which specialized in the design of department stores, primarily in the early 20th century.
History The senior partner, Goldwin Starrett (1867–1918), brother of Colonel William A. Starrett, had worked for four years in the Chicago office of Daniel Burnham before founding the firm as Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck along with Ernest Allen Van Vleck (1875–1956) in 1907. Starrett, a native of Lawrence, Kansas, had attended the University of Michigan, while Van Vleck was a Cornell School of Architecture graduate from Bell Creek, Nebraska. After William A. Starrett and Orrin Rice joined the partnership several years later, “Goldwin” was removed from the firm’s name.
Notable projects Included in their designs were the New York City flagship stores of Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Abraham & Straus, and Alexander’s. The Lord & Taylor Building, located on Fifth Avenue between 38th and 39th Streets, was completed in 1914 as Starrett & van Vleck’s first major department store and is a New York City designated landmark.
The Lexington Avenue extension of Bloomingdales.
Garfinkel’s Department Store
Starrett & van Vleck was also responsible for the design of the designated New York City landmarks Everett Building (1908), American Stock Exchange Building (1921), 21 West Street (1929), and Downtown Athletic Club (1930).[4] Between 1937 and 1948, they designed the downtown flagship store of the J. N. Adam & Co. in Buffalo, New York, which is currently threatened with demolition.[5] It is located in the J.N. Adam-AM&A Historic District. Starrett & van Vleck, credits also include the flagship store of Washington, D.C.’s Garfinckel’s, and the Miller & Rhoads department store in Richmond, VA as well as the former Mosby Dry Goods Store in Richmond, VA, which is now undergoing restoration and renovation as a hotel. Garfinckel’s was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
21 West Street A slender 31-story Art Deco landmark, was converted from offices to apartments in 1998.
The building complements the adjoining Downtown Athletic Club, designed by the same architects but built five years earlier. When built in 1931 (at the same time as the Empire State Building),
21 West Street was across the street from the waterfront. Upper-story tenants then had an unobstructed view of the Hudson. Battery Park City was built on landfill placed in 1980 from excavation for the World Trade Center.
The exposed corners of the building are cantilevered, allowing corner windows. The building was promoted as “An office building with glass corners.” The original red window frames have been replaced by a more neutral tan matching the brick surrounds.
Starrett & Van Vleck used different-colored bricks to create a “woven” texture and to accentuate the building’s vertical lines. The Washington Street facade has setbacks at the 10th and 16th floors; all three facades have setbacks above the 21st, 26th, 29th and 30th floors.
The Former Equitable Life Assurance Company is currently under threat due to the proposed Empire Station Complex. *This handsome building at 383-399 Seventh Avenue, next to the Hotel Pennsylvania, was built in 1922-23 as the headquarters of the Equitable Life Assurance Company Building which was formerly based at 120 Broadway.
The stone-clad building was designed by the firm Starrett & Van Vleck with showroom-like windows on the first two floors. According to the Environmental Impact Study report, “The former Equitable Life Assurance Company Building is significant under Criterion A for its association with commercial development around Penn Station. In addition, the building also meets Criterion C for its architectural design.
In an Environmental Review letter dated December 14, 2020, LPC determined that it also appears to be eligible for NYCL designation.” This building would only be affected by “Potential Adverse Construction-Related Impacts from Construction on Sites 3 and 7.”
Take a look at our steam plant, now de-commissioned and sitting vacant, designed by Starett and Van Vleck.
SHEPARD HALL AT CITY COLLEGE A WONDERFUL LANDMARKS WITH GARGOYLES GALORE!
HARA REISER GOT IT!!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
WIKIPEDIA
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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
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Let’s talk about East River bridges. We all know something about the Brooklyn Bridge and I have written about our Queensboro Bridge. But perhaps we can bridge some information gaps about other East River crossings.
First, how many bridges cross the East River? Seven? No, eight. (Don’t forget Hell Gate Bridge.) Three older bridges south of us (the BMW – Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg), Oueensboro, and then north, towards Long Island Sound – Hell Gate and Robert F. Kennedy, Bronx Whitestone and Throgs Neck.
Second question. Which of these bridges was viewed as the ugliest? Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro – but never Brooklyn – have all been awarded that dubious honor at one time or another. Williamsburg is still considered the “Ugly Duckling” of suspension bridges, but the dysfunctional problem child is Manhattan. And, our cantilever truss, Queensboro, has been termed ungainly and visually heavy. Henry Hornbostel, responsible for the ornamental decoration on the towers and portals, has been widely quoted as saying, upon seeing the completed bridge “My God, it’s a blacksmith’s shop!”
