Village Preservation, short for Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, is a non-profit membership organization that documents, honors and preserves the architectural heritage and cultural history of several neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan. Village Preservation recently received a treasure trove of donated photos of SoHo and Cast Iron New York taken by Edward LaGrassa in 1969, before cast-iron architecture was widely appreciated and rediscovered. These photos also date back to a time when neighborhoods with the greatest concentration of such architecture were either being bulldozed or slated to be by Robert Moses.
The organization painstakingly identified each site and location (where possible) of the unlabeled photos, given to them in support of their fight against a proposed SoHo/NoHo Upzoning plan. They have examined the beautiful black and white photographs taken by a student doing an architectural survey at the time and have analyzed the competing and contradictory forces at play on this part of Lower Manhattan at the time.
287 Broadway. Photo by Edward LaGrassa courtesy Village Preservation
One of the many buildings included in LaGrassa’s collection is the Little Singer Building, at 561 Broadway, designed by Ernest Flagg, the same architect as the the Singer Building in Lower Manhattan which was once the world’s tallest building. It still stands today and its ornamented facade makes it a unique presence in Soho.
The E.V. Haughwout Building is a five-story commercial loft at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway. Built in 1857 with cast-iron facades, it originally housed Eder V. Haughwout’s fashionable emporium, which sold imported cut glass, silverware, handpainted china, and chandeliers. Mary Todd Lincoln actually had new official White House china painted here. The building was also the site of the world’s first successful passenger elevator.
At 101 Spring Street is the Judd Foundation Building, a five story cast-iron building located at the corner of Spring Street and Mercer Street. Constructed in 1870, it was the first building owned by Donald Judd, an American artist associated with the minimalist movement. The building also served as Judd’s studio, where he developed the belief that the placement of a work of art was as critical to its understanding as the work itself. Judd’s installations balance his respect for the historic nature of the landmark cast-iron building and his approach to architecture and design.
Gunther Building in Soho.Photo by Edward LaGrassa courtesy Village Preservation
The Gunther Building at 473 Broome Street was designed by Griffith Thomas in 1871, distinguished from its cast-iron neighbors by its bright white facade, Corinthian columns, and its curved glass corner. Gunther was a prominent 19th century furrier, with the building originally used as a warehouse for textiles and furs. Lenny Kravitz was once a resident of the building, which now serves as an artist co-op.
Bogardus Building getting prepared for demolition. Photo by Edward LaGrassa courtesy Village Preservation
The Bogardus Building was one of the most fascinating buildings in New York’s history, since the remains of it were mysteriously stolen and sold twice. The Bogardus Building/Edward Laing Stores stood at the intersection of Washington and Murray Streets in the Washington Market area. It was one of the first cast-iron buildings in the city, with prefabricated and interchangeable parts. The speed in which the building was constructed–just two months–was related directly with the technological advancements utilized and was certainly a key moment in the evolution of the skyscraper in the late 19th century. However, the Landmarks Preservation Commission recommended that the entire building, particularly the facade, be dismantled and “re-erected as an integral part of a new building,” later determined to be the Manhattan Borough Community College. The townhouses were moved in one piece, to a new location, but the Bogardus building was in such poor shape, it had to be taken down in parts, catalogued, and stored in a vacant lot, all which took place in 1971.
Manhattan Borough Community College would not begin construction until 1974, so the Bogardus building remained in pieces during the interim. Yet the building contractor noticed that people had actually stole some of these remaining pieces. The contractor told police that the perpetrators stole 20 to 30 panels, 2/3 of the facade, over the previous several weeks–22 broken pieces were subsequently found in a Bronx junkyard for $90 a truckload. The rest of the panels were then designated to be included in a building at South Street Seaport, and the rest of the Bogardus building panels were moved to a secret location in a city-owned building on 52nd Street, off 10th Avenue. When architects went to measure the panels with the Commission in June 1977, though, the hidden storage unit was missing all of the panels.
Andrew Berman has been the Executive Director of Village Preservation since 2002. During that time, the group, the largest neighborhood preservation organization in New York City, has secured landmark designation of more than 1,250 buildings, including 11 new historic districts and historic district extensions and dozens of individual landmarks, and zoning protections for nearly 100 blocks to help preserve the scale and character of historic neighborhoods. Prior to Village Preservation Berman worked in both city and state government, and has a background in architectural history.
BLACKWELL’S ISLAND PENITENTIARY UNDER DEMOLITION IN 1936
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
IMAGES AND TEXT COURTESY
UNTAPPED NEW YORK (C)
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The Nassau, a twin-hulled boat, was the first regularly scheduled steam-powered ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Credit…Brooklyn Historical Society
Steaming on the East River
Stephen Blank
The East River has long been a key thoroughfare for profit and pleasure. A big change, of course, was the advent of steam propulsion. Bigger craft, more people, more business. We’ve seen many pictures of great steamships on the Hudson. But our river, too, had some glorious steamers. So join me for a trip down memory lane, steaming on the East River.
Talking steamboats, begin with Fulton, inventor of the first successful steamboat and the first to put a steamboat on the East River. In 1814, Robert Fulton and William Cutting, his brother-in-law, formed the New York & Brooklyn Steamboat Ferry Association and obtained a lease from the City to establish a steam-powered ferry to cross the river. Fulton’s ferry crossed at the its narrowest point, some 700 yards between what is now Fulton Street in Brooklyn and Fulton Street in Manhattan, between where the River Café is today, beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and the South Street Seaport. The first ferry was named Nassau. The twin-hulled boat carried 549 passengers, one wagon and three horses. The trip took 5 to 12 minutes and was no longer subject to the mercy of the winds and the East River’s punishing tides. The Nassau was captained by Peter Coffee, who would remain with the company that operated the vessel for 50 years.
Yes, I know this is not really glam travel, it’s commuting.
So how about the fine line of “Sylvan” steamboats which raced up and down the East River from Peck’s Slip (just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, which didn’t exist) to 120th and 130th Streets in Harlem via a stop in Astoria and through Hell Gate?
