DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM CORNELL TECH A NEW WATERFRONT WALKWAY/PROMENADE IS TAKING SHAPE. ENJOY WATCHING THE GIANT CRANES AND BARGES WORKING IN THE RIVER.
YOU CAN WATCH PROGRESS AS NEW SECTIONS ARE FLOATED INTO PLACE EVERY WEEKEND.
A rendering of the East Midtown Greenway, as it will appear looking north near East 54th Street. (New York City Economic Development Corporation)
The creation of the East Midtown Greenway (EMG), a 1.5-acre public space stretching from East 53rd to 61st Streets along the waterfront, got underway Friday. The project, to be completed by 2022, is part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway initiative to wrap the entire perimeter of Manhattan with accessible public spaces and safe bicycle paths. The midtown space will close one of the largest remaining gaps in the $250 million city initiative, announced by Mayor de Blasio in 2018, to connect 32 miles of Manhattan waterfront esplanade.
The Manhattan Waterfront Greenaway project will close gaps in Inwood, Harlem, and East Harlem, as well as the East Midtown space. The goal is to connect neighborhoods to their waterfronts and add about 15 acres of open space. The planned esplanade will connect the bike paths that line the city’s perimeter so that cyclists can safely circle Manhattan without veering off into city streets.
After a six-month delay during the pandemic, construction has resumed on the long-awaited project adding a new eight-block stretch to the East River Esplanade.
The East Midtown Greenway will stretch between East 53rd and 61st streets, creating new waterfront access and public space and bringing the city closer to its long-held goal of creating a continuous, 32-mile loop around Manhattan.
The existing esplanade runs north above East 60th Street and into East Harlem. Construction started in November on the new $100 million greenway, which will be built directly above the East River, but came to a halt in the spring as the coronavirus took hold.
Now, even as the city faces a severe fiscal shortfall that has thrown a wrench into many capital projects, the greenway will be allowed to restart construction since work had already begun when the pandemic hit.
RENDERINGS FOR THE PROJECT
(FINAL PLANS MAY HAVE CHANGED)
Portion will be over the water. Remember when there was a temporary roadway in this area when the FR Drive was being renovated?
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY GLORIA HERMAN AND ED LITCHER GOT IT. CON ED HEADQUARTERS 14TH STREET AND IRVING PLACE
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
UPPER EAST SIDE PATCH NYC/EDC 6SQ FT
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Russian-born Saul Kovner studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City with Charles Hawthorne and William Auerbach-Levy, considered one of America’s most renowned caricaturists. Kovner was employed as a painter and printmaker by the Federal Art Project, a branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) created during the Great Depression to give financial and moral support to America’s artists. He often dropped his surname when signing his prints, and is also known simply as “Saul.” After his training at the National Academy of Design, Kovner maintained a studio near Central Park, creating paintings and drawings of the city and its people. He later moved to California and exhibited widely on the West Coast.
Saul Kovner, Tompkins Park, N.Y. City, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum acquisition, 1980.48
Saul Kovner’s Tompkins Park, N.Y. City was painted in 1934, under the patronage of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a New Deal program created by the federal government to offer work and financial support to America’s artists during the Great Depression. The public park, situated in the Alphabet City section of Manhattan’s East Village, is named in honor of Daniel D. Tompkins (1774−1825), who served as governor of New York from 1807 to 1817 and as vice president of the United States under James Monroe from 1817 to 1825. The PWAP encouraged their commissioned artists to capture “the American Scene,” and in this painting Kovner conveys strong messages of community spirit and American values. Children and adults enjoy winter in the park, building snowmen and playing with sleds; the presence of the Stars and Stripes in the center of the work places this as a uniquely American scene.
Saul Kovner, Skating in Central Park, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Newark Museum, 1966.31.10
Saul Kovner, Smoke and Steam, 1939, lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Audrey McMahon, 1968.98.16
Eastside Backyards, 1934
TENTING IN YOSEMITE HOT SUMMER NIGHT WATERFRONT, BALBOA SNOW OVER CROTONA PARK
(1) Frank Diaz Escalet, “Mask of Solitudes: A Portrait of Frank Diaz Escalet,” interview for La Plaza, PBS/WGBH Boston, Nov. 3, 1988. (2) Interview with Derek Fowles, “Portrait of an artist’s life: Frank Diaz Escalet paints from experience,” University of Massachusetts Amherst Student Newsletter, Sept. 29-Oct. 20, 1994. (3) Escalet, “Mask of Solitudes,” interview for La Plaza, 1988. (4) Michael R. Vosburgh, “Latin artist portrays ‘life’ in his work,” The Daily Globe, Worthington, Minnesota, Oct. 1995. (5) Jared Quinn, “MultiCultural Center Showcases African-American Exhibit Illustrating Cultural Influences,” UC Santa Barbara Daily Nexus, Santa Barbara, California, Oct. 8, 1999. (6) Escalet, “Mask of Solitudes,” interview for La Plaza, 1988. (7) Interview with Jenifer McKim, The Boston Globe, Nov. 10, 1996.
