Manhattan’s 57th Street, the world’s “most expensive” street, was laid out and opened in 1857 as the city of New York expanded northward.With the Hudson and East Rivers on either end, the area was until then largely uninhabited and clustered with small factories and workshops. As late as the 1860s, the area east of Central Park was a shantytown with up to 5,000 squatters.Half a century later it was Manhattan’s cultural heart and an intercontinental meeting place of artists, collectors and dealers.
57th StreetIn 1823, society doyenne Mary Mason Jones inherited the wasteland of what is today Fifth Avenue & 57th Street from her father, the President of Chemical Bank. In 1868 she commissioned architect Robert Mook to build her a spectacular mansion in the mode of a French chateau along with a row of similar marble dwellings (the project was completed in 1871). The block of five between 57th & 58th Street was treated as a single unit. After Jones moved into her corner mansion, she rented the remaining four to others in her social circle.Her initiative had an immediate impact. In the mid-1870s, wealthy New Yorkers began to put up “choice” family residences in a mixture of styles, from brownstone mansions to French chateaux and Gothic palaces. These grandiose erections were interspersed with structures dedicated to the arts.During the 1890s and early-twentieth century an artistic hub developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue to Broadway. Predating the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891, the thirty-eight Osborne Apartments at 205 West 57th Street were built to provide soundproof residences for musicians. During the mid-1920s, the piano showrooms of Chickering Hall and Steinway Hall were developed there. The composer Bela Bartok spent the last year of his life at 309 West 57th.On the south side of the street studio apartments were constructed that offered artists the advantage of light from the north, including the Rembrandt Studios at 152, Sherwood Studios at 58 (both demolished), and Rodin Studios at 200 West 57th Street. Childe Hassam worked in a double-height studio at 130 West 57th. The same street also served as headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Art Students League, and the Architectural League of New York.
Durand-Ruel Gallery
In 1839 Jean-Marie-Fortuné Durand and Marie-Ferdinande Ruel set up an art shop at 1 Rue de la Paix in Paris, naming it the Galerie Durand-Ruel. In 1865, their son Paul Durand took over the family business and moved the gallery to 16 Rue Lafitte with an additional branch at 111 Rue Le Peletier.During the 1860s and early 1870s he represented the landscape painters of the Barbizon School. He then became intrigued by a group of young Impressionist painters who, at the time, were lambasted by the critics and ridiculed in the press. When he filled three rooms of his Le Pelletier gallery with paintings for the second impressionist show in 1876, French critics were viciously hostile.Durand’s dealings with American collectors began during the 1860s, but were initially kept to short-term ventures such as exhibitions in Boston and Philadelphia. Struggling to make a living in Paris, he packed up some three hundred works in forty-three crates and sailed to America. In April 1886, the American Art Association (AAA) used its premises at 6 East 23rd Street to present a major exhibition of French Impressionism. The show consisted of 289 paintings that were assembled from Durand-Ruel’s stock.The favorable reception of the exhibition motivated him to open permanent quarters at Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street. It proved to be the cornerstone to his phenomenal success. Durand’s name became interlocked with the migratory history of Impression. He turned Manhattan into an Impressionist haven.Durand-Ruel & Sons was the official name of his venture which by 1893 included the participation of his sons Joseph, Charles and Georges. Having moved the firm’s location to 12 East 57th Street in 1912, the pioneering gallery supported a new breed of American art lovers in their foundation of some important private collections which, in turn, would form the basis of major museum holdings.Motivated by the success of Durand-Ruel, other galleries soon followed suit and relocated to “arty” 57th Street. It was just a matter time before additional exhibition spaces and auction houses opened up in the immediate vicinity. One of the newcomers was a young man named F. Valentine Dudensing.
Valentine & Foujita
Foujita exhibition the Valentine Dudensing GalleryIn 1926 the Dudensing name was well known in New York. Born in 1892, Valentine was the third generation of his family to be engaged in the art business. His grandfather Richard had emigrated from Germany in 1853 and worked as an engraver and printer.
In 1904 his father Frank opened the Dudensing Galleries at 45 West 44th Street, specializing in Barbizon School paintings and the work of young American artists. Valentine joined him after graduation in 1913. It was, from a dealer’s point of view, an exciting time. In the wake of the Armory Show there was a sudden interest in and enthusiasm for modern (European) art.
During a trip to Paris in the early 1920s, Dudensing became acquainted with Pierre Matisse, the painter’s younger son. Together, they conceived the project of a gallery managed by Dudensing in New York, while Matisse organized and curated art from Paris.
The F. Valentine Dudensing Gallery opened on February 8th, 1926, at 43 East 57th Street with an exhibition of work by the Franco-Japanese painter Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita. It was the artist’s first American showing. While his work was acclaimed in Parisian circles (he was hailed as the “Japanese Ingres”), his work was virtually unknown in New York.The artist’s obsession with the female nude was highlighted with Déese de la neige (1924), a painting over six feet in length. Dudensing sold the painting of this lady with “porcelain” skin to Carl Weeks, a collector from Des Moines, Iowa, and owner of the highly profitable Armand cosmetics company who, at the time, was in the process of building Salisbury House, a grand manor that he planned to fill with his extensive art collection (the painting was donated to the Fogg Art Museum in 1974 by the owner’s son).The New York gallery was instantly hailed as an important venue for contemporary art. The show’s success was in part due to the gallery’s ground-breaking décor of pale grey walls, bare floors and abundant natural light from south-facing windows. Valentine created a Continental model that would followed by other Manhattan galleries. In 1927 he changed its name to the Valentine Gallery to distinguish it from his father’s art firm.