Yet wonderful. Long ago, in 1916, Ellsworth Huntington, a well-known Yale geographer, gushed over our bridges and the City that built them: “With the exception of the bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scotland, New York has the four longest bridges in the world, their length varying from 6,000 to 7,500 feet… The New York bridges, too, have some of the longest spans in the world. Among suspension bridges, the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Williamsburg Bridges…are unrivaled. The Hell Gate Bridge…is the largest arch bridge in existence… It is an astonishing fact that of the world’s seven largest bridges five should be in the midst of the world’s largest city.”
Also astonishing – how quickly they were built. Brooklyn, completed 1883; Williamsburg, 1903; Queensboro, March 1909; Manhattan, December 1909; and Hell Gate, 1916. These were among the largest and most complex – and most expensive – engineering jobs ever undertaken. Remember, too, that at this moment the City was raising the new sky scrapers, creating many of our great Beaux Arts edifices, and building the subways. In the 1890’s, much of the city was being wired for electricity. And New York’s population was increasing from just under 2 million in 1880 to almost 5 million in 1910.
We don’t know much about who actually worked on the bridges. Except, not Mohawks, who worked on many sky scrapers only from the 1920s. Many workers must have been immigrants whose number in the city increased from about half a million in 1880 to 2 million in 1910. (Soon, at the peak of immigration, some 40% of the City’s population would be immigrants.)
I learned preparing an earlier essay (“Thomas Rainey: A Man and a Bridge”) that discussions about a bridge crossing the East River over Blackwell’s Island had been on- and off-going since the 1850s, and were quite serious in the 1880s, but to no avail. So, of course, Brooklyn was first, and was the longest suspension bridge in the world.
Williamsburgers, too, pushed for a connector to Manhattan, even before Brooklyn opened. Why Williamsburg? Williamsburg stood apart from the rest of Brooklyn. Indeed, between 1852 and 1855, Williamsburg (or Williamsburgh, its original spelling) was its own city, comprised of the modern neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. In 1855 it was absorbed — along with the Town of Bushwalk — into the expanding city of Brooklyn and these new additions, more industrial and immigrant in nature, were referred to as the Eastern District.
But, as with the Queensboro idea, bottom up pressure, even from the business community, was insufficient. A new organization, the East River Bridge Company, was able to get a charter from New York State to build two bridges to form a loop transit line connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. But the project proceeded slowly. Others then pushed ahead for a bridge that would be owned by the two cities, ultimately purchasing the Company’s rights for $200,000. And the loop design was dropped. As usual, New York politics intervened and successive NYC mayors fired and hired commissioners and engineers in the bridge project.
What began as a design similar to Brooklyn worked out to be something much different, with all-steel towers that never won the hearts and minds of New Yorkers, and seems to lack the charm and grace of Brooklyn.
On the Manhattan side, planners used the project to clear away a notorious districts – Corlears Hook, where shipbuilding had been concentrated and now a well-known red light district. (The ladies there were known as “hookers”, a much better story than the conventional one about Civil War General Joseph Hooker.)
The Bridge opened up space in less populated Brooklyn for those, many Jews, who inhabited the very crowded Lower East Side. Thus the bridge was even called the “Jews Highway” as those of Eastern European and Russian Jewish heritage transplanted to Williamsburg.
Williamsburg Bridge. Wikipedia
But perhaps the most intriguing part of the story is the makeover proposed by Donald Trump in the 1980s. Williamsburg would be redone a “spectacular landmark”.
The fact is that Williamsburg was in bad shape. In May 1987, a six-foot beam fell from the bridge into the East River; in April 1988, the bridge was abruptly closed for two weeks after corrosion was found that presented a “5 percent chance there would have been a failure” of the bridge.
Der Scutt Architect
Trump’s plan included covering it with bronze reflecting panels and adding a two-story restaurant on one of the towers.
By 1898, electric trolleys, an El train and pedestrian lanes were crossing the Brooklyn, leaving only one lane in each direction for all other traffic. It is said that a traffic jam in 1898 was so bad the weight on the bridge caused it drop 12 feet, and engineers were afraid that if traffic was not reduced, it would fall. It was obvious that another bridge was needed from downtown Manhattan to the busy Fulton Ferry area.