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Title:New York, 1695 Creator:Miller, John, 1666-1724 Date:[1860?–1869?]Format: Maps/Atlases Location:Boston Public Library
Title: Plan of New York Creator: Kirkham, Major Date: [1912?] Format: Maps/Atlases Location: Boston Public Library
Miller’s new map of the city of New-York Miller’s new map of the city of New York with a list of all the streets, with reference to the map, and views of some of the principal buildings
Title:Map of New-York Creator:Geo. H. Walker & Co Date:1898 Format:Maps/Atlases Location:Boston Public Library Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
Title: New York City : the business center of the borough of Manhattan Creator: Rummell, Richard, 1848-1924 Creator: King, Moses, 1853-1909 Creator: A.W. Elson & Co
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY SAUL STEINBERF NEW YORKER COVER FROM MARCH 29, 1976
CLARA BELLA, GUY LUDWIG, ARON EISENPRIESS, HARA REISER, JAY JACOBON, ED LITCHER, LAURA HUSSEY ALL KENEW THE ANSWER
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Elizabeth Olds, Dead End Beach, ca. 1940-1945, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.43
Elizabeth Olds (December 10, 1896 – March 4, 1991) was an American artist known for her work in developing silkscreen as a fine arts medium. She was a painter and illustrator, but is primarily known as a printmaker, using silkscreen, woodcut, lithography processes. In 1926, she became the first female honored with the Guggenheim Fellowship. She studied under George Luks,[4] was a Social Realist, and worked for the Public Works of Art Project and Federal Art Project during the Great Depression. In her later career, Olds wrote and illustrated six children’s books.
Elizabeth Olds, The Middle Class, ca. 1939, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.7
Early life and education
Olds was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to a middle-class family.[4] Olds’s mother was an art historian, and her mother exposed Olds and her sister, Eleanor, to art through visits to the Walker Art Center and Minneapolis Institute of Arts.[Olds’s art was first documented in her high school yearbook, featuring a cartoon sketch of a goose at tea.[ She studied Home Economics and Architectural Drawing at the University of Minnesota from 1916-1918, and received a scholarship to study at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design from 1918-1921. In 1921, Olds received another scholarship to study at the Art Students League of New York where she studied under George Luks.
Career
Early works The early style of Olds reflects Luks’s influence on her art. The pair experimented with the style and themes of the Ashcan school, visiting the Lower East Side of New York to observe the exotic urban immigrant. During the summers from 1923-1925, Olds was invited to the circles of The Roots and their friends and the Percy Saunders of Clinton, New York.[4] In 1925, with the help of Elihu Root and some bankers, Olds was funded to travel to France.[4] While in France, she observed and sketched the famous circus family, the Fratellini family, and their show, “Cirque d’Hiver.”Olds later joined the troupe as a trick bareback rider.In 1926, Olds became the first woman awarded with the Guggenheim Fellowship, and was granted further travel in Europe.
Elizabeth Olds, Harlem River Bridges, ca. 1935-1940, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.37
Elizabeth Olds, Harlem River Bridges, 1940, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.32
Great Depression
For those visiting the Hunters Point area of Queens this summer, MoMA’s PS1 outdoor courtyard will feature an experiment in creative ecologies. As a leading space within the neighborhood’s community, the new installation will reimagine the use and access of the PS1 courtyard. It will feature Rashid Johnson’s Stage, a participatory installation and sound work, which draws on the history of the microphone as a tool of protest and public oratory. It will feature a yellow powder-coated stage, with Johnson’s signature markings engraved onto it, and five SM58 microphones of varying heights. Stage’s design echoes that of other unofficial sites of public intellectual and cultural life like Harlem’s 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. Visitors will have the opportunity to speak to the public on the stage, with their words being recorded and broadcasted in the courtyard. In addition, the stage will feature a number of performances from artists, activists, poets, and musicians.
Two Boys, a painting by Elizabeth Olds for the United States Works Progress Administration Olds was fairly sheltered from the Great Depression when she returned to the U.S. in 1929. In 1932, Olds viewed José Clemente Orozco’s nearly finished murals at Dartmouth College, and was inspired by his expressive use of form and political themes.The same year, she moved to Omaha, Nebraska to paint portraits of the family of Samuel Rees, a local industrialist.[6] Olds completed the project, but she became frustrated with the monotony of painting portraits. At the same time Olds was studying the basics of lithography at Rees’s printing business.