Why Harlem? For pleasure and profit. The flat, rich, eastern portion of Harlem was fertile farmland, and some of New York’s most illustrious early families, like the Delanceys, Bleekers, Rikers, Beekmans, and Hamiltons kept large estates in the high western section. Harlem recovered slowly from the Revolutionary war struggles that took place there and remained largely rural through the early 19th century. Some of the estates were available at knockdown prices, and Harlem also attracted new immigrants to the City. Undeveloped, but not poor. It is said that Harlem was “a synonym for elegant living through a good part of the nineteenth century.”
To reach Harlem from lower Manhattan Island by stagecoach and later by horse car took a hard hour and a half to two hour ride. But by boat, there was no lovelier vista than the banks of the East River from Jones’ Wood north, where the shore was dotted by splendid country homes with large grounds of well-to-do New Yorkers – except when steaming past Blackwell’s Island.
The Harlem and New York Navigation Company was incorporated in 1856 and the “Sylvan Shore,” the first of this company’s line of “Sylvan” boats, was built that year. Four more “Sylvans” would appear over the next dozen years. The steamboats did the Harlem run on weekdays and excursions to points along the Sound on Sundays.
Steamboat “Sylvan Shore”, James Bard (1815–1897), New York Historical Society
The business went well. Not only did the Sylvan boats grow in number, but another line, the Morrisania steamboat line, joined in as a competitor. Their steamship “Shady Side” carried passengers to upper Manhattan and the Bronx. The Shady Side was the fastest Morrisania boat and frequently raced against the Harlem Line’s swiftest ship, the Sylvan Dell – much to the distress at times of the police. The Sylvan Dell carried on her bow mast an unusual but significant flag – a race horse with a jockey instead of the name of the boat.
Steamboat Shady Side, James Bard (1815–1897), New York Historical Society
By 1867 the elevated railroads were being talked of seriously, experiments projected, and in 1875 the Legislature favored granting a franchise for the elevated roads. The elevated opened for operations in 1876, but it was not until after 1880 that the elevated lines on both sides of the city were extended to Harlem. Simultaneously with that accomplishment the patronage of the Harlem and Morrisania declined.
They were attractive but fairly small sidewheel steamboats. We assume they were nicely fitted out with comfortable lounges but no overnight facilities, but we really don’t know the details. We know more about the spectacular vessels that sailed past our Island in the high age of East River steamboating. Stately sidewheelers connected Peck’s Slip with Hartford, Boston and locations between. One author rhapsodizes “These Long Island Sound steamers, unlike the tubby, wedding cake dowagers of Western waters, were long, sleek craft, with sharp prows cutting a neat wake as they cruised along. Departing each afternoon from State Street or Talcott Street wharf in Hartford, the ‘night boats’ reached New York at daybreak, inaugurating a pattern of city commuting that continues to this day.“
Other destinations were reached by a water-rail combination. The Old Colony Railroad developed a network of railroad lines extending from New York to Boston and southeastern Massachusetts. Steamers connected the railroad lines at various points. Established in 1847, the line was originally owned by the Bay State Steamboat Company.
The classic example was The Fall River Line, a combination steamboat and railroad connection between New York City and Boston that operated between 1847 and 1937. Sailing from New York, the Fall River boats paddled up the East River in the early evenings of dusk; up to Hell Gate then down the Long Island sound; calling at Newport in the middle of the night and the morning they landed at the Fall River dock. Boston was just a train ride away with connections north to Maine’s major cities and resorts.
For many years, this was the preferred route for travel between the two major cities. The Long Island Sound steamboats became firmly established with the public as the safe and comfortable way for New Yorkers to go to Boston since they avoided the long, hazardous water route around Cape Cod and the longer crowded train trip all the way from New York. The line was extremely popular, and its steamboats were among the most advanced and luxurious of their day. Everyone from presidents to swindlers sailed the Sound on “Mammoth Palace Steamers” in the heyday of the side-wheelers.
Big paddle steamers, gleaming white, ornamental and luxurious, touched all the islands and reached up the long tidal rivers, carrying “The Four Hundred” – New York’s Gilded Age High Society. Nineteenth Century steamboat men looked down on the railroads as mere “feeders,” and even later through trains ran rapidly along the shore from Boston to New York they maintained, for some time, the favorite of travelers. Old Commodore Vanderbilt and Daniel Drew struggled for power on the Sound before they began to battle for greater prizes among the railroads; its waters were controlled in turn by Jim Fisk and J. P. Morgan, who eventually brought almost all the various steamboat lines under control of his New Haven Railroad. The star of the Fall River Line was the steamship Priscilla.
Judy Berdy has written about the Priscilla in an earlier number of the Almanac but I will tell you more about the Fall River Line and its rivals in my next essay.
Fall River Line ships Priscilla and Puritan steaming under the abuilding Queensboro Bridge and past the Octagon on Blackwell’s Island
Competition on these routes grew. The Lexington was a paddlewheel steamboat that provided service between New York City and Providence, Rhode Island. It was commissioned by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1835, and at 220 feet in length was considered one of the most luxurious steamers in operation. In 1837, the Lexington switched to the route between New York and Stonington, Connecticut, to connect with the newly built Old Colony railroad to Boston.
And dangers too. On the night of January 13, 1840, midway through the ship’s voyage through the Sound, the casing around the ship’s smokestack caught fire and ignited 150 bales of cotton that were stored on deck aft of the smokestack. The fire was out of control and the order was given to abandon ship. The ships’ overcrowded lifeboats sank almost immediately, leaving the ship’s passengers and crew to drown in the freezing water. Rough water, poor visibility, the frigid cold and the wind made rescue attempts impossible. Of the 143 people on board the Lexington that night, only 4 survived.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back soon with more on the East River steamboat business, its pleasures and perils.
Stephen Blank RIHS July 11, 2021
THANKS TO GLORIA HERMAN AND HER GRANDKIDS FOR HELPING WEEDING AND FIXING UP THE KIOSK GARDEN TODAY.
Elijah (Eli) and Thomson (Sonny) are 11 and Eadie is 9.
ONE OF THE DECORATED WALLS AND MOTIFS OUTSIDE “THE SANCTUARY” IS THIS GREAT GREETING FROM ROOSEVELT ISLAND MURAL AND SPOT FOR A PHOTO.
WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY #2
(SOMEONE FORGOT TO POST ONE OF THESE ANSWERS) FORMER TRIBORO HOSPITAL NOW UNDER RESTORATION INTO AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN JAMAICA, QUEENS. Ed Litcher, Andy Sparberg and Harriet Lieber got it right
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
A.J.Wall, “The Sylvan Steamboats on the East River, New York to Harlem”, THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY BULLETIN VOL. VIII OCTOBER, 1924 No. 3
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Guy Ludwig and Ed Lticher added great history Thanks
I believe today’s historic photograph is of the White Star Line’s pier complex on the Hudson river. This is where the Titanic would have tied up had she made it. The Titanic (and her sisters the Olympic and the Gigantic – no kidding, but she was renamed Britannic) flew the flag of White Star Lines, a company controlled by J.P. Morgan. Following the Titanic disaster, White Star became an easy target for acquisition by the most powerful transatlantic line, Cunard. Four years after Titanic sank, the Britannic went to the bottom of the Aegean Sea after hitting a mine. It took until the 1930’s but eventually Cunard did merge with White Star, and in 1949 bought out firm completely and retired its name.
Guy Ludwig Westview
Chelsea PiersDesigned by the architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore, which was also designing Grand Central Terminal at the same time, the Chelsea Piers replaced a hodgepodge of run-down waterfront structures with a magnificent row of grand buildings embellished with pink granite facades.In 1910, the opening of the Chelsea Piers was marked with a ribbon cutting and speeches, including lots of back-patting after 30 long years of talk and 8 years of construction. In 1907, even before the piers were completed, the first of the new luxury liners, the Lusitania and Mauretania, docked there. The man responsible for the completion of the piers, Mayor George B. McClellan, wasn’t even in office when the liner Oceanic broke through a colorful wide ribbon to signal the official opening of the Chelsea Piers. The next day The New York Times called them “the most remarkable urban design achievement of their day.”For the next 50 years, the Chelsea Piers served the needs of the New York port: first, as the city’s premier passenger ship terminal; then as an embarkation point for soldiers departing for the battlefields of World Wars I and II; and finally, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, as a cargo terminal.After that, the Chelsea Piers, like much of Manhattan’s waterfront, became neglected maritime relics, made obsolete by the jet plane that whisked passengers across the Atlantic and the large container ships that required dock facilities and truck linkages that Manhattan could never provide.
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 Roosevelt Island Historical Society
NYC HEALTH + HOSPITALS
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Judith Berdy with Xiomara Wallace, Office of Community Relations, NY H+H.
I had the honor to receive a Marjorie Matthews Award today for service with the Coler Community Advisory Board and the Coler Auxiliary. The ceremony was held at the Queens Hospital Center.
There are over 500 volunteers who work on these committees to make our municipal hospitals better serve all the residents of New York City,
Of course being there, I had to find out about the wonderful WPA mural that is in the main corridor and the progress of converting Triboro Hospital into affordable housing.
Above: The Grand Republic steamship. As you can see from its paddlewheel, it was a twin to the General Slocum
East River Maritime Disasters
Stephen Blank
OK. By popular demand, one more – but only one more – East River ship story.
How about East River Maritime disasters? Turns out the East River has been a pretty dangerous place. Many serious shipping accidents have occurred in this short non-river (tidal estuary, to be precise). The most famous was the terrible General Slocum fire in 1904. Most of us have heard the name but don’t really know much about it. General Slocum was a triple-decker wooden side paddler that took folks on excursions around New York City. On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the ship was chartered for $350 by St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. The Church’s parish drew on German immigrants in the Lower East Side and East Village (then known as “Little Germany”). This was the trip’s 17th consecutive year, during a period when German settlers moved out of Little Germany for the Upper East and West Sides. Almost 1,400 passengers, mostly women and children (fewer than 150 were adult males) boarded General Slocum, which was to sail up the East River and then across the Long Island Sound to Locust Grove, a picnic site in Eatons Neck, Long Island.
But the steamboat caught fire and sank. In just 20 minutes, more than 1,000 people died. Prior to 9-11, the burning of the General Slocum had the highest death toll of any disaster in New York City history. It is the worst maritime disaster in the city’s history, and the second worst maritime disaster on United States waterways.
The excursion boat General Slocum lies beached off North Brother Island New York City’s East River, following a fire and resulting panic. The disaster cost the lives of 1,030 mostly German immigrants, June 15, 1904. (AP)
It was a preventable disaster. The crew was inexperienced and never conducted a fire drill. Some passengers jumped overboard but most of the ship’s lifejackets proved worthless because the cork then used for buoyancy, had turned to dust. Even worse, investigations discovered that Nonpareil Cork Works, supplier of cork for the life preservers, had placed 8 once iron bars inside the cork materials to meet minimum content requirements (6 pounds of “good cork” for each lifejacket) at the time. As the ship raced to shallow water the crew tried to fight the blaze, but the elderly fire hoses burst under the pressure. The Captain decided to continue his course rather than run the ship aground or stop at a nearby landing. By going into headwinds and failing to immediately ground the ship, he fanned the fire and promoted its spread from fore to aft. And he jumped ship as soon as he could. ‘
The Slocum disaster may have been the worst on the East River. But there were more.
The steamship caught fire just as it was in Hell Gate, the turbulent waters north of Blackwell’s (Roosevelt) Island, a particularly wicked part of the East River. Many tales have been told about the hundreds – even thousands – of ships sunk or damaged making this treacherous passage.
Indeed, histories repeat the same refrain: “Hundreds of ships have sunk into Hell Gate” “By the 1850s, one in fifty ships passing through the Hell Gate were either damaged or sunk—an annual average of 1,000 ships ran aground in the strait.” This is found again and again in the literature.
No less interesting than this Hell Gate horror story is the finding that while this liturgy is often repeated, evidence of these many maritime calamities never appears. (Where sources are indicated – rarely – they quote each other.) A thousand ships a year run aground just north of our island?? Why the north end of our island should have been littered in wreckage and bodies. The picture that these tales create was well captured by this dramatic painting of chaos in Hell Gate. (So many ships are waiting to run the gauntlet!) I suspect the reality of the numbers is as true as the reality of this image.