In 1901, planning began for the new bridge, called Bridge No.3. Seth Low, reform mayor elected to counter Tammany influence and graft, hired Gustav Lindenthal, a respected bridge engineer and architect to design what would be the Manhattan Bridge. Lindenthal had grand plans for an enormous bridge with 14 lanes of track, as well as towers large enough to hold auditoriums.
In accordance with the City Beautiful Movement, plans included large public plazas leading to the bridge from both sides, very grand Baroque style with a gleaming triumphal arch and colonnade on the Manhattan side and sedate but impressive portal with statues on the Brooklyn side. The Manhattan entrance, inspired by Paris’ Porte St. Denis arch and Bernini’s Colonnade at St. Peter’s in Rome, had a colored mosaic walkway within a large plaza leading to the bridge.
But before plans could be implemented, Low’s term ended and the Tammany machine installed George McClellen as mayor. McClellen appointed a political hack named George Best as Chief Engineer, who was not an engineer or even an architect, who immediately fired Lindenthal, and hired a Leon S. Moisseiff to complete the bridge.
Moisieff’s design envisioned a lighter and shallower stiffening truss. The bridge is braced in only two directions, allowing the towers to flex, reducing bending moments and requiring smaller foundations under the tower. He also put the subway and streetcar tracks on the outer edges of the roadway, instead of in the middle, as in the both of the other East River bridges. This stressed the bridge, so when trains were coming from both directions, it sway and twist – a problem that worsened with longer trains. And, as one bridge historian writes, “Because it was a Tammany Hall project, a whole lot of money had to be spread around, and the bridge, which was supposed to cost under $20 million ended up at $31 million by the time it was finished. Initially, that is. In reality, the bridge would become a massive black hole sucking money into its maw well into the 21st century.”
Image: Wikipedia
The bridge was constructed in record time, mostly so that McClellan could claim it under his administration, and it had a show opening, on December 31, 1909, the last day of his term. Since the road wasn’t finished, they laid temporary planks across the deck to enable vehicles to cross. The pedestrian walkway wasn’t finished until 1910, and the first trains crossed in 1912. The Beaux Arts entryways to the bridge weren’t completed until 1916.
In 1961, Robert Moses wanted to demolish the Manhattan entrance to the bridge in his plans for a Lower Manhattan Expressway that would connect the Manhattan Bridge and the Holland Tunnel. He got the permission of the New York City Arts Commission to do so, but the roadway was never built. The furor over this decision was a factor in the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission a few years later.
Most of the park leading to the bridge was reclaimed by the building of Confucius Plaza in the 1960’s. As Christopher Gray says in a “Cityscape” article in the NY Times in 1996, “Today the plaza of the Manhattan Bridge evokes not the City Beautiful but the sack of Rome.”
Bridges, love them or hate them, we can’t live without them.
THE WONDERFUL BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK THAT GENTLY FLOWS TO THE RIVERFRONT. A CONTRAST TO OUR SOUTHPOINT WHERE THE RIVER IS MANY FEET BELOW.
NINA LUBLIN, ED LITCHER, OLYA TURCHIN, HARA REISER, ALEXIS VILLAFANE 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
Ellsworth Huntington, “The Water Barriers of New York City,” Geographical Review, Sept., 1916
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STOP THE PRESSES… EVEN MORE BIZARRE RIVERSIDE FURNITURE IN THE NEW SOUTHPOINT PARK!
THESE MONSTROSITIES ARE BEING PLACED ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE NEW SOUTHPOINT PARK. WHAT WAS RIOC THINKING? OR NOT THINKING. MOST OF THE BENCHES FACE THE PARK, NOT THE RIVER VIEW!
WE CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT THIS OBJECT IS SUPPOSED TO BE.
AFTER WORKING SO HARD (WITH LOTS OF COMMUNITY INPUT) A WONDERFUL FDR HOPE MEMORIAL MATERIALIZED.
RIOC WAS LEFT ON THEIR OWN TO MESS UP SOUTHPOINT PARK. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN EVERYONE WAS SUPPOSEDLY “WORKING FROM HOME.” AN PANDEMIC OF BAD DESIGN.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2021
THE 431st EDITION
A Bizarre
August Tradition
Along Old
New York City’s
Waterfronts
FROM EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
Boys at Rutger’s Slip
The lazy dog days of summer along the waterfronts of late 19th century New York could could also be dangerous, thanks in part to a strange old tradition called “launching day.”