Valentine & Picasso
The Dudensing-Matisse partnership was hugely successful and lasted until 1931 when Matisse decided to open his own gallery in the Fuller Building on 57th Street where, for about six decades and some three hundred exhibitions, he introduced to New York some of the latest European art. He also promoted the careers of emerging American talent.Valentine’s program alternated between shows of contemporary French art, arranged with Matisse’s help as an agent and shows of American artists organized by Dudensing. The gallery presented the first American solo exhibitions of many (now household) names, including Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and others. In addition Dudensing arranged retrospectives of the work of Henri Matisse, Chaïm Soutine and Maurice Utrillo.Valentine and his wife Margaret [Bibi] van der Gros, an American artist who had studied in Paris, befriended Picasso during the late 1920s. In a letter of November 1928 he complained to Matisse that he had been unable to find buyers for Pablo’s work, but his fortunes would change rapidly. In early December that same year he sold a 1906 gouache Woman with Kerchief to the prominent New York attorney and collector T. Catesby Jones. The latter was one of a small group of Picasso collectors in the city who had purchased work from other sources, either in Paris or elsewhere.This sale seemed to have been the catalyst Valentine needed to begin handling and promoting the artist’s work. According to its sales records, the gallery sold six Picassos in 1929 and seven in 1930. This sudden interest motivated Dudensing to present the first Picasso exhibition at the Valentine, by then located at 69 East 57th Street.Making initial arrangements for the show, Matisse visited Picasso in April 1930 and reported that the artist was very keen on the project and promised to lend pictures. Abstractions by Picasso opened in early January 1931 with works dating from 1914 to 1930 and became one of the gallery’s most notable exhibitions. It gained Dudensing the reputation as a leading dealer and connoisseur of Picasso’s work.Just days after Abstractions show closed, he was alerted to the fact that Pablo’s masterpiece Family of Saltimbanque (1905) was offered for sale. The painting had been owned since 1915 by Hertha Koenig, a private collector in Munich, who had pledged it as collateral for a bank loan on which she defaulted. Dudensing immediately alerted Chester Dale and negotiated a deal on his behalf. The painting was shipped to America and put on view at New York’s Museum of French Art. Today it is part of the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Spanish Refugees
Throughout the 1930s Dudensing sold more works by Picasso than any other European artist and he did much to promote and establish the painter’s reputation in America. He included Picasso’s paintings and drawings in numerous group exhibitions over the years and mounted seven solo shows between 1931 and 1939.
Early in the Spanish Civil War, the country’s Republican government commissioned Picasso to paint a mural for the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. Living and working in the capital, Picasso read in horror of the April 1937 German carpet bombing of Guernica, a Basque town that had sided with the Republicans against Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces. The latter had authorized the attack as a means of intimidating his opponents in the region. More than a thousand residents were killed.
In 1939, Picasso placed the painting in the care of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and decreed that it would not return from exile until democracy was restored in Spain. In May that year the American Artists’ Congress, chaired by the industrialist and gallery owner Sidney Janis, helped organize an American tour of Guernica along with a set of related drawings in order to raise funds for refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War.
Although MoMA’s new Goodwin/Stone Building at 11 West 53rd Street had opened that same month with enormous publicity, Picasso did not want the painting to be shown there fearing that the commotion would deflect attention from the serious purpose of the occasion. Janis selected the Valentine Gallery as the painting’s venue not only because its main room could accommodate the large painting, but also in recognition of Dudensing’s personal relationship with the artist.
The gala opening on May 4, 1939, was attended by nearly one hundred guests, including the former premier of the Spanish Republic, Juan Negrín, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; and many other dignitaries. Two thousand visitors paid the admission fee to see Guernica during the show’s four-week run in New York. It left Willem de Kooning in awe; Jackson Pollock visited the gallery on various occasions to closely study the painting; for Lee Krasner it was a deeply emotional experience.
The painting was put on display in the Stendhal Gallery Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Chicago Arts Club, before returning to New York for a Picasso retrospective at MoMA. By then war had begun in Europe and dealers were feeling its effects. New York’s art world was changing. An influx of dealers fleeing the Nazis stiffened competition in the modern art market. One recent arrival from Berlin was Curt Valentin who opened the Buchholz Gallery at 32 East 57th Street in 1938 (in 1951 renamed as the Curt Valentin Gallery). Although Jewish, the latter had gained permission from the Nazi authorities to sell German art in America to help fund Hitler’s war efforts. The similarity between names caused confusion (which continues to this today).
In the spring of 1947, without a murmur to the press, the doors to the Valentine Gallery were left shut as the owner and his wife had quietly moved to France. Once Manhattan’s most influential dealer had departed, his name was soon forgotten. The man who had made Pablo Picasso a widely admired painter throughout the United States, lived his final years in obscurity tending to his cattle and vineyards.
Spain’s transition to democracy led to the approval of the 1978 Constitution. In 1981, eight years after Picasso’s death and an exile of forty-two years, Guernica arrived in Madrid for the very first time.
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
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: Mary Mason Jones’ marble mansion in 1917/8 (demolished in 1929); portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, c. 1910 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (The National Gallery, London); Foujita exhibition the Valentine Dudensing Gallery, East 57th Street, February 1926; Tsuguharu Foujita, Deésse de la neige, 1924 (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA); Picasso exhibition at the Valentine Gallery, November 1937; and Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso (Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid).
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Grandma Moses painted many winter scenes of farm life in which adults and children happily do their chores and play in the snow. She painted only cheerful images that were based on her memories of growing up on a farm and of being a farmwife herself. In this painting the people talking and laughing together evoke a nostalgic ideal of community life, which the artist emphasized through small stylized buildings and bright colors. The buildings and looping fences create a two-dimensional pattern on the pure white snow that underscores the picturesque, storybook scene.
Edward B. Webster, The Nativity, 1956, oil on canvas mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1971.91
The Nativity is one of twenty-two paintings depicting the life of Christ done by Edward Webster over a span of twenty years (Hall, “Postman to Painter,” Sepia, Dec. 1971). The infant is the focal point of the scene, as the light from the star spotlights him through the wooden roof. The three Magi, freshly arrived from the East, leave their camels and rush toward the stable to share in this moment. The animals bow their heads and focus on the child as if they, too, recognize the solemnity of the event. The painting’s composition mimics that of a stage performance: the artist left a space between Joseph and the Magi for the viewer to participate in the scene; our view of the stable’s interior and the goings-on outside are completely unobstructed. The expressive figures and dramatic lighting enhance this theatrical effect.
Edward Penfield, Harper’s Christmas, ca.1898, color lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1974.6
Harry Cimino, Christmas Card, n.d., woodcut, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Charlotte Manzari, 1969.31.32
Werner Drewes, The Christmas Letter, 1962, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.16
Juan González, The Nativity, 1662, oil on wood inlaid with mother of pearl, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.48
Ernest W. Watson, Christmas Morning, 1947, color linoleum cut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1970.193
Abraham Rattner, Window Cleaner, watercolor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Abraham Rattner, 1981.153.24
The Hanukkah Menorah has eight branches of equal height and a ninth, taller branch for the shamash, or “servant light,” used to light the others. The Hanukkah holiday commemorates the rededication of the Hebrew Temple of Jerusalem after it was destroyed by the Syrians in 165 BC. Abrasha’s menorah conforms to Jewish law by burning wicks in olive oil instead of candles. Hinges allow the piece to be arranged in different ways, and the gold, silver, and stainless steel provide a play of different colors under the light of the wicks.
“My work now is contemporary, geometric, and simple in style and feeling … I usually combine two or three different materials to create tension between them and their colors in my designs.” Artist quoted in American Craft Museum Catalogue, 1992
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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
In the fourth quarterly issue of Volume VIII, the fascinating history and recent lecture by Jeffrey S. Urbin discusses Appalachia’sPack Horse Librarians.