However, we know of one famous victim of Hell Gate, H.M.S. Hussar. She was a 28-gun, 6th-rate, Mermaid Class Frigate of the British Royal Navy with a crew of over one hundred. Built in 1763, the ship fought in sea battles off the coasts of Ireland and Portugal before being dispatched to New York in November 1780 to fight the colonists.
On 23 November 1780, against his pilot’s better judgment, Hussar’s captain decided to sail from the East River through the treacherous waters of Hell Gate between Randall’s Island and Astoria. Just before reaching Long Island Sound, Hussar was swept onto Pot Rock and began sinking. Pole was unable to run her aground and she sank in 96 feet of water.
What makes this loss of a relatively minor ship so interesting is that the British army’s payroll was to be moved to Gardiners Bay – aboard, of course, H.M.S. Hussar. The Brits owed a lot of back pay to its soldiers, and Hussar arrived in Manhattan with wages and 70 American prisoners of war. The exact amount is under dispute, but some say it might have been 960,000 British pounds in gold, worth roughly $576 million at the time. Various accounts of the tragedy emerged, but the British immediately denied that any payroll of gold guineas or sterling silver was consigned on the voyage. The survivors never mentioned a valuable cargo, nor was there any listed on the cargo manifest. The best bet is that the gold and silver was offloaded before the accident. The Brits denied the payroll delivery, but were suspect when they conducted extensive salvage efforts.
Occasional efforts are still made to find the treasure on the bottom of Hell Gate. A NY Times reporter in 2013 wrote, “The Hussar is the ship that got away. It has long been part of the lore of a South Bronx community that is among the poorest in the nation, promising untold riches for anyone with the imagination and courage to pluck it from the mud and trash of the East River. Its call has enthralled generations of residents and historians, and lured numerous fortune seekers.”
H.M.S. Hussar, National Maritime Museum
Two other East River maritime catastrophes are remembered today, probably because of the graphic images created at the time.
On October 7, 1833 steamship New England ploughed up the East River, destined for Hartford. Arriving off Essex at 3:00 am, the engine was stopped but both boilers exploded “with a noise like heavy cannon. The shock was dreadful; and the scene which followed … [w]as awful and heart-rending beyond description.”
New England burst its boilers off Essex, October 8, 1833, killing 13 people. Woodcut from Steamboat Disasters and Railroad Accidents in the United States by Warren Lazell, 1846
The ladies’ cabin suffered the worst: “Those who on first alarm, sprang from their berths, were more or less scalded. All who were on deck abaft the boilers, were either killed or wounded….Thirteen people perished, including five crewmen.
And mentioned in an earlier essay, Lexington was a paddlewheel steamboat servicing New York City and Providence. Commissioned by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1835, it was considered one of the most luxurious steamers in operation. In 1837, the Lexington switched to the route between New York and Stonington, Connecticut, to connect with the newly built Old Colony railroad to Boston.
Hartford lithographers D. W. Kellogg & Co. published this view of the doomed Lexington sometime after Nathaniel Currier’s print was released. Survivors can be seen clinging to floating debris in the foreground. 2003.263.0
On the night of January 13, 1840, midway through the ship’s voyage through the Sound, a fire ignited bales of cotton that were stored (illegally) on deck. The fire went out of control and the order was given to abandon ship. The ships’ overcrowded lifeboats sank almost immediately, leaving the ship’s passengers and crew to drown in the freezing water. Rough water, poor visibility, the frigid cold and the wind made rescue attempts impossible. Of the 143 people on board the Lexington that night, only 4 survived.
These are the East River maritime disasters we remember. Over the years, there were many more incidents and even sinkings – if not hundreds or thousands. The East River was a turbulent and troubled and extraordinarily busy waterway. And as we see every day, it still is. Thanks for reading.
GLORIA HERMAN, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, AND LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
Sources
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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Josephine Joy, Irish Cottage, ca. 1935-1938, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Newark Museum, 1966.31.8
This quaint Irish cottage was probably inspired by romantic illustrations of Ireland that appeared in American travel brochures and books. The lady playing a harp, however, is based on the symbol of the Society of United Irishmen, an organization formed in 1791 to rebel against British control. Their badge combined a harp (Ireland’s national icon), with the motto: “It is new strung and shall be heard.”
Josephine Hiett Joy was born near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in 1869 and soon thereafter her family moved to Peoria, Illinois. After an early marriage that ended in divorce, she went to Chicago and subsequently married Frank Joy. She became interested in painting after they moved to San Diego. A prolific worker, she became a WPA artist in the late 1930s, which led to her first solo exhibition at the Galerie St. Etienne in New York City in 1943. Joy died in Peoria in 1948.
Josephine Joy was born Sally Hiett, but changed her name when she was sixteen years old. As a young woman, she lived in Chicago and Denver before settling in San Diego, California, with her husband. It was there that she began to paint, creating images of flowers and landscapes, and she particularly enjoyed sketching animals at the San Diego Zoo. During the Great Depression, Joy worked with the California Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which helped bring national attention to her work. In the spring of 1943, she held her first one-woman show at the Galerie St. Etienne in New York, which received considerable praise from critics.
Josephine Joy, Magnolia Blossoms, ca. 1935-1941, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.44
Josephine Joy grew up on an Illinois farm, where she loved to sketch birds, trees, and flowers. Circumstances prevented her from following her artistic calling until 1927, after her children were grown and her husband had died. Joy lived in California then, and the WPA’s California Art Project afforded her the opportunity to work gainfully as an artist. In the 1930s, “non-academic” painters were increasingly celebrated alongside their professional peers. By the early 1940s, Joy was a nationally acclaimed painter whose work had been featured in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Josephine Joy, San Diego Mission, ca. 1935-1939, oil on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.45
Josephine Joy’s paintings combine direct observation and imaginative design. This is especially evident in this painting of the Mission San Diego de Alcala, the first of California’s twenty-one missions. Founded in 1769, the building underwent renovations in 1931. Certain features of San Diego Mission are drawn from the renovation, while others appear much older. The newly built bell tower contrasts with the cracked and exposed brick and the aged building to the right. Joy painted San Diego Mission while working with the WPA’s Southern California Art Project in Los Angeles from 1936 to 1939.