“Splinter Beach” George Bellows 1908
In 1908 On either August 1 or the first Friday in August (sources differ on exactly when it was held and how long it lasted), boys (and some men) along the city’s rivers would pick up another boy or man and launch them into the water. “Yesterday was what the boys along the water front call ‘Launching Day,'” wrote the New York World on August 3, 1897. “They throw each other into the river, clothes and all, saying, ‘Now swim and give yourself a bath.'”
The origins of launching day aren’t clear, but one Brooklyn newspaper stated in 1902 that it “has been a summer event ever since Robert Fulton launched the first steamboat into the Hudson in 1807.”
Launching Day was apparently held in Brooklyn as well. “Tomorrow will also be a fine day for the little boys along the river front who will observe ‘Launching Day,'” reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on July 31, 1897, a Saturday. “This juvenile holiday will, in all probability, last for three days, as some little boys do not like to be thrown overboard in their Sunday togs.”
Evening World headline
“August 1 has been known about the waterfront for many years as ‘Launching Day,'” wrote the New-York Herald on August 2, 1900. “Anybody who ventures on a pier is in danger of being thrown into the water….John Kriete, 21 years old, an iceman of 312 East 84th Street, pushed a workman, George Krause, of the same address, overboard at East 100th Street yesterday and fell in afterward himself. Kriete was drowned.”
“In Brooklyn the drowned body of Thomas McGullen, the 10-year-old son of John McGullen of No. 70 Hicks Street, was taken from the water at Henry Street,” wrote the New-York Tribune on August 2, 1903. “He was pushed off the pier by his playmates, who were celebrating ‘launching.’ They thought he could swim.”
The action along an East River dock
Exactly when launching day died out I’m not sure. But by the 1930s, newspapers interviewed people who recalled the tradition.
In the Daily News in 1934, a police reporter wrote: “I’ve known how to swim for 30 years because I was one of the West Side kids who used the Hudson River. We don’t have it now but then we had an annual ‘Launching Day’….Everybody near the water got thrown in, clothes and all. You had to swim or else.”
[Top photo: George Bain Collection/LOC; second image: George Bellows; Third photo: New-York Historical Society; Fourth image: New York Evening World; Fifth image: NYPL]
ED LITCHER, THOM HEYER, NINA LUBLIN, LAURA HUSSEY, ARON EISENPREISS, GLORIA HERMAN, HARA REISER ALL ARE RIGHT.
FROM WIKIPEDIA: The Elephantine Colossus (also known as the Colossal Elephant or the Elephant Colossus, or by its function as the Elephant Hotel) was a tourist attraction located on Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York City. It was built in the shape of an elephant, an example of novelty architecture. The seven story structure designed by James V. Lafferty stood above Surf Avenue and West 12th Street from 1885 until 1896, when it burnt down in a fire. During its lifespan, the thirty-one room building acted as a concert hall and amusement bazaar. It was the second of three elephant buildings built by Lafferty, preceded by the extant Lucy the Elephant near Atlantic City and followed by The Light of Asia in Cape May.
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
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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
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK (C)
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FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE R.I.H.S. WE WELCOME ALL TO LEARN ABOUT THE SOCIETY.
Our next board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, August 11th at 5 p.m. Please tell me if you want in-person or Zoom. All members and friends and those just curious are invited to attend. E-mail or text if you are interested in attending.
FRIDAY, JULY 30, 2021
The
429th Edition
The Age of Glamorous
Steamboats
on the East River
STEPHEN BLANK
The Age of Glamorous Steamboats on the East River
Stephen Blank
In my last essay, I described how splendid steamboats plied the East River as well as the Hudson. The most dazzling of these were the steamboats of the Fall River Line. Fall River Line was a combination steamboat and railroad connection between New York City and Boston that operated between 1847 and 1937. (Note, I have drawn heavily in this piece from two super articles on the Fall River Line by Michael Grace.)
What’s most interesting to me is that this combo line continued to operate – and to be a social high point – not only through the great rail era in the US but well into the time of air travel as well. It became a continuing element of high society. The Fall River Line also provides a window on the internecine struggles of the great robber barons of the Gilded Age.
