who is cruelly abandoned by her Christian lover, would remain her greatest triumph. Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94) Modern albumen silver print from 1863 wet collodion negative |
Pauline Cushman 1833–1893
Born New Orleans, Louisiana
A brief but harrowing career as a Union spy transformed minor actress Pauline Cushman into a major celebrity. In 1863, while appearing in a play in Unionoccupied Louisville, Kentucky, Cushman gained entrée to Confederate circles by publically feigning Southern sympathies. Hailed as the darling of the rebel troops, she gathered intelligence for the North until her duplicity was discovered. Arrested, tried, and condemned to hang, she was rescued by Union forces before the sentence could be carried out.
In recognition of Cushman’s service to the nation, she received a commendation from President Lincoln and was awarded the honorary rank of major. In June 1864, P.T. Barnum advertised that “MISS MAJOR PAULINE CUSHMAN! THE FAMOUS UNION SPY AND SCOUT,” would recount her “EXTRAORDINARY EXPLOITS and ADVENTURES” during a series of appearances at his American Museum. Barnum also advised patrons that “elegant” carte de visite portraits of Cushman would be offered for sale.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94)
Modern albumen silver print from c. 1860-1870 wet collodion negative
Mary Todd Lincoln 1818–1882
Born Lexington, Kentucky
When her husband was elected president in 1860, Mary Todd Lincoln welcomed her role as the nation’s First Lady. Yet, her years in the White House proved far from happy. Unjustly suspected by many of harboring Confederate sympathies, she quickly became a target of public criticism for everything from her Southern birth to her extravagant style of entertaining. Hurt and embittered by these attacks, Mrs. Lincoln was shaken further by the death in 1862 of the Lincolns’ beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie. Still suffering from that tragic loss, she was utterly devastated by her husband’s assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth in April 1865. Mrs. Lincoln never fully regained her equilibrium and spent her remaining years plagued by mentalinstability.
Mrs. Lincoln posed for this portrait in one of the elegant silk gowns fashioned for her by the talented African American dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94)
Modern albumen silver print from 1862 wet collodion negative
Julia Dent Grant 1826–1902
Born White Haven, near St. Louis, Missouri
Julia Grant served as a stabilizing influence in the life of her husband, Ulysses S. Grant. She remained steadfast in her devotion and her belief in his potential, despite a series of setbacks that plagued the couple during the early years of their marriage. When Grant reentered military service during the Civil War, his need for his wife’s companionship and counsel was such that Julia hastened to join him in the field whenever possible. Throughout the war, no general’s wife spent as much time in army encampments as she did. While traveling to meet her husband in Oxford, Mississippi, in December 1862, Julia narrowly avoided capture by Confederate raiders when they swept into the town of Holly Springs. She later joined Grant at his encampments in Jackson, Memphis, Nashville, Vicksburg, and City Point. At the war’s conclusion, Julia accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C, along with his victorious troops.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94)
Modern albumen silver print from c. 1864 wet collodion negative
Queen Emma 1836–1885
Born Honolulu, Hawaii
On May 6, 1865, less than a month after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender marked the end of the Civil War, Hawaii’s recently widowed Queen Emma embarked from Honolulu on a lengthy international tour. After an extended stay in England, where she met with Queen Victoria and raised funds for the construction of an Anglican cathedral in Honolulu, Queen Emma traveled to a host of European cities. In late July 1866, following a second visit to London and brief sojourn in Ireland, she sailed for New York City. As the first queen of any nation to visit the United States, she was welcomed with great fanfare that included a thirteen-gun salute when her ship docked on August 6. Warmly praised by the New York press, Queen Emma generated similar excitement when she traveled to Washington, D.C., where President Andrew Johnson feted her at a grand White House reception.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94)
Modern albumen silver print from 1866 wet collodion negative
Lavina Warren Stratton 1841–1919
Born Middleborough, Plymouth, Massachusetts
One of the most famous women of the Civil War era stood just thirty-two inches tall. Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump was a person with dwarfism who began her professional life at sixteen as a schoolteacher. She later embarked on a career as an entertainer when a cousin invited her to perform on his Mississippi showboat. In 1862, famed impresario P. T. Barnum recruited the “Lilliputian Queen”—now known as Lavinia Warren—to appear at his American Museum in New York City. There, she met Charles Stratton, a little person and Barnum protégé, who enjoyed international celebrity as “Tom Thumb.” When the pair announced their plans to wed, Barnum publicized the engagement and reaped as much as $3,000 per day in admission fees from those who flocked to see the couple. Their lavish “Fairy Wedding” in New York City’s Grace Church on February 10, 1863, provided a much-needed diversion for a war-weary nation.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94)
Modern albumen silver print from 1863 wet collodion negative
Anna Elizabeth Dickinson 1842–1932
Born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Acclaimed as “The Girl Orator” by radical reformer William Lloyd Garrison, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was still in her teens when she launched her publicspeaking career. An ardent abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, she first found receptive audiences in Philadelphia, where she spoke before the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society (1860) and later delivered an address titled “The Rights and Wrongs of Women” (1861). On the lecture circuit, Dickinson built a following among listeners captivated by her intensity, youth, and dedication to reform. She campaigned effectively for Republican candidates, and in 1863, she joined Frederick Douglass in promoting African American enlistment in the Union Army. On January 16, 1864, at the invitation of Congressional Republicans, Dickinson became the first woman to speak before the U.S. House of Representatives. In her address, she lauded the contributions of African Americans to the war effort and endorsed the reelection of President Lincoln.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94)
Modern albumen silver print from 1863 wet collodion negative
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND YOUR ANSWER TO:
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
IF MESSAGE REJECTS SEND TO:
JBIRD134@AOL.COM
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
BROWN CHAPEL. SELMA, ALABAMA
RESPONSES WILL BE PUBLISHED LATER THIS WEEK
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM
RIHS (C) FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com