FollowingThe Origins of Modern Santa — A New York Inventiondiscusses the nuances of the figure St. Nicholas through the past to the present.
In the final piece, Island Icons: Part VII — World War I discusses the affects and aftermath of the First War on New York City.
Don’t forget to check out our updated event calendar on the last page of Blackwell’s Almanac!
An early postcard shows horse drawn vehicles, omnibuses and motorcars passing the colorful Beaux Arts wonder. In 1906 when the Singer Sewing Machine Company announced its plans for a new headquarters building, engineering and technological advances had already changed the face of downtown Manhattan. Steel skeletons made higher buildings possible and passenger elevators made them feasible. But not everyone was excited about the prospect of skyscrapers. In 1902 A. J. Bloor warned in The Architects and Builders’ Magazine that “calamity is also in store for the public” and later that year wrote to the editor of the New-York Tribune saying “firemen are ‘afraid’ of the skyscraper. They have good reason to be.” Despite it all, the skyscraper was here to stay. The rush was on to build taller and costlier office buildings. On July 22, 1906 the New-York Daily Tribune wrote of the $75 million worth of new buildings going up in Downtown—including the soaring Singer Building. In an article titled “Vast Sums, Vast Piles” it singled out the planned structure. “The Singer Building is to be the one that the visitor to New York will go to see on his first day in town…[It] will be thirty-six stories high, but what will make it yet more remarkable is the fact that twenty-five of these stories will rise up like a tower, almost as high in itself as the Washington Monument, from a fundamental building of eleven stories in height….The architect, Ernest Flagg, says that there will be no exposed woodwork throughout the building. Its cost will be $1,500,000.” Flagg had designed the existing Singer Building at No. 561 Broadway. A proponent of providing adequate sunlight and ventilation, he worried about the shadowy “ravines” that could eventually result from sheer walls of masonry lining the narrow streets of the Financial District. His design for the new Singer Building would exemplify his push for towers narrower than the base, allowing sunlight to filter onto the streets.
The newspapers were quick to draw comparisons to existing buildings. “With the exception of the Eiffel Tower the Singer Building will be the loftiest structure in the world,” asserted The New York Times. “It will be nearly 60 feet higher than the Philadelphia City Hall, more than 200 feet higher than the Park Row Building or The Times Building and over 100 feet higher than any of the famous spires of Europe, with the exception of those of the Cologne Cathedral, which rise 512 feet above the ground.”
A sketch in 1908 showed the tower in relation to other landmarks like the Washington Monument — A History of the Construction of the Singer Building (copyright expired)
Construction would take two years to complete and New Yorkers followed the progress with riveted interest. By January 2, 1907, as the skeleton rose, plans had changed and an additional five floors were added to the height. “The tower of the Singer Building will have forty-one floors containing offices, and will be thirteen stories higher than any other structure now standing in the city,” said the New-York Tribune. Flagg’s Beaux Arts design—sometimes tagged “Second Empire Baroque”—was lavished with ornamentation. At every seventh story, on all four sides of the tower, were cast iron balconies supported by ornamental wrought iron brackets. The window openings were graced with ornamental iron railings with French scrolled designs. The architect used dark red face brick, combined with 1,500 cubic feet of North River bluestone for the base courses, windowsills, entrance steps, and other trim; as well as 4,280,000 pounds of limestone. Terra cotta details went so far as to include three entire balconies of the material on each of the four facades fabricated by The New Jersey Terra Cotta Co.
Even before construction was completed the Singer Building was an attention-getter. On August 29, 1907 Prince Wilhelm of Sweden was taken to the 29th floor. The prince stayed for half an hour taking in the panorama. “It is simply magnificent,” he told reporters. “Beyond all doubt it is the grandest sight I have ever beheld in my life.” The prince was especially interested in visiting the rising skyscraper because most of the ironworkers were Swedish-born. “He was told by the Engineer that, probably on account of their early training on ship masts and other high places, Swedes were found to be the safest men on the ‘tail jobs’ of any of the nationalities which work at them.” Less than two months later crowds on the sidewalk below gazed in amazement as not a Swede, but an Italian, was raised 612 feet from the pavement to install the ball on the top of the flagpole. “The highest point above the sidewalk ever attained by a man outside of a balloon in New York was reached yesterday by Ernest Capelle, steeplejack, who placed the golden ball on the top of the flagpole that surmounts the Singer Building in lower Broadway,” reported the New-York Tribune on October 11, 1907.
A miniscule Ernest Capelle can be seen at the top of the flagpole on October 10, 1907 — New-York Tribune October 11, 1907 (copyright expired) Prior to going up the flagpole Capelle dismissed questions of fear. “Afraid! Why, it’s no better—or worse—to fall off a little country church steeple than it is to fall off this pole.” Having affixed the ball onto the flagpole, Capelle then had to gold leaf it. “With the ball once in place, the crowd saw him puttering about the top as he lay back in the rope sling that held him. He was putting the gold leaf on the ball, but this was not evident until he had finished and slipped down a few feet.” Inside the building, Flagg lavished the public spaces with costly materials. According to the building’s chief engineer Otto Francis Semsch “Nowhere…in recent work has greater advantage been taken of the possibilities of the enrichment of marble by the use of decorative bronze than in the Singer Building.”
Bronze railings and medalions compliment the several different types of marble. At the end of the hall is the bronze-cased Master Clock that regulated all the “secondary clocks” throughout the building.– A History of the Construction of the Singer Building (copyright expired)
The entrance “doorway” was a 24-foot high bronze grille. Inside, the marble columns and walls were embellished with more than 3,600 lineal feet of cast bronze molding plus 80 bronze medallions bearing the trademark of the Singer Manufacturing Company. The elevator doors, stair railings, interior balconies, office doors and the master-clock on the main stairs in the lobby were all of bronze. Thirty-eight tons of ornamental bronze were used. The executive offices of the Singer company covered the entire 34th floor. Here were Oriental rugs, custom-designed Empire-inspired mahogany furniture and carved woodwork. Semsch commented “Such furniture appeals to the discriminating man and creates the right impression upon all who see it.”
The Directors’ Room upon opening in 1908 — A History of the Construction of the Singer Building (copyright expired)
The building was completed in 1908 and the newspapers scrambled to print lists of staggering figures couched in hyperbole. “It contains 136 miles of various kinds of metal piping,” reported The Sun on June 28. “The telephones, elevators electric lights, fans and clocks require 3,425 miles of wire, which if stretched out would extend from the top of the Singer Building to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, with 300 miles left over. “The steel used in the construction of the Singer Building if made into ¾ uinch wire cable, would reach from New York to Buenos Ayres, a distance of 7,100 miles. The total length of the steel bearing columns in the building is about ten miles.