Old Colony Railroad
Let’s begin with the landside, the Old Colony Railroad. The OC was a major railroad system which operated from 1845 to 1893. Its network ran from New York to Boston and southeastern Massachusetts. For many years, the OC also operated steamboat and ferry lines, including the Fall River Line. It grew by mergers and acquisitions until it was itself acquired by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in 1893. The acquisition was part of J. P. Morgan’s plan to monopolize New England transportation, including railroads and steamship lines, and build a network of electrified trolley lines to provide interurban transportation for all of southern New England. By 1912, Morgan’s railroad practically monopolized traffic from Boston to New York City.
Fall River Line The Fall River Line, known originally as the Bay State Steamboat Company, was launched in 1847, backed, among others, by members of the Borden family (remember Lizzie?). Sailing from New York, the Fall River boats steamed up the East River in the early evening; up to Hell Gate, then down the Long Island sound; calling at Newport in the middle of the night and in the morning landing at the Fall River dock. Boston was just a train ride away with connections north to Maine’s major cities and resorts.
Michael Grace writes “Of all the fleets that plied the Sound, there was never any quite like the Fall River Line. Songs were written about it. Nearly all the presidents and most of the great men and women of that long period traveled it—the famous boat train from Boston in the late afternoon, then off the cars and into the boat at the Fall River wharf, in time to dine in the line sea air while steaming down Narragansett Bay, past Newport, to head around treacherous Point Judith and thence westward through The Race into the Sound. A fine sleep and into New York in time for business in the morning: it was the recommended route.”
The Fall River Line’s first steamer was the Bay State, 300 feet long and forty wide, lit by oil lamps at night. Her cuisine attained considerable renown, at fifty cents for the grand table d’hôte dinner, served at long candlelit tables. These were no ferry boats, and they were modeled on the grand manner of the transatlantic trade. The line was so profitable that two new boats, the Empire State, and the Metropolis, could be bought out of profits in a few years. Soon, Wall Street men moved in to begin a series of major financial mergers and shufflings which lasted over many years.
Featured image Fall River Line night boats docked at Pier 14 in Manhattan, newyorksocialdiary.comFall River Steamer – Digital Commonwealth
One “Wall Street man” in particular is remembered, “Admiral” Jim Fisk (“If Vanderbilt’s a Commodore, I can be an Admiral!”) soon to be owner of everything from railroads to judges. Representing some Boston capitalists, he outsmarted Daniel Drew, a longtime rival of Vanderbilt, into selling out his rival steamboat interest, and this gave him power as the president of a great steamboat line.
After Fisk’s death, when his mistress’s other lover shot him on the stairs of the Grand Central Hotel, the line was restructured, becoming the Old Colony Steamboat Company, under railroad control. Later it was absorbed, along with the Old Colony Railroad, by Morgan’s New Haven in the 1890’s.
Competition was brisk, principally from the Stonington Line, which was called “Old Reliable,” only to run two of its best ships aground one after the other, and then to have two others, the sister ships Narragansett and Stonington, collide off Cornfield Point, near Saybrook, Connecticut, with a loss of 27 lives. Presently this line too was swallowed up in the Morgan mergers.
But the Fall River Line, with the largest and most magnificent and most perfectly equipped river going vessels in the world, remained preeminent. Its modern steam-electricity technology, brightened by music from top groups, and with grand meals in the elegant dining salon attracted the nation’s social leaders. The palatial steamboats Priscilla and Commonwealth were the greatest of the Fall River Line fleet. These ships, it was claimed, could carry as many passengers and as much freight as the great Atlantic liners, Lusitania and Mauretania, on about one-sixth the displacement. Their accommodations, it was said, were often superior to those on all but the most luxurious North Atlantic liners. With over 300 first class staterooms, plus 15 parlor bedroom suites, a crew of 250 needed to operate the Priscilla and Commonwealth.
Grace: “No steamship service under the American flag, not excluding the North Atlantic liners, was more beloved by the traveling public than the Fall River Line or more greatly mourned when it was no more. A naval architect wrote, ‘The passenger steamers of the Fall River Line are absolutely the finest ships in the world for passenger service on inland waters. We may well be proud of the Fall River Line boats as creations distinctly American along with the elegance and service found in the greatest European hotels.’”
Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company
The Gilded Age wealthy traveled elsewhere as well, to less trafficked destinations where they built vast summer “cottages”, namely Newport and Conanicut Island and Narragansett. Getting there was not convenient. A group of well to do New Yorkers decided to make things easier. Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his brother Frederick, formed the Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company with several other investors. Other members of the board included political figures like Senator George Peabody Wetmore and Congressman George Gordon King. They constructed and operated a rail line a mere three-and-a half miles long. The track ran from the mainline New York, Providence & Boston stop at Wickford Junction to the port of Wickford, where a company-owned steamboat could bring passengers across to Newport. The little steamboat was not grand, but its passengers were. The N&W began service in 1871, the start of the Gilded Age, and managed to provide combined rail and steamship service until 1925.
Travelers were soon arriving from as far away as Chicago and St. Louis. The private rail cars of the wealthy New Yorkers were backed onto the siding where the N&W’s sole locomotive patiently waited to haul them to Wickford Harbor. For those without a private Pullman parlor car, the mainline railroad added a “Newport Car” reserved for passengers also heading to the City by water.
The Sad End
But no dream lasts forever and our grand steamers were finally junked or sold. Why? The opening of the Cape Cod Cana created a faster and safer all water route. Cheaper New York-Boston rail service diminished demand. Most of all, the private automobile and an improving road network was the most important factor. As the Great Depression wore on, line after line disappeared until only the Fall River route remained of all the once far-flung New Haven Railroad steamboat network.
Last words from Michael Grace, “… a generation has grown up since the line stopped operating in 1937, a generation which never strolled the deep-carpeted saloon and decks, eyeing the drummers and men of property and occasional flashy women, and never awoke to peer through the porthole at Hell Gate Bridge and take a hearty breakfast while the ‘mammoth palace steamer’ steamed round the Battery and swung into her Hudson River berth.” Goodness, goodness, goodness. Don’t you wish you had had the opportunity to sail on the Fall River Line? (And those “flashy women”.)
SIEGEL COOPER DEPARTMENT STORE 18-19 STREETS ON SIXTH AVENUE
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)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
The three Stern brothers from Buffalo had outgrown their previous shop on West 23rd Street as well as their first New York City store, established in 1867, around the corner at 367 Sixth Avenue). So a new cathedral of commerce was needed, and it featured a stunning cast-iron facade and five stories of selling space.
Stern’s was now the city’s biggest department store—one that catered to both aspirational middle-class shoppers and the wealthy carriage trade. These elite shoppers entered a separate door on 22nd Street, so as not to rub shoulders with the riffraff.
But everyone who came to Stern’s left feeling like a million bucks.
”When the customer entered the store, he was welcomed personally by one of the Stern brothers, all of whom wore gray-striped trousers and cutaway tailcoats,” wrote the New York Times in 2001, quoting Larry Stone, who started at Stern’s in 1948 as a trainee and retired as chief executive in 1993. ”Pageboys escorted the customer to the department in which they wished to shop, and purchases were sent out in elegant horse-drawn carriages and delivered by liveried footmen.”
Stern’s was such a popular spot on 23rd Street—the northern border of what became known as the Ladies Mile Shopping District, where women were free to browse and buy without having to be escorted by their husbands or fathers—this dry goods emporium was enlarged in 1892.
The store was always a stop for tourists, too. “We got off [the Broadway car] at 23rd Street and Josie took us to the Stern Brothers, one of the large and select dry goods houses where we saw the latest fashions,” wrote 12-year-old Naomi King, who kept a travel diary of her visit to the city with her parents from Indiana in 1899. King wrote that she saw “all the new spring styles [and] the new spring color: amethyst, purple, or violet in all shades [and] stripes extending to gentlemen’s cravats in Roman colors.”
But Stern’s reign as one of the most popular shops on Ladies Mile wouldn’t last—mainly because Ladies Mile didn’t last. Macy’s was the first store to relocate uptown, from 14th Street and Sixth Avenue to Herald Square, in 1903.
Other big-name department stores followed. Stern’s made the jump to 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue in 1913, leaving their old building behind, according to a 1967 New York Times article marking the store’s centennial. For most of the 20th century, the palatial building on 23rd Street was used for light industry and commercial concerns.
The 42nd Street flagship store would ultimately close in 1970, wrote Gerard R. Wolfe in New York: A Guide to the Metropolis. By 2001, Stern’s shut down all of its stores and went out of business.
Since 2000s, Home Depot has occupied the old Stern’s dry goods palace, and it seems as if every trace of Stern’s has long been striped from the building.
Except on the facade. If you look up above the Home Depot Sign, you can see the initials “SB,” a permanent reminder of this magnificent building’s original triumphant owners.