From 1933-1934, Olds was invited to join the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in Omaha. Under the PWAP, Olds created a series of lithographs featuring the bread lines, shelters, and clinics of the Great Depression.[ Olds’s break from portraiture was fruitful as she developed her style and content, which like Orozco’s murals, used broad, expressive lines and portrayed political themes. Later, Olds studied at a meat packing plant, which inspired her ‘’Stockyard Series’’. “Sheep Skinners,” one of the ten black-and-white lithographs, was exhibited in 1935 in the Weyhe Gallery in New York as one of the “Fifty Best Prints of the Year.”
From 1935 until the early 1940s, Olds was a nonrelief employee for the Works Progress Administration-Federal Art Project (WPA-FAP) in the Graphic Arts Division in New York,[9] where she helped younger artists in the silkscreen unit.[10] She also joined the American Artists’ Congress, Artists Union, and other groups with similar interests. Olds became friends with Harry Gottlieb, another nonrelief artist who also focused on industrialism.[7] Together, they observed the mining and steel industries of New York, and their research lead to Olds’s creation of her award-winning print, “Miner Joe.”[ Olds used both silkscreen and lithography for the prints for ‘‘Miner Joe,’’ but it was her lithograph that won first place for the Philadelphia Print Club competition in 1938.
Olds and Gottlieb experimented with silkscreen printing as a fine arts medium. They accomplished this with a few other artists in the silkscreen unit of the Graphic Arts Division of the WPA-FAP in New York. From 1939 until 1941, Olds and Gottlieb opened and ran the independent Silk Screen School for students interested in learning the newest printmaking technologies.Her work was included in the 1940 MoMA show American Color Prints Under $10. The show was organized as a vehicle for bringing affordable fine art prints to the general public.
Olds submitted and reproduced 10 prints in The New Masses in 1936 and 1937, a leftist magazine at the time. In the United American Artists under the Public Use of Art Committee, Olds and other artists worked to produce murals along New York City Subway walls, but the murals were never installed.] Olds’s art reflected her leftist political views, but also her social and political awareness at the time. As a WPA-FAP employee, Olds’s prints were intended to go to the government for their purposes, but she selectively sent her leftist prints to George C. Miller, an independent lithographer.
Elizabeth Olds, Me and Her, ca. 1940-1970, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.31
Elizabeth Olds, Harlem Musicians, ca. 1937, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American ArElizabeth Olds,
Two Terns Parading, 1955, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.t, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.2
Elizabeth Olds, Burlesque, ca. 1935-1945, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.40
Elizabeth Olds, Birds in a Hurry, 1954, color woodcut and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1984.31.46
Later works
After the war, Olds redirected her skills and began experimenting with watercolor, collage, and woodblock prints] Her silk screen, “Three Alarm Fire” (1945), prompted Roberta Fansler to suggest that Olds should illustrate children’s books.] From 1945-1963, Olds wrote and illustrated six children’s books. In three of her books, Olds wrote about firefighters, trains, and oil, educating her readers about industrialism.
In the early 1950s, Olds was hired as an illustrator-reporter for The New Republic and Fortune (magazine).[18] In the summers of the 1950s and 1960s, Olds was awarded artist-in-residence positions at the artists’ colonies of Yaddo near Saratoga Springs in New York and McDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Her papers are held at the University of Texas.
THE ORIGINAL WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL AT 350 FIFTH AVENUE ANDY SPARBERG 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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM WIKIPEDIA
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LAURA HUSSEY, LINDA BECKER & ED LITCHER GOT IT RIGHT
In 1969, David Rockefeller commissioned Jean Dubuffet to create a sculpture to be placed in front of the Chase Manhattan Building . The sculpture, Group of Four Trees, towers above the visitor in varying heights, in Dubuffet’s signature loopy, childlike style. It feels as if you are almost walking into a children’s coloring book, with uncolored trees leaping from the pages and growing above you. A fantasy contrast before entering a staunch financial institution! This coloring book effect is seemingly what Dubuffet intended, calling them not sculptures but drawings, which extend and expand into space.
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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Invasives by Jean Shin, Courtesy of BravinLee programs . Through September 13, 2021
Karin Bravin‘s public art exhibition, Re: Growth, A Celebration of Art, Riverside Park and the New York Spirit, will be on display in Riverside Park, spanning from 64th Street to 151st Street. It was created in celebration of Riverside Park Conservancy‘s 35th Anniversary and as a testament to the City and Park’s resilience this past year. The exhibition includes 16 site-specific installations and ten flag and banner projects — centered around the theme of regrowth in the literal, metaphorical, poetic, and philosophical sense. Some of the featured artists in the exhibition include Jean Shin, Vanessa Albury, Weenie Huang, Mary Mattingly, David Shaw Jean Shin, Woolpunk, and many others, some of whom’s work will be discussed later.