The lobby ceiling was a masterpiece of plasterwork. The “skylights” in the domes were electrically lighted. A History of the Construction of the Singer Building (copyright expired) “The terra cotta floor blocks in the building, if spread out on a plane, would cover 8.96 acres. Placed end to end they would extend 97 miles, or further than New York to Philadelphia.” And so on. For eighteen months it would proudly hold the title as tallest building in the world. The observation tower opened on the 42nd Floor on July 1 of that year. Never before had New Yorkers seen the city from so lofty a perch. The Evening World remarked “It gives a sightseeing radius of thirty miles in all directions and being the highest observation tower in the world, it affords a vew never before possible except from an airship.” The Safe Deposit Company of New York took about 10,000 square feet in the basement of the new building, signing a 20 year lease. The term “basement,” however, was misleading. Ornate columns and arched vaults upheld a series of domes in the cathedral-like space. Semsch said that the specially-designed and constructed level “offers its patrons the most secure, elaborate and convenient means for the safe keeping of valuables.”
The Singer Building was the first in New York to be dramatically lit at night. This postcard’s boast “Highest building in the world” would last only 18 months.
Meanwhile, upstairs, tenants enjoyed ultra-modern conveniences. There was a central, building-wide vacuum system, a refrigerating plant for the cooling of the drinking water (which was filtered), and an amazing electric clock system. “Secondary clocks” were installed throughout the building and were actuated by the master clock in the lobby. The master clock was wound daily by an electric motor that was powered by the electric plant in the building. “The magneto apparatus is released every half minute, thus generating a positive and strong current, and operating the secondary clocks throughout the building,” explained Otto Semsch in his “A History of the Singer Building Construction.” Not everyone loved the building. The New York Globe scoffed “For anyone but an eagle, the occupancy of a perch over 600 feet up is a matter of sentiment rather than reason, and until there is a balloon fire-rescue service established, there ought to be some limit to our real estate owners’ appropriation of the skies.” The newspaper called it an “architectural giraffe.” Unfortunately, extremely tall buildings not only offered a stunning view, they offered a convenient means of suicide. Albert Goldman, an agent for the Mutual Life Insurance Company, was one of the early victims. On August 10, 1916 Police Headquarters received a letter from Goldman. “The writer said he had decided to end his life by jumping from some high building down town, and begged the Police Commissioner to forgive any annoyance he might cause by his act,” reported The New York Times a day later. With scores of “high buildings” as possible choices, orders were sent from headquarters to post guards at all skyscrapers in the Financial District. A few minutes before a policeman arrived at the Singer Building, Goldman flung himself from the observation platform. The Times was a bit lurid in its details. “Lower Broadway and the cross streets were thronged at the time, and thousands saw Goldman’s body in the last hundred feet or so of its drop and heard it strike the pavement, their attention having been drawn by the shrieks of persons who had happened to be looking at the tower when the man made his leap into space. The body struck the mansard roof at the thirteenth story, bounded over the eave and almost across Broadway to the sidewalk in front of the windows of McCue Brothers & Drummond, opposite the entrance to the Singer Building.” It was the first suicide from the Singer Building and it unnerved the Superintendent, A. J. Bleecker who ordered the tower closed to visitors for several days. “This is the first occurrence of its kind we have had here,” he told reporters, “and as all such deeds are known to prompt others to similar acts, we have decided not to risk a repetition through morbid suggestion.” It was not the observation platform that served as the jumping point for Austin Adams, Jr. The 59-year old wheelbarrow manufacturer visited his attorney at the offices of Douglass Moore and Grover C. Snifflin regarding business matters on October 15, 1930. The firm had its offices on the 24th floor. When Adams arrived, Moore was out of the office so, according to The New York Times, he “put aside his coat, hat and umbrella and began reading a magazine to wait for his lawyer.” When Sniffin, who was sitting at a desk in the same room, walked out for a few moments, he returned to find Adams missing. The man had thrown himself out of the office window, falling to his death on the 14th floor setback. “The police said that Adams was apparently depressed over business difficulties.” Despite the newspaper-selling tragedies, the glorious Singer Building drew little undue attention. For decades it served as one of New York’s foremost tourist attractions and indisputably one of the handsomest structures in the city. Then on November 16, 1961 the Singer Manufacturing Company announced that after more than half a century in its iconic headquarters, it had leased six floors at 30 Rockefeller Center. The Singer Building was put on the market. Two years later United States Steel assumed control of the property. The firm bought up surrounding structures and on August 22, 1967 The New York Times said “The first signs of demolition activity are marking the beginning of the end for a historic office building in downtown Manhattan.” In its place United States Steel planted a 50-story tower. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission had been established in 1965. But it was still testing the legal and preservationist waters. In September 1965 it had designated the Jerome Mansion on Madison Square a landmark, deeming it “priceless.” Now, the same year that the Singer Building was schedule for demolition, the Jerome Mansion was bulldozed to the ground. Alan Burnham, executive director of the Landmarks Preservation Commission praised the Singer Building. “The building held the seeds of modernity,” he said. But he excused the Commission in its resistance to landmark the structure. “If the building were made a landmark, we would have to find a buyer for it or the city would have to acquire it. The city is not that wealthy and the commission doesn’t have a big enough staff to be a real-estate broker for a skyscraper.” So as the head of the LPC spoke like a businessman rather than a preservationist, demolition continued. On March 27, 1968 it was well under way. “Yesterday the lobby looked as if a bomb had hit it,” remarked The New York Times. “The Italian-marble surfacing and the bronze medallions with the Singer monogram were stripped from many columns and were being offered for sale. “Holes pocked the elaborately sculptured pendentives that support the series of domes forming the ceiling. Plaster flaked onto a floor strewn with wood, shattered brick and discarded coffee cups.” Since the last brick was removed from the site, the Singer Building remains the tallest building in the world to be purposefully demolished. On the site rose the 54-story U.S. Steel Building, later renamed One Liberty Plaza.
LIBERTY BELL, PHILADEPHIA ALEXIS VILLAFANE, GLORIA HERMAN, NINA LUBLIN, JINNY EWALD, ARON EISENPREISS, HARA REISER, LAURA HUSSEY, & ED LITCHER ALL RANG IN EARLY!
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
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
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Coenties Slip, Jeanette Park. New York City, 1926.
1920’s New York Project.
Jeannette at Le Havre in 1878, prior to her departure for San Francisco in a trip that would see her round Cape Horn
Vietnam Veterans Plaza was Jeanette Park
The City of New York acquired the northern section of this plaza in 1686 and 1730 by virtue of the Dongan and Montgomerie Charters, which assigned all unused or excess properties to the City. At that time, the remainder of the property was in the East River and was known as Coenties Slip. When the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 laid out Manhattan’s grid, the island contained hundreds of piers, but as the City’s population grew, the waterfront was filled in to make more land.