[Top three images: NYPL Digital Collection] Tags: Home Depot 23rd Street NYC, Ladies Mile 23rd Street, Ladies Mile Shopping NYC, Stern Brothers department store NYC, Stern Brothers Store New York City, Stern’s 23rd Street NYC, Stern’s Store 42nd Street NYC Posted in Chelsea, Defunct department stores, Fashion and shopping, Old print ads, Random signage, Upper East Side
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY Can you identify this photo from today’s edition? Send you submission to ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
Take a close look and realize that this is a pavilion to the south of the Holy Spirit Chapel, today The Sanctuary. Photo from the NYC Municipal Archives. I have never seen any other images of this pavilion, on the location south of the current tented area.
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
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
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The play area in Blackwell Park was demolished today. By current standards a playground built with wooden boulders, bricks, metal slides and metal climbing device is so unsafe it had to be removed. A bulldozer made waste of the area this morning.
The site will be paved over and left to the open since RIOC canceled the reading and sitting area that would adjoin the new library.
The Learning Library will continue on the adjoining site.
It is a pity RIOC cared not for an improved area and just chose the easy solution, a bulldozer.
Do you have photos of your kids in the area? Please send them to us as a reminder of the little that remains of our original plans, either good, bad, innovative or dangerous.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 2021
427st ISSUE
All the Arches
That were Built
(and then bulldozed) in
Madison Square
FROM EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
All the arches that were built (and then bulldozed) in Madison Square Arch fever at Madison Square Park started in 1889. That’s the year a pair of elaborate wood arches festooned with American flags were built to commemorate the centennial of George Washington’s inauguration. One arch went up outside the 23rd Street and Broadway entrance to the park (above photo), and the other was constructed on the 26th Street side (below). The city threw an impressive party for the first president, but after the festivities honoring Washington ended, the two arches were reduced to rubble.
But arches in general were quite popular all over the Beaux-Arts city through the end of the Gilded Age. So 10 years later, another arch was unveiled beside the Fifth Avenue Hotel at 24th Street and Broadway.This impressive structure was the Dewey Arch (above), named for Admiral George Dewey, whose victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War earned him national hero status. Dewey was coming to New York to be honored with a parade and a flotilla of ships, and city officials hoped to welcome him in triumphant style.
The ostentatious arch reflected that spirit. “The Dewey Arch, designed by architect Charles R. Lamb, was based on the Arch of Titus in Rome and was produced by 28 sculptors,” wrote flatirondistrict.nyc. “It was topped by a quadriga, a chariot pulled by four horses running abreast. This one, in keeping with the occasion, depicted four seahorses pulling a ship.”After the Dewey celebration, calls went out to turn this temporary arch (made from staff, a mixture of plaster and wood shavings) into a permanent one. Unfortunately, the Dewey Arch was “carted away” later that year, already picked apart by vandals, according to Daniel B. Schneider in The New York Times FYI column in 1999. The public lost interest in Dewey by then anyway.
But Madison Square Park wasn’t done with arches yet. In 1918, a fourth arch, called the Victory Arch, would be unveiled at Fifth Avenue and 24th Street. The Victory Arch was the brainchild of Mayor John Hylan, a way to honor the fallen soldiers from World War I as well as the men who were returning from Europe.“The $80,000 triple arch was designed by Thomas Hastings in temporary materials and modeled after the Arch of Constantine in Rome, with relief panels commemorating important battles, war service organizations, and industrial might—like munitions makers,” wrote Christopher Gray in the New York Times in 1994.
As with the Dewey Arch, many New Yorkers wanted the Victory Arch to be permanent. Of course, it had plenty of critics as well. “Fiorello H. LaGuardia, as a candidate for President of the Board of Alderman in 1919, denounced the project as the ‘Altar of Extravagance,’ stated Gray.By 1919, thousands of doughboys had marched through the Victory Arch during the many parades held by the city. It must have been quite a shock, then, to watch the arch be demolished in the summer of 1920—a victim of “bureaucratic infighting,” according to Allison McNearney in The Daily Beast.
Madison Square Park remains arch-less a century later—but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
In 2008, the Alumni of the Metropolitan Hospital School of Nursing presented this sundial to the Octagon developer, Bruce Becker. The sundial was placed in the triangular turn-around outside the building. It was surround by three benches, flowering trees and foliage.
Last year, the current management removed the sundial and benches. We now have an oversize building sign with 3 “888” mounted on the top.