“I love to paint in the open, sitting in some beautiful garden, hillside or remote place or in Balboa Park [in San Diego], where I had sketched many pictures … I paint from nature but occasionally I find myself designing.” The artist, quoted in Cat and a Ball on a Waterfall: 200 Years of California Folk Painting and Sculpture, 1986
Josephine Joy, Trysting at Evening, ca. 1935-1939, oil on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.39
This painting may have been inspired by a sketch Josephine Joy made on one of her trips to the San Diego Zoo. The bench and railing in the image imply that this scene is a part of some man-made environment. The two peacocks in the foreground spread their trains to the fullest, displaying the bright colors of their plumage, and lift their chins in an attempt to attract a mate. The three birds perched on the railing and in the tree, however, ignore this elaborate show. In nature, the male peacocks are more brightly colored than female peahens, but here the artist shows them all to be more similarly colored.
Josephine Joy, Waterbirds Nesting, ca. 1935-1939, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.42
Josephine Joy, Moufflon–Bobtailed Sheep, ca. 1935-1939, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.40
Josephine Joy, Prisoner’s Plea, ca. 1935-1937, oil on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.38
Josephine Joy, CCC Camp Balboa Park, ca. 1933-1937, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971.447.41
The Starrett–Lehigh Building at 601 West 26th Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues and between 26th and 27th Streets in Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City, is a full-block freight terminal, warehouse and office building. It was built in 1930–31 as a joint venture of the Starrett Corporation and the Lehigh Valley Railroad on a lot where the railroad had its previous freight terminal, and was designed by the firm of (Russell G.) Cory & (Walter M.) Cory, with Yasuo Matsui the associate architect and the firm of Purdy & Henderson the consulting, structural engineers. When William A. Starrett died in 1932, the Lehigh Valley Railroad bought the building outright, but by 1933 it was a losing proposition, with a net loss that year of $300,000. The Starrett–Lehigh Building was named a New York City landmark in 1986,[1] and is part of the West Chelsea Historic District, designated in 2008
NINA LUBLIN, ROBIN LYNN, ARON EISENPREISS, ANDY SPARBERG, ED LITCHER (WHO SENT THE HISTORY),
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 Roosevelt Island Historical Society
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
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New York City has seen its fair share of civil unrest. One of them, however unlikely, was caused by rocking chairs and took place in Madison Square Park.
The upscale Madison Square Park neighborhood, located in front of the posh Fifth Avenue Hotel, teamed with elegantly dressed and well heeled elites. One day in 1901, a businessmen named Oscar F. Spate saw an opportunity for procuring a buck. The idea was based both on the natural human desire to rest one’s tired body in a comfortable chair combined with the lack of an equal desire to share seating arrangements with lower-ranking members of society.
Mr. Spate arranged a deal with the city to place comfy rocking chairs in Central Park and Madison Square Park that would be made available for a modest fee of five cents per sitting body. This highly undemocratic concept was met with resentment and righteous indignation by those who happened to lack the proper means to afford the chairs but nevertheless desired to be seated just as much as the next person. In order to protect the chairs from un-paying public, Spate hired special attendants—a move which led to clashes between the hired hands and unruly citizens attempting to sit for free.
The problem was compounded by the heat wave of 1901—one of the longest the city had ever experienced—during whichthe temperature in Manhattan hit at least 99 degrees every day for over a week straight. Prior to air-conditioning, public parks were the only places where citizens could cool down and regain strength. Problematically, not only did parks not have enough public benches, but most of those benches in Madison Square Park were located in the open sun while the desirable shady spots were occupied by Spate’s paid chairs.
As an act of protest, some people actually went so far as paying for a chair, only to immediately break it down to pieces. One of the attendants, after attempting to remove a non-paying boy from a chair, had to run for his life to the safety of the Fifth Avenue Hotel when a mob of one-thousand men proceeded to chase the poor soul with the war-like cries of “Lynch him!”
The situation escalated two days later when the chair skirmishes erupted into a full-on rocking chair riot. It all started with one weary, overheated young man who refused to yield to the demand to either pay or vacate his comfortable, shady place of rest. His right to stay seated was vocally supported by a sizable, irritable, overheated crowd demanding equal sitting rights, free of charge. The struggle got physical as unruly members of the crowd started expropriating the chairs and threatening attendants. The police rushed over, but to no avail—the crowd was too large to handle. The uprising soon ended in the complete and utter success of the public: the Parks Commissioner canceled the five-year contract with Spate. A 10,000-person celebration ensued, with victory being sealed when the NY Supreme Court issued an injunction forbidding anyone to charge money for park seating.
In a final attempt to monetize his chairs, the relentless Spate sold some of them to Wanamaker’s Department Store under the label of “Historic Chairs.” The rest of the chairs were left in the parks with the humane and democratic sign, “FREE.”
As for Oscar F. Spate—the chair riot apparently wasn’t the most colorful episode of his life. Prior to the “chair” saga, he divorced his wife on the grounds that she turned out to be a man and later ended up in jail for some of his shady “business deals.” What a shame it was for him to find out, while incarcerated, that after his mother’s death he had inherited more than a million.
OLD METROPOLITAN OPERA HUSE AT 39 STREET NO ONE GUESSED THE OLD MET!!
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 Sources
PortableNYC – New York history, architecture and secrets
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The Cornell Graduate Hotel has opened. Who would have believed we would have a glam university campus, conference center and hotel? An impossible dream! Many dreams have been bruited about over the years on what this 147 acre bit of land in the East River might become. I wrote about several earlier, but today I’ll dig more deeply into one of the most important plans for the Island, the Johnson Burgee Master Plan.
First of all, what and when.
In 1966 Mayor Lindsay announced the city’s intention to develop Welfare Island. He also announced the creation of The Welfare Island Planning and Development Committee—a group of influential and interested New Yorkers, including Ralph Bunche, Mrs. Vincent Astor, the architect Philip Johnson and various city officials. The committee’s plan, financed by money it raised itself, was incorporated into the General Development Plan produced by Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s newly formed New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC), the agency responsible for building subsidized low-and moderate income housing throughout New York State, headed by Ed Logue. In 1969, the UDC issued a report reviewing the options for Welfare Island – and then the city told the UDC to carry out the committee’s recommendations to create a new community on the island. The UDC tasked Philip Johnson and his partner John Burgee with developing a master plan. Their plan was unveiled in October 1969, in a Met Museum exhibition “The Island Nobody Knows”.
