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
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. 2021 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
If you’re familiar with John Sloan’s Lower Manhattan paintings and illustrations from the first half of the 20th century, then you’ve probably noticed a running theme among them: tenement rooftops.
“Rain Rooftops West Fourth Street,” 1913
Like other Ashcan and social realist artists of his era, Sloan was captivated by what he saw on these roofs—the people he surreptitiously watched; their mundane activities; their delight, despair, and sensuality; and the exquisite vantage points roofs offered of a city on the rise.
“Sunday Paper on the Roof,” 1918
“These wonderful roofs of New York City bring me all humanity,” Sloan said in 1919, about 15 years after he and his wife left his native Philadelphia and relocated first to Chelsea and then to Greenwich Village, according to the Hyde Collection, where an exhibit of Sloan’s roof paintings ran in 2019. “It is all the world.”
Roof Chats,” 1944-1950
“Work, play, love, sorrow, vanity, the schoolgirl, the old mother, the thief, the truant, the harlot,” Sloan stated, per an article in The Magazine Antiques. “I see them all down there without disguise.”
Pigeons,” 1910
His rooftop paintings and illustrations often depicted the city during summer, when New Yorkers went to their roofs to escape the stifling heat in tenement houses—socializing, taking pleasure in romance and love, and on the hottest days dragging up mattresses to sleep.
“I have always liked to watch the people in the summer, especially the way they live on the roofs,” the artist said, according to Reynolda House. “Coming to New York and finding a place to live where I could observe the backyards and rooftops behind our attic studio—it was a new and exciting experience.”
Red Kimono on the Roof,” 1912
Rooftops were something of a stage for Sloan. From his seat in his Greenwich Village studio on the 11th floor of a building at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street, Sloan could watch the theater of the city: a woman hanging her laundry, another reading the Sunday paper, a man training pigeons on top of a tenement and a rapt boy watching, dreaming.
Sloan described his 1912 painting, “Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair,” as “another of the human comedies which were regularly staged for my enjoyment by the humble roof-top players of Cornelia Street,” states the caption to this painting at the Addison Gallery of American Art.
“Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair,” 1912
Of course, roofs also meant freedom. In the crowded, crumbling pockets of Lower Manhattan filled with the poor and working class New Yorkers who captured Sloan’s imagination, roofs conveyed a sense of “escape from the suffocating confines of New York tenement living,” wrote the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Sunbathers on the Roof,” 1941
In the early 20th century, many progressive social reformers preferred to see these roof-dwelling New Yorkers in newly created parks and beaches, which were safer and less private.
But “Sloan embraced what he called ‘the roof life of the Metropolis’—as he did its street life—as a means to capture the human and aesthetic qualities of the urban everyday, a defining commitment of the Ashcan School,” wrote Nick Yablon in American Art in 2011.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY HELLGATE BRIDGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION ANDY SPARBERG, ARON EISENPREISS, JAY JACOBSON, EL LITCHER AND HARA REISER ALL 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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
Tags: John Sloan Chelsea, John Sloan Greenwich Village, John Sloan paintings NYC, John Sloan Pigeons, John Sloan Red Kimono on the Roof, John Sloan Roof Chats, John Sloan Sunday Women Drying Their Hair, tenement roofs Posted in art, Chelsea, Lower Manhattan, West Village |
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Abstract Landscapes and Scenic Depictions, Cubist Style.
Karl Knaths, Bach, 1953, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Katie and Walter C. Louchheim, 1970.328
Karl Knaths, 1930, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0020780
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)
Karl Knaths, who lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, from 1919 until his death in 1971, was one of the first Americans whose work found its way into Albert Gallatin’s Gallery of Living Art. By virtue of his residence away from New York, Knaths was never an active member of the American Abstract Artists. Nevertheless, his affiliation brought distinction to the group. Knaths was older than many of the group’s members, and exhibited in New York to generally positive reviews from about 1930 on (although he once remarked that except for Duncan Phillips’s annual purchase, he did not sell a single painting for twenty-three years).(1) Recognized as an important modernist, he had the valuable support of Duncan Phillips. Over the years Phillips bought many of Knath’s paintings and frequently invited him to lecture at the Phillips Collection in Washington. In October 1945, Knaths exhibited in a group show at the Paul Rosenberg Gallery. The following January, he had the first of twenty-two solo exhibitions—almost one each year—until his death twenty-five years later.