It was a sad loss of an island memento, the loss of a beautiful pear tree and three benches.
AN AREA ON THE NORTHBOUND #1 PLATFORM COLUMBUS CIRCLE STATION
HAS A UNIQUE DISPLAY OF TILE SAMPLES. THESE WERE DISCOVERED DURING RENOVATIONS. THEY HAVE BEEN PRESERVED FOR PASSENGERS TO SEE THE TYPES OF TILEWORKS THAT WERE BEING TESTED.
HARA REISER AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE 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
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Ida Abelman, Greetings from a Manhattan Artist, ca. 1939, color lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from D.C. Public Library, 1967.72.1
Ida Abelman is well known for her combination of different styles of art, including surrealism, constructivism, and social realism. It is important to define the themes in her artwork because only then can it be framed in the context of social commentary appropriate for the time period. Art themes that convey important social, economic, and political messages of the time transform the function of works from “for viewing purposes” to “for learning purposes”
Surrealism: the goal of surrealism was to release the creative unconscious through the juxtaposition of irrational images.
Constructivism: Constructivism is a form of art that supports the use of architecture, graphic design, illustration, theater, film, dance, music, and other forms of art as a practice having social impact, that is, created with a message.
Social realism: Social realism describes the work of artists that draw attention to the struggles and realistic conditions of the poor and working class. These paintings, photographs, and/or films criticize the social structure that cause or maintain these conditions.
Ida Abelman, Machine + “El” Patterns, 1935-1943, color lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Internal Revenue Service through the General Services Administration , 1962.8.76
Ida Abelman, A Manhattan Landscape with Figures, 1936, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1976.90.2
Ida Abelman, My Father Reminisces, 1937, lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from D.C. Public Library, 1967.72.4
Publisher: Published by WPA Date: 1935–43 Medium: Lithograph Dimensions: image: 10 x 12 in. (25.4 x 30.5 cm) sheet: 11 1/2 x 16 in. (29.2 x 40.6 cm) Classification: Prints Credit Line: Gift of New York City WPA, 1943
This painting most obviously demonstrates social realism by illustrating how machines encompassed men at the time. The Great Depression was characterized by a heavy emphasis in the machine industry. The Industrial Revolution, the transition to new manufacturing processes, had occurred almost 100 years ago. The most accessible job market was that of manufacturing. In this way the painting shows the struggles of the working class to find positions that paid enough to uphold themselves or their families and not physically injure themselves in the process.
Publisher: Published by WPA Date: 1937 Medium: Lithograph Dimensions: image: 14 x 10 in. (35.6 x 25.4 cm) sheet: 15 3/4 x 11 1/2 in. (40 x 29.2 cm) Classification: Prints Credit Line: Gift of the Work Projects Administration, New York, 1943
“Street Patterns” was painted by Ida Abelman in 1937, and represents an abstract depiction of the New York City Skyline from a rooftop. There is integration of skyscrapers, and the shadow made from the viewpoint seems to resemble a guitar neck. The usage of dark shades of grey, black, and white are consistent with her depressive themes. Indeed, the city seems still, which reflects the aura of the Great Depression.
Publisher:Published by Federal Art Project, WPA, New York. Date: 1937 Medium: Lithograph Dimensions: 29.5 x 38.4 cm. (11.6 x 15.1 in.) Classification: Prints
“Wonders of Our Time” was painted by Ida Abelman in 1937 and can be found in the Whitney Museum of Art. It is consistent with the social changes of New York City at the time, as the city had begun construction on the subway system only 30 years prior, and it was rapidly spreading. It varies in its black, white, and grey shades to create a somber mood regarding the city. This can be connected to using the subway as a work commute, path to interviews, or other events that are associated with the Great Depression. The odd angles of the train and exaggerated facial expressions uphold Abelman’s constant themes of Surrealism. “Some of the figures look back at the viewer as if, in an act of desperation, to ask for help. The scene reveals an unnerving parallel between competition for seats among subway riders and Dawin’s theory of natural selection. As Abelman’s passengers squeeze their way into the war, the fittest, or the most aggressive, get seats while the weakest are left behind. Crowding was always a problem in the subway, but after World War I it became unbearable.”
RENDERINGS OF THE OCTAGON FROM “THE ISLAND NOBODY KNOWS” UDC 1969 THOM HEYER, NANCY BROWN, HARA REISER, JOAN BROOKS, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, ARLENE BESSENOFF 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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM WORDPRESS
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