Who?
Philip Johnson (1906–2005) was a key figure in modern architecture. Influenced by Mies van der Rohe, Johnson became a proselytizer for the new architecture and was a key figure behind the landmark 1932 MOMA show “The International Style: Architecture Since 1922”. In 1930, he founded MOMA’s Department of Architecture and Design and later, as a trustee, was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture Prize. John Burgee (1933-) is an American architect noted for his contributions to Postmodern architecture. Burgee and Johnson established Johnson/Burgee in Manhattan in 1968, with Burgee as CEO. Burgee eased Johnson out of the firm in 1991, and it subsequently went bankrupt.
Their Master Plan
There would be no private cars. One main street would wind through the sections of the new island community. Two distinct “towns” would be separated by parkland: Northtown, a dense zone of horseshoe shaped apartment buildings, 4 to 12 stories tall, with numerous views of the water; next an area of park around the Blackwell farmhouse; and finally Southtown, with a town center of shops, offices, hotel and arcade extending across the island from a harbor to the subway stop. With the two towns both clustered tightly, a third of the island could be open space. The island’s remarkable buildings were to be preserved as “important landmarks”. The master plan underlined protecting the island’s grand vistas. A network of waterfront promenades and paths would serve pedestrians and cyclists. It laid out impressive ideas for “docks and harbors for water buses and taxis of the sort that have long and efficiently served Venice… and two glass-tower elevators for pedestrian access from the 59th St Bridge.”
Philip Johnson and John Burgee’s master plan for Roosevelt Island. From The Island that Nobody Knows, New York State Urban Development Corporation, 1969.
The roughly 5,000 units of housing for some 20,000 people would be well spread among the poor, the old, the moderate and middle incomed, and the well‐to‐do, with schools, library, daycare and community centers, churches and sports facilities of many kinds. There was to be accommodation for patients well enough to live outside of hospital and for hospital staff. The response was largely positive. To some, the plan seemed “to project a believable and appealing image of medium density urbanism, comparable to that of prewar Forest Hills or Kew Gardens…”
The masterplan was approved in October 1969 and the UDC immediately leapt into action, hiring architects for the housing, garage, commercial facilities, infrastructure, and parks.
The first phase of construction commenced in the summer of 1971 with 2,138 units of housing for 5,000 residents in four apartment buildings, along with streets, sewers and commercial space and a parking garage with a firehouse, post office, full-sized supermarket and retail. Rivercross Apartments and Island House, designed by John Johansen with Ashok Bhavnani were completed in 1975. Sert, Jackson & Associates designed Eastwood and Westview Apartments, completed a year after Rivercross and Island House.
With much reduced federal financing for housing under President Nixon, building plans had to be revised. Most significantly, the towers grew taller, and courtyards were cut off from the East River. Johnson’s master plan sought to maintain a human scale, with buildings not more than 10 stories. But the UDC analysis found buildings would have to reach up to 22 stories to meet the required density. Sert and Johansen’s buildings were able to retain Johnson’s human scale by gradually stepping the 22 story east-west sections back from the river, preserving the water views and capping the longer north-south portions that followed Main Street to seven stories. But Main Street seemed more of a canyon between higher buildings with few vistas of the water. Ada Louise Huxtable who had praised the original design now said that the “plan’s most felicitous features, the side views through to the water from the central north-south main street were lost, with the street turned into an almost solid wall of the highest buildings.”
John Johansen later wrote: “The urban plan by Philip Johnson proposed an angled central street with buildings as fingers reaching and stepping down toward both banks of the river. As his proposal did not deal with a realistic density, it was not literally a master plan, and the team’s studies resulted in building heights not 10 stories, as he intended, but 18 stories. Johnson was insulted and said, ‘That is no longer my Island.’”
Buildings were not only higher, but materials changed as well. Johansen continued, “At first we were encouraged to be highly innovative in our design and use of building technology. Later, as the corporation became fearful of construction costs and anticipated market resistance to anything other than conventional housing, we were advised to modify our designs. Rossant and Giurgola refused and they were fired. Sert and I somehow held course and, as good friends, coordinated our separate designs rather well. Later, with Adam Yarmolinski as director, we were advised that, for security reasons, courtyards of the upper income apartments must be barricaded against the potentially threatening lower income people across the street. As this contradicted Ed Logue’s central idea of an open neighborhood, I resigned as architect until this directive was finally withdrawn.”
Still, the impressions were not bad. In 1974, in the midst of construction, Anthony Bailey of the NYTimes, wrote “What the Johnson‐Burgee concept did was combine many of the desired elements—housing, parks, historic buildings—in a plan that honored the exhilarating island site, while letting itself be shaped by what was there: the river, the narrowness of the island, the Queensboro Bridge winging across it and the constraints of the two hospitals, which were too recent and too expensive to replace elsewhere.” And Johnson himself seemed OK with what was working out. Bailey quotes him, “I think they’re all doing very well. Force of events, money and the actual conditions have caused them to make changes in my master plan, but they’re following it as well as they can. Ed Logue’s got fine architects working on the job, and Logue’s a genius. He’s the only person who could get this done.”
So? Many years later.
Certainly – my view – what we got is not what the Johnson Burgee Master Plan depicted. Most important, Main Street became a deep canyon with very limited views of the water. The water front described in the Master Plan never materialized. But perhaps the essence of the Master Plan was preserved.
Looking in context, one critic (David Turturo) writes that “the re-imagination of Roosevelt Island, at the time, manifested an awakening of activist-architect-urbanists. New York’s new island town became a symbol of the nascent urban design (UD) movement, led by Sert himself. He established the first UD program at Harvard while GSD dean there in 1960…So Roosevelt Island was the perfect test site. In a city shaken by the civil rights movement, white flight, and an unpopular war, the site’s master planners Johnson and Burgee reached outside the box to build real change. They reconciled diverse concrete structures with historic landmarks to help create a real, vibrantly modern place. The result was striking and collaborative: refined, interwoven, and cumulative—a cross-disciplinary exemplar of urban design.”