Originally from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in 1912 Knaths entered the school of the Art Institute of Chicago where he remained for five years. From there he went to New York, and later settled in Provincetown. In 1922, three years after his move to Cape Cod, he married Helen Weinrich, a pianist, whose sister Agnes was a Paris-trained abstract painter, and built the house that would be his home for the remainder of his life. During the winters, the Knaths and Weinrich usually spent a month in New York; but Europe, which attracted so many of Knaths, colleagues, failed to lure him from his beloved Provincetown.
Karl Knaths, Wisconsin, from the United States Series, ca. 1947, oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Container Corporation of America, 1984.124.161
Karl Knaths, Water Valley, 1959, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.23
Yet, in his lecture notes, and in a manuscript for an unpublished book entitled Ornament and Glory, Knaths, thorough understanding of modernist tenets as well as the principles of Renaissance and subsequent European art is apparent.(2) His papers contain typescripts of Hans Hofmann’s lectures and writings by Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky, and other important theorists of modernism. Yet of all the artists whose work he knew well, the strongest parallels to Knaths, work come with Céanne’s late paintings. Both artists blended an intuitional understanding of structure with motifs drawn from observed nature. For his subject matter, Knaths drew repeatedly from his Provincetown surroundings: deer in landscape settings, clamdiggers returning from work, fishing shacks, boats in the harbor, still lifes of duck decoys and fishing paraphernalia. But Knaths also found inspiration in American folklore and literature, and did paintings of Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, and Herman Melville’s Ahab.
Knaths was one of the most theoretically inclined painters of his generation. He agreed with Kandinsky that “there are definite, measurable correspondences between sound in music and color and space in painting: specifically, between musical intervals and color intervals and spatial proportions.”(3) Knaths worked out intricate charts for color and musical ratios,which he used to determine directional lines and proportions in his paintings. Like Hofmann, he believed that “whatever is to be realized by the painting should arise through the use of pictorial elements in a thematic way. The surface being the prime element, it is possible to manipulate full spaciousness within its flat terms “(4)
At some point, Knaths discovered Wilhelm Ostwald’s color system. Based on color and not on light, the Ostwald system was devised as a way of ordering color, and was quite popular among American artists of the time. Knaths not only used this system, he harnessed it to a complex set of mathematical and geometrical relations—akin to musical proportions—so that the theoretical foundations of his art were both complex and highly worked out.
In his paintings, whether sketchy, experimental works like the Untitled gouache, circa 1939–40, or in more highly ordered canvases, Knaths remained true to the artistic principles he began to develop early in his life.
Karl Knaths, Geranium at Night Window, 1932, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1981.182
Karl Knaths, The Gale at Force Hollow, 1946, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Otto L. Spaeth, 1977.83
Karl Knaths, Clam Diggers, 1959, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1986.6.49
Karl Knaths, Beach–1949, 1949, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Emil J. Arnold, 1967.56.23
JOAN OF ARC STATUE IN RIVERSIDE PARK ED LITCHER, GLORIA HERMAN, LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT!!!
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Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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Incredible, right? Called the Navarro Flats, this massive fortress of Gilded-Age extravagance was built on Central Park South at Seventh Avenue in the mid-1880s.
Twice the size of the Dakota, the Navarro Flats was also early example of apartment-style living. At the time, most New Yorkers of means still preferred living in a single brownstone or townhouse.
But “French Flats” were catching on, and the developer, Jose Francisco de Navarro, expected to make a mint selling luxury apartments to new-money New Yorkers.
He spared no expense. The seven-bedroom duplexes had as much as 7,000 square feet of floor space, including a drawing room, library, and billiards room (but only two bathrooms per apartment).
Each $20,000 duplex was part of one of eight townhouses within the complex, an arrangement thought to make the idea of apartment life more palatable, reports Nathan Silver’s Lost New York.
So why isn’t such a spectacular mishmash of Queen Anne and Gothic architecture there anymore?
Some apartments sold, but mostly, New Yorkers didn’t bite. In 1888, de Navarro was fending off lawsuits from mortgage holders, and the enormous complex met with foreclosure.
By the 1920s, it was gone–replaced by newer luxury residences the Hampshire House and Essex House.