Coenties Slip was filled in 1835. In 1884 the trapezoidal parcel created by filling in Coenties Slip was named Jeannette Park in honor of The Jeannette, the flagship of the ill-fated Arctic Expedition (1879-1881) sponsored by New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett, Jr., who named the ship after his sister.
In 1886, Horticulturist Samuel Parsons Jr., who served as Superintendent of Parks, designed Jeannette Park. More than 60 years later, Commissioner Robert Moses rebuilt the park with horseshoe pitches and tennis, paddleball, handball, and shuffleboard courts all arranged around a tear-shaped asphalt plaza with a flagpole.
Manhattan: East River waterfront, Jeanette Park, the Brooklyn Heights
waterfront, elevated railroad tracks, South Street, undated. N-YHS
View looking across at the “music shell”; Jeannette Park is surrounded by an iron fence; the park is surround by low buildings, and skyscrapers are in the back. 1935-1941 WPA
Dedication on dome to merchant seamen of World War I, man in door Date: December 11, 1924
In 1971 Paul Friedberg redesigned the enlarged, triangular property in brick, with an amphitheater fountain. The owners of the skyscraper at 55 Water Street maintain the site in exchange for receiving permission to build over what was once Coenties Slip. In the early 1980s Mayor Koch campaigned forcefully for a memorial to honor those who fought and died in Vietnam. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission raised $1 million from private donations to finance the memorial, as well as to provide counseling and employment services for Vietnam veterans. In 1982 a mayoral task force selected Jeannette Park as the future site for the memorial, and the property was renamed by a local law which Mayor Koch signed that year.
The winning design, by architects Peter Wormser, William Fellows, and writer/veteran Joseph Ferrandino, is a wall of translucent glass blocks, on which are engraved excerpts of letters, poems, and diary entries written by men and women of the armed forces, as well as news dispatches. A granite shelf runs along the base of the monument, onto which visitors from time to time have placed tokens of remembrance, such as baby shoes, military patches, pictures, plaques, and American flags
In 2001 Vietnam Veterans Plaza underwent a $7 million restoration that transformed the site, creating an attractive and dignified setting for this important memorial. A public/private coalition including the New Water Street Corporation, Vietnam Veterans of America, City of New York/Parks & Recreation, City Parks Foundation, the United War Veterans Council, and the Alliance for Downtown New York was formed to lead the plaza’s redesign and reconstruction. Mayor Giuliani, Borough President C. Virginia Fields, and the City Council provided $2.5 million of the total cost of the project.
The completely redesigned plaza features a new ceremonial entrance that provides access through the site from Water to South Street as well as new plantings and a new round, black granite fountain that forms a curtain of water. Visitors to the park are now guided through the site with a series of new features that educate and inform. An etched stainless-steel map that provides a geographical perspective of the war and details battle zones in South Vietnam greets visitors.
The “Walk of Honor,” a series of twelve polished granite pylons with the names of all 1,741 United States military personnel from New York who died as a result of their service in Vietnam, leads to the refurbished memorial, which was cleaned and repaired during the park’s renovation. Today the redesigned plaza and restored memorial serve as a timeless tribute to the Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
LAURA HUSSEY, ED LITCHER, ARON EISENPREISS, ANDY SPARBERG, ED LITCHER, HARA REISER, ALEXIS VILLAFANE 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)
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Most of the opulent mansions that lined the avenues of Murray Hill in the late 19th century have been demolished, and the spaciousness and quiet formality of what used to be an entirely residential neighborhood has largely disappeared.
But in the early decades of the Gilded Age, the east side blocks between Madison Square and 40th Street comprised the most elite enclave in the city. Mrs. Astor’s brownstone mansion commanded respect on 34th Street and Fifth Avenue; her brother-in-law lived in a similar house next door.
By the turn of the century, however, most of the Gilded Age rich decamped for Upper Fifth Avenue; Murray Hill was thought of as staid, even a little shabby as commercial enterprises crept in.
So it raised eyebrows when, in 1902, Joseph Raphael De Lamar—who made millions in gold mining and then millions more on Wall Street—chose the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 37th Street as the site for the breathtaking Beaux-Arts mansion he built for himself and his young daughter.
Joseph Raphael De Lamar, undated photo
De Lamar was rich, but he was an outsider when it came to Gilded Age society. Born in Amsterdam, he supposedly stowed away on a ship as a child and spent years as a sailor, visiting ports around the world, according to his 1918 obituary in the New York Times.
After settling in Martha’s Vineyard, the Captain, as he was called, moved out West. There, he made his mining fortune, tried politics in Idaho, and then set his sights on New York City.
The De Lamar Mansion in 1925
On Wall Street, he was known as “the man of mystery.” Wrote the Times: “His intimate friends said that he never talked much,” but was “uniformly successful in his transactions.”
De Lamar was socially ambitious as well. In the 1890s he wed Nellie Sands, the daughter of a prosperous New York druggist. Despite their wealth, “the Lamars never became a part of the inner circle of society,” wrote Wayne Craven in his book, Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society. After having a daughter, Alice, the family subsequently spent a few years in Paris. “Wealthy Americans who were shunned by society often tried their luck in European capitals,” stated Craven.
The marriage ended in divorce. After De Lamar returned to Manhattan with Alice, he hired Charles P. H. Gilbert, the architect behind some of the best-known Gilded Age mansions, to construct his as well. De Lamar gave Gilbert “a free hand so far as the dwelling itself [was] concerned,” wrote the New York Times in 1904, via Gilded Mansions.
De Lamar may have chosen the Madison Avenue and 37th Street site for a specific reason: to spite J. P. Morgan, who resided a block away and “had regularly rebuffed [Lamar] in business,” according to Leanne Italie in a recent Associated Press article.
The Parisian-style mansion, completed in 1905, didn’t reflect Gilbert’s usual French Gothic style. But physically and stylistically, it overshadowed Morgan’s dwelling—thanks in part to the rusticated stone, copper crests, recessed entrance, and roof. “The subtly asymmetrical house, with an entrance that is flanked by marble columns and crowned by a pair of putti, is surmounted by an exceptionally imposing mansard,” wrote The Guide to New York Landmarks.
That spectacular mansard was dubbed “the most formidable mansard roof in New York,” by the AIA Guide to New York City.
De Lamar added another impressive feature to his mansion: a sidewalk-level car elevator. “At the far right edge of the property, a large metal plate flush with the sidewalk is actually the roof of his automobile elevator, which goes down to the basement,” wrote Christopher Gray in the New York Times in 2008. (The outline of the metal plate is barely visible now under a new stairway.)
For the next 13 years, De Lamar and Alice lived in the eye-popping mansion; the 1910 census recorded the two living with nine servants, stated Gray. Society may not have accepted him, however, and Alice seemed to shy away from the display of wealth. Even so, when De Lamar died in 1918 at Roosevelt Hospital, he left part of his fortune of $29 million to his daughter, who was now 23 years old.