And the island itself – notwithstanding the “what might have beens” – was viewed as a remarkable achievement. Robin Herman, in the Times, writes, “Just three and a minutes from Bloomingdale’s by way of the Tinker Toy colored tram, it is yet a world apart from the heat and bustle of Dry Dock country…” Of course, not everyone loved being a world apart.
This was a bit longer than usual. I’m sorry, and thanks for sticking it out.
The former USS Growler first opened at the Intrepid Museum in 1989 and is the only American guided missile submarine open to the public. Growler offers museum visitors a firsthand look at life aboard a submarine and a close-up inspection of the once “top-secret” missile command center.
ED LITCHER AND MITCH HAMMER GOT IT RIGHT
P.S. FIORELLO LA GUARDIA WIVES:
La Guardia married twice. His first wife was Thea Almerigotti, an Istrian immigrant, whom he married on March 8, 1919.
In 1929, La Guardia remarried to Marie Fisher (1895–1984) who had been his secretary while in Congress. They adopted two children.
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)
Chapter 8 Roosevelt Island, in Robert Stern, Thomas Mellins, David Fishman, New York 1960 (Monacelli Press, 1995)
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)
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On June 19, 1865, enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas, were told they were free. A century and a half later, people in cities and towns across the U.S. continue to celebrate the occasion.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Derrick Bryson Taylor June 16, 2021 This story was first published in 2020. It was updated in June 2021.
Juneteenth, an annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, has been celebrated by African-Americans since the late 1800s. But in recent years, and particularly following nationwide protests over police brutality and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and other Black Americans, there is a renewed interest in the day that celebrates freedom. The celebration continues to resonate in new ways, given the sweeping changes and widespread protests across the U.S. over the last year and following a guilty verdict in the killing of Mr. Floyd. Here’s a brief guide to what you should know about Juneteenth.
What is Juneteenth?
On June 19, 1865, about two months after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Va., Gordon Granger, a Union general, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African-Americans of their freedom and that the Civil War had ended. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued more than two and a half years earlier on Jan. 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln.
The holiday received its name by combining June and 19. The day is also sometimes called “Juneteenth Independence Day,” “Freedom Day” or “Emancipation Day.”
How is it celebrated?
The original celebration became an annual one, and it grew in popularity over the years with the addition of descendants, according to Juneteenth.com, which tracks celebrations. The day was celebrated by praying and bringing families together. In some celebrations on this day, men and women who had been enslaved, and their descendants, made an annual pilgrimage back to Galveston.
Celebrations reached new heights in 1872 when a group of African-American ministers and businessmen in Houston purchased 10 acres of land and created Emancipation Park. The space was intended to hold the city’s annual Juneteenth celebration.
Today, while some celebrations take place among families in backyards where food is an integral element, some cities, like Atlanta and Washington, hold larger events, like parades and festivals with residents, local businesses and more.
While celebrations in 2020 were largely subdued by the coronavirus pandemic, some cities this year are pressing forward with plans.
Galveston has remained a busy site for Juneteenth events over the years, said Douglas Matthews, who has helped coordinate them for more than two decades.
In 2021, the city will dedicate a 5,000 square-foot mural, entitled “Absolute Equality,” on the spot where General Granger informed enslaved African-Americans of their freedom. The city will also mark the holiday with a parade and picnic. Events and activities in Atlanta this year have been scaled back, but organizers have made plans for a parade and music festival at Centennial Olympic Park. Similar events are scheduled in Annapolis, Md.; Chicago; Detroit and Los Angeles.
THE FAMOUS HANGING CHAD COUNT IN FLORIDA IN THE 2000 ELECTION JAY JACOBSON, ARLENE BESSENOFF, ALEXIS VILLEFANE, NINA LUBLIN ALL TO IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff Roosevelt Island Historical Society
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THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 2021
The
392nd Edition
A STATUE OF LIBERTY
REPLICA IS COMING
FROM PARIS TO THE U.S.
from UNTAPPED NEW YORK
One of our favorite fun facts is that there are replicas of the Statue of Liberty in both New York City and in Paris. We’ve just gotten word that one of the replicas in Paris is making its way over to New York City for July 4th to be inaugurated on Ellis Island! It will then travel to Washington D.C. to be on display at the French Ambassador’s Residence for Bastille Day. The effort to bring “Lady Liberty’s Little Sister” to visit the U.S. is part of a 135th anniversary celebration of the Statue of Liberty crossing the Atlantic Ocean (in pieces) and is a partnership effort between the Embassy of France in the U.S., the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam) and the CMA CGM Group, a shipping logistics company.
The original plaster sculpture, which sculptor Auguste Bartholdi made in his Paris studio, was bequeathed to the Musée des Arts et Métiers (Museum of Arts and Crafts) in the Marais district of Paris by his widow in 1907. In 2005, the French art dealer, Guillaume Duhamel, rediscovered the sculpture while accompanying his son’s elementary school class on a visit there. He convinced the museum to let him create 12 casts from the plaster original (the maximum allowed under French law) using the lost-wax method and the museum would get to keep the first cast. It’s been on display at the museum for the last decade.
The statue was taken down from the museum on June 7, 2021 and put into a plexiglass case custom-designed for the voyage. It will then be taken to the port city of Le Havre, where it will board the CMA CGM TOSCA on June 20th headed for New York in a branded shipping container.
According to a press release from the Embassy of France in the U.S., the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam) and the CMA CGM Group, “The arrival of the new Lady Liberty will celebrate the most central value of the French-American partnership: freedom. The technological, artistic, and logistical challenges that had to be overcome to bring this new statue to America tell a modern tale of successful international cooperation.”
In celebration, the French Embassy will be hosting a contest on Instagram (@franceintheus) for participants to win LEGO® Architecture Statue of Liberty, a France-Amerique magazine subscription, an Albertine Books membership and more. Starting June 20th, the voyage of Statue of Liberty’s “Little Sister” can be viewed live on the CMA CGM website.