Tags:Central Park Apartments 1880s, Central Park South, French Flats New York City, Gilded Age apartments, Incredible apartment buildings New York City, Navarro Central Park South, Navarro Flats, New York in the 1880s, New York’s luxury apartments, Old apartment buildings New York City Posted in central park, Cool building names, Midtown
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 FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYC
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Let’s talk about our neighbor across the river, Long Island City. But first, what is Long Island City? Today, LIC faces us, bordered by Astoria (at Steinway Street) to north and Newtown Creek to the south.
Some maps label part (or even all) of this region Hunters Point, and the huge development our fine ferry calls Long Island City is officially named Hunters Point Park.
So, clearly, we need a little historical context here. (This is a story largely about infrastructure, how infrastructure drove and hindered development.)
The Dutch government at New Amsterdam chartered townships in what became Long Island City, including Newtown, on Long Island’s western shore; Hallett’s Point, a squarish peninsula that sticks into the East River just across from Roosevelt Island’s north end (the new tall glassy apartments are “Hallett’s Point”); Hunters Point; and Dutch Kills. Hallett did well: His 2,200 acres included his original property and the lands of current Astoria and Steinway. Following the English capture of New Amsterdam, Hallett’s estate was confirmed in a patent dated April 8, 1668 and called the Hell Gate Neck tract. In November 1683, now under British rule, the Colonial Assembly organized Queens County as one of the twelve original counties of the Province of New York (named for Queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of King Charles II). Queens was later subdivided into the townships of Flushing, Hempstead, Jamaica, Oyster Bay and Newtown (which included all of what became Long Island City).
Between 1835 and 1841, streets in the townships along the coast were laid out and houses and stores erected. The first major roads were the Hallett’s Cove and Flushing Turnpike, today’s Astoria Boulevard, and the Ravenswood, Hallett’s Cove and Williamsburgh Turnpike and Bridge, today’s Vernon Avenue. Stephen Halsey, a settler in Hallett’s community involved in infrastructure construction, founded a new village in 1839 which he named Astoria in the hope of gaining the interest – and financial aid – of the wealthiest man in the country. By this time, ferries connected with Manhattan.
Soon, these coastal areas would become refuges for wealthy New Yorkers, particularly Astoria and Ravenswood. Country estates with names like Bodine Castle and Mount Bonaparte served as getaways for rich Manhattanites. The Jacob Blackwell family lived there early on, during the Revolution, in a large house at 37th Avenue overlooking the river. It is said that the family in the 1830s owned much of Hallett’s Point.
In 1852, the New York Times urged New Yorkers to take a day trip to the countryside: Queens was underrated, fancier than Broadway, a great place to explore, and worth the trip from Brooklyn. “There are charming residences and delightful lawns at Ravenswood and Astoria,” said the paper as it urged people to take long walks to Astoria. “It is lamentable that with such fine weather and pleasant country promenades at hand, our fair friends, especially of Brooklyn and Williamsburg, do not avail themselves of their privileges. They would find an agreeable change from the usual hackneyed routes…Throw off this deathly indolence that is benumbing your physical and spiritual faculties”
Century Currier and Ives print depicts mansions on the Long Island City waterfront. https://www.gothamcenter.org
Astoria developed as a port, and coal and lumber yards and shipyards grew up along the shore of Hallett’s Cove where products could move readily by barge. In 1854, rail arrived with the New York & Flushing Railroad’s new terminus in Hunters Point. Ferry service remained the only way for travelers to get to Manhattan.
LIC’s big chance came when Brooklyn banned steam locomotives in 1861 and the Long Island Railroad moved its terminus to Hunters Point, where it connected with the 34th Street ferry. LIRR purchased the New York & Flushing Railroad in 1867 and in a few years, would own or control most of the rail traffic in Long Island, centered now in LIC. Sunnyside Yards opened in 1910, the year that the Pennsylvania Railroad began running trains under the East River. Located just east of Queensboro Plaza, it would become the world’s largest rail yard (and a constant temptation to be decked over and developed).
The creation of the LIRR terminus led to an explosion of industry, commerce and entertainment sites. LIC became a hub for produce from Long Island’s farms headed to Manhattan. Factories, tanneries and gas plants sprang up along the waterfront. Hotels and taverns opened and the breweries and bars became destinations themselves, and soon the Times commented that “Hunters Point has gained an unenviable notoriety.” The Queens waterfront was no longer a quiet oasis for the rich. By the turn of the century, many of Astoria’s estates had been torn down as New York’s aristocrats moved to Long Island’s Gold Coast.