The mansion in 1975
“Alice De Lamar soon deserted her father’s house for a Park Avenue apartment, and went on to become a volunteer driver and mechanic for the Red Cross and an advocate of housing for working women,” wrote Gray. This “bachelor girl,” as 1920s and 1930s gossip columnists dubbed her, spent time in her homes in Palm Beach, Connecticut, and Paris. She was a quiet supporter of the arts until her death in 1983.
And the mansion? It was bought by the American Bible Society, and then became the headquarters of the National Democratic Club in the 1920s. in the 1970s, De Lamar’s Beaux-Arts gem was purchased by the Polish government, which made it the site of its Consulate General. The interiors are rumored to be as lovely as the facade. Keep an eye out for events that might be open to the public.
[Third image: ; fourth image: Wikipedia; fifth image: NYPL; ninth image: Images Wikimedia Commons in public domain
FROM ED LITCHER: Ringling Museum of Art Garden Having made his money in the circus, John Ringling and his wife Mable purchased 20 acres of land on the waterfront in Sarasota in 1911. They built a Venetian Gothic mansion, known as the Cà d’Zan (meaning “House of John”) and a Museum of Art to house their private collection. The Mable Ringling Rose Garden was completed in 1913. The estate is now run by Florida State University.
NOTES FROM READERSM. FRANK ALSO GUESSED THE TRYON AND PERISPHERE
JAY JACOBSON REPORTS: No idea about the photo, but the tattooed man depicted in the Barnum piece clearly is the model for some of the basketball players I have been watching this weekend!
REMINDER: SOMETIMES WE JUST CANNOT GET ALL THE NAMES OF THE PERSONS WHO GOT THE PICTURES RIGHT. OUR APOLOGIES!!
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EPHEMERAL NEW YORK WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2022 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
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Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert was a pioneer of the Modern Movement in Spain. After the Spanish Civil War, he fled the country for the United States, where he led a very successful professional and academic career. After his arrival in New York he co-founded the architectural firm called Town Planning Associates, and later went on to direct the Harvard Graduate School of Design Department of Architecture. In the United States, Sert applied the rationalist ideals born in the 1930s Spanish groups for the promotion of Modernist architecture and thought (GATCPAC and GATEPAC).
HARVARD
Holyoke Center, Josep Lluis Sert, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1965)
Source: Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University GSD . Photograph: Louis Reens
The Holyoke Center is the main administrative building of Harvard University. When it was built, it became the first high-rise and one of the first modern buildings on the university campus, marking a turning point in its architectural style.
Hand-drawn sketch of the plan of Peabody Terrace. Harvard University, SJA (Sert Jackson & Associates), Cambridge, Massachusetts (1964)
The Peabody Terrace buildings were intended as a residence for married students at Harvard University.The building consisted of three 23-story-high towers joined at their bases and overlooking the Charles River, and partakes of Sert’s experiments in collective housing.
ROOSEVELT ISLAND
In 1969, Roosevelt Island, an island close to Manhattan which until then had been used chiefly for hospital purposes, was turned into a residential district. Sert was the architect of a large part of the operation, and this gave him the opportunity to realize a large-scale housing project incorporating experimental solutions for dwellings, public spaces, communications, etc.
LEANING TOWER IN PISA ANDY SPARBERG, CLARA BELLA, SUMIT KAUR, HARA REISER, LAURA HUSSEY ALL GOT IT RIGHT
FROM ED LITCHER: The Tower of Pisa, also known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, is one of the most iconic buildings in Italy. As its name suggests, this tower is best known for its tilt, and is perhaps the most renowned leaning building in the world. This tilt, however, was unintentional, and was the result of poor planning on the part of its architects. The city’s physical geography is also partially to be blamed for the tower’s tilt, as several other buildings in Pisa are tilted as well. While historians generally agree that building on the Tower started in 1173, theycan’t agree on who actually designed it. Some evidence points to a local architect, Bonanno Pisano as the architect with construction overseen by master-craftsman, Diotisalvi.He had a habit of signing his work and as the Tower carries no signature, confirmation of this remains elusive.
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)
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DESIGNING AMERICA SPAIN’S IMPRINT IN THE U.S. JOSEP LLUIS SERT
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CHRISTIAN DIOR: DESIGNER OF DREAMS AT BROOKLYN MUSEUM
FROM UNTAPPED NEW YORK:
Today the new exhibition “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams.” opens at the Brooklyn Museum. “This is an exciting time,” Shelby White and Leon Levy Brooklyn Museum Director, Anne Pasternak says, “People wanted, and in fact, they needed inspiration. And really, what could be more inspiring than the designs of Christian Dior? Knowing New York needed some uplift, we will see that the team of Dior brought their very best with this extraordinary exhibition. In fact, New York owes Dior a very great debt.”
Each museum in New York is known to have its own personality — the upscale, larger-than-life presence of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the innovative classic style of The MoMA, the humbling and deeply enriching experience at the Museum of the City of New York. However, what makes each stand out from the other, and which one stands out the most from all the rest of these remarkable museums infamously known in New York City? The Brooklyn Museum has, indeed, its own unique personality. It introduces you to exhibitions of history rarely seen and brings light to art that surprises and moves the masses with not only the breathtaking candor of the structure of the museum itself but the dedication behind their installations to tap into another dimension.
Back in 1949, New York City exhibited the great Christian Dior for the first time in Two Centuries of French Fashion. It was a gift from France to New York of 49 displayed couture dolls to give thanks for America’s “service and participation during World War 2.” The Brooklyn Museum then became the first American museum to collect work from the house of Dior after collecting the great French couture doll. “Christian Dior is a breathtaking look at the history and legacy of one of the most important fashion houses in the world,” Anne Pasternak says. “I can truly say what the Dior team has done to transform this space has been one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve had at the museum. The team was 24/7 for weeks upon weeks working to transform this extraordinary space…I cannot say it enough Dior has been the most extraordinary partner.” Brooklyn Museum staff mentioned, “They would come in at 6 a.m. and be nonstop. They used their own equipment, everything.”
Curator of the exhibition, Florence Muller says, “This exhibition has had a number of iterations because it was first created in Paris in 2017 at the Museum of Decorative Arts. And then it went to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and then to the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai. Perhaps you can ask yourself what is so special at the exhibition here at the Brooklyn Museum? First, I might say that two-thirds of the dresses that you might see, and not only the dresses but also the documents, the film, the photographs, were not exhibited before. And there are some entire sections that are created entirely for the Brooklyn Museum.”