The statue is scheduled to arrive in New York by July 1st, when a ceremony will take place on Ellis Island to inaugurate the statue. It will be on display on the island until July 5th after which it will be transported to Washington D.C.. by CEVA Logistics.
You can also see this statue with your tickets to our tour of the abandoned hospitals of Ellis Island, with tickets still available for the July 3 and 4:
DUE TO THE FACT THAT I AM WORKING CRAZY HOURS I CANNOT LIST THE WINNERS DAILY!! AFTER THE ELECTION THE WINNERS WILL BE POSTED
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)
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Last week we featured two stories on Civil War Union soldiers, Underwood and Clark who died at the Smallpox Hospital days after being mustered into the army. They never saw a battlefield and died of Smallpox weeks after joining up. Today, our story is about Col. Ellsworth who removed a flag from a building in Alexandria, Virginia. He was shot for his effort and his assailant was bayoneted by a fellow soldier.
The metal coffin reached Jersey City by train at half past three o’clock on May 31, 1861. It was loaded into a hearse and onto a ferry, and when it arrived in Manhattan it was brought to a parlor inside Astor House—at the time New York’s most luxurious hotel, on Broadway between Vesey and Barclay Streets.
For several hours there, the coffin lay under a large draped American flag. Family, friends, and National Guardsmen mourned the man, whose “pallid features,” as the The Sun described them the next day, could be seen through a piece of oval glass. “Few would have recognized in the ghastly features the gallant commander once so full of life and intelligent,” the newspaper wrote.
At 10 pm, the coffin went back in the hearse for the short trip to City Hall, where flags stood at half-mast and black and white crepe hung over the entrance. “Here an immense crowd had assembled on the steps and in front of the building, awaiting the funeral cortege,” wrote The Sun. Politicians, such as mayor Fernando Wood, paid their respects. Soon the public was allowed to enter, and over the next few hours 10,000 New Yorkers passed by the coffin that contained Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth, 24, the first Union officer to be killed in the Civil War.
“Remember Ellsworth” was a popular rallying cry among Union supporters during the War Between the States. Today, Col. Ellsworth, who commanded a funeral cortege similar to that of Abraham Lincoln’s four years later, has largely been forgotten. Who was he, and why did the death of this young lawyer from upstate command such an elaborate farewell in New York City?
Part of it had to do with his status as a dashing young law clerk and National Guard Cadet who took a job in the Springfield, Illinois office of future President Lincoln. “The young clerk and Lincoln became friends, and when the president-elect moved to Washington in 1861, Ellsworth accompanied him,” stated Smithsonian magazine.
Ellsworth also had a deep interest in military science. When President Lincoln put out the call for Union troops after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861 launched the Civil War, he responded by “raising of the 11th New York Volunteer Infantry, which he dressed in distinctive Zouave-style uniforms, fashioned after those worn by French colonial troops,” according to the NPS.
The 11th New York Volunteers were also known as the First Fire Zouaves, since many members of this unit—with their distinctive flashy uniforms and billowy pants—were recruited from New York’s volunteer fire departments. In May 1861, Ellsworth returned to Washington with his Fire Zouaves. On May 24, the unit went to Alexandria, Virginia to remove a large Confederate flag that had been flying from the roof of a hotel called Marshall House, which could be seen from the White House roof 10 miles away. The next day, “Ellsworth succeeded in removing the flag, but as he descended the stairs from the building’s roof, the hotel’s owner, James W. Jackson, shot and killed Ellsworth with a single shotgun blast to the chest,” wrote the NPS.”
Jackson, a “zealous defender of slavery,” Smithsonian magazine stated, was then shot to death by one of the fire zouaves, Cpl. Francis Brownell.
The death of Col. Ellsworth so shook President Lincoln, he reportedly said, according to a PBS.org article on Ellsworth, ““My boy! My boy! Was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?” Before Col. Ellsworth’s body came New York’s City Hall, Lincoln had it laid in state at the White House.
Col. Ellsworth became something of a folk hero, his image and actions reproduced in lithographs and sheet music. His story stuck in New York City’s memory through the first half of the 20th century. In 1936, an Ellsworth memorial was dedicated in Greenwich Village: It’s the flagpole at Christopher Park, the triangle across from Sheridan Square. (Above, a marker on the flag pole.)
Photograph of Marshall House, Alexandria, VA. The view of Alexandria shows that the town was rather built up. The Marshall House is on the corner surrounded by many other buildings, such as the Dry Good Store, the Bookstore, and the “Great Western Clothing House”. There are a couple women standing outside the shops, which are surrounded by sidewalk.
A massive, iconic Confederate flag, torn down by a Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, a soldier born in Saratoga County and widely remembered as the first Union officer killed in the Civil War, was on display at the New York State Museum.
Ellsworth is buried at Hudson View Cemetery Mechanicville, Saratoga County, New York, USA
THOM HEYER, ED LITCHER, ALEXIS VILLEFAE, LAURA HUSSEY, SUSAN RODETIS, JAY JACOBSON ALL GOT IT RIGHT
Thank you for the wonderful article on Wanda Gag. I loved Millions of Cats since I was a child & first heard it read on Capt. Kangaroo!
I guess that dates me now, doesn’t it? ;^)
I knew nothing about her or her other black & white prints. They’re so beautiful & uniquely her own style. Thanks again for a great article! Have a great weekend– Thom
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)
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
First image: Billy Hathom/Wikipedia photo of a portrait; second image: whitehousehistory.org; third image: Currier & Ives lithograph/Wikipedia; fourth image: Musicology for Everyone; fifth image: Corbis via Smithsonian magazine; sixth image: The Historical Marker Database]
ephemeralnewyork | May 31, 2021 at 3:12 am | Tags: Elmer E. Ellsworth in New York City, Elmer Ellsworth Abe Lincoln, Elmer Ellsworth Civil War NYC, Elmer Ellsworth FIre Zouaves, Elmer Ellsworth Flag Pole NYC, Elmer Ellsworth Funeral City Hall NYC, First Union Soldier Die Civil War | Categories: Disasters and crimes, Lower Manhattan, War memorials, West Village | URL: https://wp.me/pec9m-8Rj
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