In the 1860s, development in Hunters Point and Astoria was the catalyst for the consolidation of neighboring communities into Long Island City. In 1870, Steinway, Astoria, Hunters Point, Newtown, Ravenswood, Blissville, and Dutch Kills, joined to form LIC. By this time, the area was an urban center with industry and a growing population. Even so, LIC remained short on paved roads and water. In 1871, a revised charter mandated a police force of 30 men, but the city lacked the revenue to hire them. No adequate fire department existed until 1893.
A 1929 plan for decking over Sunnyside Yards.
The one grand idea to transform Long Island City was to make Sunnyside a mega-project deck over the railyard. A modern, streamlined “Skyscraper Terminal” would consolidate access to the region’s twisted network of subway and rail lines, and serve as an anchor for growing neighborhood. The Great Depression paused these plans. And the deterioration of LIC continued.
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
When I arrived here 40-some years ago, I might have titled this essay “The Rise and Fall of LIC”. But look across the river now. “The Rise and Fall and Rise Again”! More to come. Thanks for reading. Stephen Blank RIHS October 1, 2021
HELLGATE BRIDGE STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION, 1916 ANDY SPARBERG, HARA REISER BOTH GOT IT RIGHT
ED LITCHER ADDED THE FOLLOWING: Hell Gate Bridge engineers, in front of the bridge they designed and built. At centre is the bridge’s designer, Austrian-US engineer Gustav Lindenthal (1850-1935, white beard). To his right is his chief assistant Othmar Hermann Ammann (1879-1965, moustache). This steel through-arch railroad bridge, built from 1912, was opened in September 1916.
It spans 310 meters, crossing Hell Gate, a tidal strait in New York’s East River. At the time, it was the world’s longest steel arch bridge. This view looks north, with the approach viaduct curving away to the right in the background. Photographed on 11 October 1916. Although this bridge is a beautiful structure and an important part of the Astoria landscape, when I think of this bridge I see it as the endpoint of an Inclined Plane that begins in the Sunny Side Yards, goes through Maspeth and ends up in Astoria. A “Simple Machine” whose only task is to slowly lift millions of tons of freight and passengers from the ground to a point more than 100 feet in the air, before the train safely accesses the bridge or crosses the river.
HELP US MOUNT THIS HISTORIC PLAQUE IN THE KIOSK
We have just acquired this wonderful plaque from the Elevator Storehouse Building. We need your help to pay for the mounting of this 130 pound bronze tablet in the kiosk
To donate online go to www.rihs.us, choose donations and select amount.
You can send us a check to: R.I.H.S., P.O. BOX 5, NY NY 10044
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19th PROGRAM AT THE RI NYPL BRANCH
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)
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)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
When you walk along New York City streets, you never know who is looking down at you. And on a busy corner at West 57th Street and Broadway, you’re getting the evil eye from two mysterious grotesques.
June 27, 2021
Back then, the building was the showroom for the Peerless Motor Car Company, a long-defunct carriage and car manufacturer that vacated the premises in the 1910s. This stretch of Broadway near Columbus Circle was known as Automobile Row, thanks to all the car showrooms that popped up there in the early 20th century.
After Peerless (above, in a 1909 ad) left, General Motors took it over. Eventually the building was renovated and converted to office use. The Hearst company bought it and based many of their consumer magazines here through the 2000s.
When it was important to have a presence in this car-showroom neighborhood, Peerless made sure they occupied prime real estate.
But they also designed the building to fit into the corner, which explains why it has the Gothic look of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, which held court on Broadway and 56th Street (above photo, likely from the 1940s)
But back to the grotesques. Spooky and sly, laughing or crying out, they’re either holding up the building or hiding under it with sinister intentions. Shrouded in what looks like robes and slip-on shoes, they’ve been with the building since the beginning…and are apparently here to stay.
[Third image: New-York Tribune, December 12, 1909; fourth image: NYPL Digital Collection]
COURTHOUSE SQUARE AND JACKSON AVENUE LONG ISLAND CITY None of our readers got this one. There is a great new Trader Joe’s a block away!!
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
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