Each section feels like falling into not only a fashion designer’s world but an artist’s evolutionary journey. This first section is dedicated to the relationship between Christian Dior and New York. In 1947, Neiman Marcus invited Dior for his first trip to the United States to receive the prestigious Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion. When Dior arrived in New York, it was love at first sight. He fell in love with the architecture of the city, the beauty of the city, and the style of the American woman. It was then he decided in 1948 to open Christian Dior-New York boutique in the Hecksher Building (Crown Building) at 730 Fifth Avenue.
Another famous black and white photograph is Dovima with elephants in a Y line, velvet sheath dress by Dior with an obi-style white satin sash taken by Richard Avedon. It sits in a glass enclosing as onlookers may pass by in awe. The name of the dress is titled Soiree De Paris and is a classic example of haute couture.
Y line dress worn by Dovima.Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum.
After Dior’s untimely death in 1957, his legacy in the house of fashion lived on. The House of Dior continued by “six highly talented artistic directors: Yves Saint Laurent (who had been personally chosen for his succession by Dior), Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferre, John Galliano, Raf Simons, and today’s leading lady, Maria Grazia Chiuri. They managed to re-enter the archives to create transformative designs that evolved the fashion house into what it is today. Their beautiful garments and masterpieces of haute couture are featured throughout the exhibition.
Dior was fascinated by the 18th-century fashion in women’s portraits . Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum. Another notable area of the exhibition is the collection of 18th-century inspired clothing. Dior and his successors drew much inspiration for feminine clothing from 18th-century portraits of women. The extravagant dresses are some jeweled, puffed shoulders and trim, long elegant waistlines or trimmed waistlines with intricate velvet-designed stomachers and puffed petite skirts that still embody a woman’s shape gracefully. They are inspired by the Versailles‘ Hall of Mirrors and the simpler, beaded, floral lace dresses are inspired by the last dress Marie Antoinette wore at her estate in Petite Trianon. Along this section is a dedication to Dior’s fragrance, which made a woman’s outfit complete.
Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum..
Miss Dior was developed in 1947, as a homage to Dior’s sister, Catherine, and became his first fragrance. She was a French Resistance fighter and survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, recently fictionalized in the novel Sisters of the Resistance: A Novel of Catherine Dior’s Spy Network. This perfume introduction became the first time a fragrance made it into a fashion house. A diverse collection of Dior scents is beautifully displayed in petite glass bottles. One, in particular, is tucked under a mini parfum stone gazebo. Others are encased in glass vitrines, and you can find a storyline on how the perfumes were born.
Miss Dior fragrance was dedicated to Dior’s sister, Catherine The “Colorama” section of the exhibition shows palettes of colors the House of Dior uses in accessories, gloves, handbags, dresses, hats, jewelry, shoes, and drawings from its conception in 1947 until present-day, 2021. The color palette of Dior represents completely strong hues on the fringe of spectacle that also align with softer, luminous tones that were popular in the eighteenth century, which Dior loved.
The section talks in intrinsic detail of the white, blue, pink, red, and orange palette. Blue represented the French Riviera and Portofino. “Pink is the color of happiness and femininity,” said Dior, and red is “the color of life.” Orange and violet were made up of Asian and Middle Eastern decorative objects in Dior’s childhood home. As a lover of gardening and nature, he adored green. White meant purity, the Dior toiles, and the seamstress’ mannequins. His favorite color of all, however, was black. According to Dior, every woman should have “a little black dress.”
Orange was a common color seen in Dior’s childhood home.Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum..
Another magnificent section that seamlessly follows after “Colorama” is “The Ateliers.” It is based on the Dior studios, also known as, workrooms, which are “the cornerstone of the fashion house,” this is the fundamental home of the seamstresses who spend countless hours working on a single design. The ateliers create test garments, also known as toiles, based on drawings by the artistic director or the designer. These sketches are the lifeline of every starting collection. Inhabited in a brightly lit oversized white room, a collection spectrum of haute couture dresses on bust forms are presented, stacked over one another until they reach a mirrored ceiling, each representing the three-dimensional toiles.
Haute couture dresses stacked high to a mirrored ceiling makes a transcending experience First: the volume and the lines of the garments are established and if approved by the designer, embellishments and adornments are followed. The toile creates a pattern for the rest of the “runway prototype” and then fabrics are selected. Here in this section, truly shows how haute couture collections are created and strictly kept in privacy by the ateliers.
Perhaps the most elusive, extravagant, and breathtaking section of all is the “Superstition and The Enchanted Garden.” Inspired by Dior and his successors’ love for flowers, this ode to nature brings the line of fashion into another realm entirely. Dior’s belief in superstition began in childhood after a fortune teller’s prediction and he remained in touch with his clairvoyant, Madame Delahaye. Chiuri used her fascination with the divining arts to create the Constellation dress, decorated with zodiac signs. The dress is behind the short film, Le Chateau du Tarot, where Chiuri envisions a young woman on a journey to discover her true self while discovering meaningful symbols along the way. Each of those symbols is represented by a dress displayed in the center of the room, which is synonymous with a specific tarot card.
The final section of the exhibition belongs to the stars, which is like entering into a dotted, blue starry night. In addition, there is a glass display of clips featuring movie stars that worked with Dior, along with television screens playing old film excerpts while their dresses are displayed.. It’s as if strolling through the end of a glitzy night. At the end of the exhibition, the journey ends with a poignant portrait mosaic of the great designer composed of intricate small graphic photos of Marilyn Monroe’s face and a heartwarming quote by Dior that reads, “My dresses make a princess of every woman.” Ultimately, after experiencing this spectacular exhibition, one can most definitely say, yes, yes, they do.
THE EXHIBITION CLOSES FEB.22 AND FEW TICKETS ARE STILL AVAILABLE.
TAVERN ON THE GREEN RESTAURANT CLARA BELLA, ARLENE BESSENOFF, ED LITCHER, JAY JACOBSON, LAURA HAUSER, NINA LUBLIN ALL HAVE ANSWERED CORRECTLY TODAY.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
BROOKLYN MUSEUM
New York City collection by Dior.Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum. There are never-before-seen sections from Dior dedicated only to the Brooklyn Museum. Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum. Marilyn Monroe’s The Last Sitting byBert Stern Y line dress worn by Dovima.Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum.FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
From my Rivercross balcony, I can see half a dozen floatplanes (airplanes with pontoons) fly by in a few minutes, presumably hauling well-heeled Wall Streeters Out East on Fridays and back on Mondays. I’ve flown on floatplanes myself, between Vancouver and Victoria when I worked in British Columbia, and even once between Philadelphia and New York City. Landing on water was always an adventure.
Watching these planes made me think about the great flying boats of the pre-WWII era. (A flying boat is an airplane with a boat-like body that lands directly on water.) Some of the most glamorous were based here in New York, at the brilliant art deco Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia airport.
Why flying boats? Easy. As airplanes became larger and heavier after WWI, and traveled longer distances, the grass landing strips that had sufficed in the early years of aviation were no longer good enough. And larger airports were space and infrastructure intensive, water was cheaper and didn’t require runway construction.
The big deal soon became international, over water flights. Not that many passengers were involved. Planes carried mail (governments subsidized new international routes), officials and travel elites – and there’s a story to be told here about the changing nature of elite travel to exotic spots, from long, elegant shipboard voyages to much faster airplanes. But in the 1930s, travel in these great flying boats was the peak of luxury.
After WWII, the golden age of flying boats came to an end. During the war, many large new airports were constructed, and governments had built huge land-based aircraft, faster, more reliable and with longer range than the flying boats. Soon, jets would make international travel faster still, more comfortable and more affordable. “Economy class” remade world travel once again.
Navy-Curtis 4, Wikipedia
A Little Context
Air travel expanded after WWI, from rebuilt war planes to purpose-built passenger planes. Washington used airmail contracts to subsidize airline development and passengers were secondary at first. Ford’s Trimotor (the Tin Goose) was one of the first all-metal planes, and the first designed to carry passengers rather than mail. In Europe, national airlines (Lufthansa, Imperial, Air France) drove innovation and sought to capture new routes.
But much of airplane development after WWI took place on the water. In 1919 – just 16 years after the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk – a Navy-Curtis 4, a huge flying boat, made the first staged aerial crossing of the Atlantic, though this involved several planes, multiple landings and repairs and took 19 days.
Throughout the 1920s, the attention of governments and airplane manufacturers focused on the Schneider Trophy. Jacques Schneider, a French industrialist, funded the race with the idea of encouraging seaplane development for commercial use. Speed rather than distance or comfort became the dominant factor, however, and the race became a military testing ground.
The Golden Age of Air Travel
But airlines saw a huge potential in flying boats for long haul travel and governments encouraged new, larger long-range models. The first of the new generation of flying boats were Italian – Italy had been a major contender in the Schneider races – and German. In the 1920s, Italian sea planes made spectacular voyages across the South Atlantic and even to the US. (Germany moved in a different direction, developing huge Zeppelins which provided another form of elegant international air travel.)
Italian sea planes were beautiful, but British and US airlines – Imperial and Pan Am – developed new over water passenger routes. By the 1930s, regular air transport between the US and Europe was possible, with new air travel routes opening up to South America, Africa, and Asia.
In June 1931, Pan American President Juan Trippe (Pan Am had been forged in 1927 from several small airlines operating in South America) began looking for a plane that could cross oceans. The result was a long relationship with Sikorsky and later Martin. Over the next decade, Pan Am helped design and then purchased successively larger, more luxurious and further ranging flying boats – the Sikorsky S-42 which established new routes in the Caribbean and Latin America; the Martin M-130 which was capable of flying the Pacific with a passengers and mail; and the Boeing B-314 which provided the perfect image of the Pan Am “Clipper”. (Trippe named all of his new flying boats “clippers” to link them with the American clipper ships of the mid-19th century, the queens of ocean traveling sailing ships.)
The first Boeing B-314 was delivered to Pan Am in January 1939 and christened the Yankee Clipper. The largest commercial plane until the arrival of the 747, it was a feat of aeronautical luxury, with seating for 74 passengers that converted into sleeping quarters for 36. The 314s had a lounge and dining area, and the galleys were crewed by chefs from four-star hotels and white-coated stewards served five and six-course meals with gleaming silver service. There were separate men’s and women’s dressing rooms and even a honeymoon suite.
B-314. Life Magazine, August 23, 1937
B-314 “Honeymoon Suite”
Boeing 314 Dining Room
This was travel for the super-rich, priced at $675 (equivalent to $12,000 in 2020) round trip from New York to Southampton. Most of the flights were transpacific, with a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Hong Kong via the “stepping-stone” islands posted at $760 (equivalent to $14,000 in 2020). The 314 Clippers brought exotic destinations within reach of air travelers and came to represent the romance of flight. Transatlantic flights to neutral Lisbon and Ireland continued after war broke out in Europe in September 1939 (and until 1945), but military passengers and cargoes necessarily got priority, and the service was more spartan.
Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia
Just six days after plans for the new New York airport were approved by President Roosevelt, Mayor LaGuardia presided over groundbreaking ceremonies and construction proceeded rapidly. At 558 acres and with nearly 4 miles of runways, the $40 million airport was the largest and most expensive in the world. New York Municipal Airport–LaGuardia Field opened on October 15, 1939. Terminal A, the airport’s international terminal, was built to handle seaplanes, namely Pan American Airways’ fleet of Clippers.
The Marine Air Terminal was designed by the firm Delano & Aldrich and constructed by the Works Progress Administration (this was the WPA’s largest project). The Terminal deserves an essay of its own, but here, we’ll just underline the great mural that circles the interior of the main building, called “light” by the American painter James Brooks (there’s a huge story here about how the mural was covered in the red scare era). The Terminal was dedicated in March 1940; the first flight from the Terminal by a Clipper departed on March 31, 1940, carrying a crew of 10, nine passengers and over 5,000 pounds of mail. It landed in Lisbon, Portugal 18 hours and 30 minutes later.
Accomplishments and ….
One of the Boeing 314’s most impressive accomplishments came on December 7, 1941. The Pacific Clipper had had just taken off from Honolulu when the Japanese launched their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Rather than returning to Hawaii and risk being shot down by a Japanese Zero, the Clipper was ordered to fly west to Auckland, New Zealand. Once safely in New Zealand, the aircraft was told to head west to New York, a 31,100-mile flight with stops in Surabaya (Indonesia), Karachi (Pakistan), Bahrain, Khartoum (Sudan), and Leopoldville in the Belgium Congo. On the morning of January 6th, 1942, the landed at LaGuardia Field’s Marine Air Terminal – the first commercial aircraft to successfully circle the globe.
The Clippers were a huge technological advance. But bear in mind that range meant little unless the crew, flying over unchartable ocean, knew where to go. Before long range over water flights could commence, Pan Am was deeply involved in creating new navigation technology, basically radio beacons, which allowed the plane to beam in on its target. All Clippers carried an onboard navigator-radio operator (radios were still large assemblies).
Another engineering innovation was the ability to “feather” an engine – to shut it down in flight. In case of a problem, the onboard engineer could crawl through a tunnel in the wing to work on an engine while in flight.
Finally, for one who has traveled extensively on planes below 10,000 feet, the idea of ploughing along at 5,000 feet at 188 miles an hour for 18 or 19 hours, through whatever weather, without cabin pressurization, seems to me pretty grim, no matter how luxurious the fixings.
But I’m still sorry I didn’t have the chance to fly on a Clipper.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