In honor of Pride month, Chilean-born street artist Dasic Fernández painted the historic Doyers Street in Chinatown in a range of beautiful colors from all across the rainbow. In the past, Doyers Street was once known as “the Bloody Angle,” for the amount of gang violence that took place in the early 20th century. The breathtaking mural that now covers the street spans 4,851 square feet in length and includes 44 unique colors, painted across a period of just three-and-a-half days. Fernández received information for the mural’s design from rice cultivation terraces—a common landscape seen throughout China. Using the Anamorphism technique, the mural appears 3D at certain points, most notably from the corner of Pell or Bowery streets, perfectly integrating the mural into its surrounding environment.
Doyers Street’s vibrant makeover is part of New York City’s Asphalt Art Activation series, which involves the partnership between NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) and artists to paint large scale-murals onto repurposed asphalt that are pedestrianized public spaces. Typical sites the program has transformed include curb extensions, slip lane closures, bike share lanes, and temporary plazas, with sizes ranging anywhere from 1,000 to 8,000 square feet. In addition, as part of the city’s Open Streets program, Doyers is fully closed to all vehicular traffic from Bowery to Pell streets daily from noon to 11:00 p.m. Given this, Doyers Street serves as the perfect venue for visitors to walk through and enjoy Fernández’s mural. The mural will be on display for the following 11 months, weather permitting.
Four Currents by Wendy Letven, Courtesy of Wendy Letven
This summer, New Jersey-based multi-disciplinary artist Wendy Letven will have two sculpture works on display in Riverside Park as part of Karin Bravin’s Re:Growth public art exhibition. The first, There Are Holes In My Perception Of The Forest, located at 125th and Riverside Drive, features an aluminum-cut structure painted in various shades of blue, brown, green, and yellow. The structure’s holes allow in the careful flow of light work to evoke the sensation of dappled light and the swirling effect of wind on trees. In addition, the artwork intentionally uses negative space to connote gaps in Letven’s perception of the world around her and the presence of the unseen forces of nature at work.
Letven’s second piece, Four Currents, is located at 83rd Street on the waterfront. It was conceived to represent the convergence of energies surrounding Riverside Park — the flow of the Hudson River, the park’s urban surroundings, the energy of the sun, and the area’s powerful wind forces. Both sculptures will be on display through September 13, 2021.
The Fabulous Plant of Rejuvenation is a 90-foot-tall mural by Baxter St alum Ivan Forde, located on the façade of the newly built Rockaway Hotel in Rockaway Beach, Queens. The mural was curated by Michi Jigarjian, Managing Partner, Creative/Social Impact Officer, with support from 7G Foundation and Facebook Open Arts. Inaugurated on June 18th, 2021, the artwork draws inspiration from the legacy of Rockaway‘s’ Indigenous Lenape people and Forde’s own ancestry — including conversations with his father on the healing powers of water and vegetation. Included in the mural is a depiction of an underwater seascape of poetic sea characters alongside local fish and birds. Its centerpiece is the mythical plant from the ancient Mesopotamian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh. In addition, the mural features a series of healing plants, connected to Forde’s birthplace of Guyana, the Rockaways, and other cultures across the globe.
“My project takes cues from the structures of epic poetry, conversations with ecologists and botanists, and folk traditions our grandmothers and great-grandmothers knew,” Forde said. “These knowledge systems are paramount to the discussions the mural aims to hold space for and align with a symbiotic relationship to nature essential for healing both the human species undergoing a global pandemic and the planet itself.”
La Femme et L’oiseau fontaine and The Stories of the Past Rejoice through Children’s Skies, Photo by Marissa Alper, Courtesy of MoMA PS1.
Besides Stage, the PS1 outdoor courtyard will also host a series of Thought Collectives that test out new and creative propositions for the future usage of public spaces. One of these collectives will be Niki de Saint Phalle‘s 1967 sculpture La Femme et L’oiseau fontaine, part of a survey of Saint Phalle’s work Structures for Life on display through September 6th, 2021. The sculpture serves as a perfect example of the artist’s early Nana sculptures, which served as monuments of female empowerment and symbols of the growing movement to move the display of artwork outside the confines of indoor art gallery’s. Finally, along the wall surrounding Saint Phalle’s sculpture will be Raul de Nieves’ 2021 installation, The Stories of the Past Rejoice through Children’s Skies. The installation was influenced by Mexican craft traditions, with its structure resembling that of stained glass windows — forcing its viewers into a church-like space of reflection.
Planeta Abuelx, Disease Throwers, Guadalupe Maravilla, Socrates Sculpture Park and PPOW Gallery. Image by Sara Morgan.
Through Planeta Abuelx, on display at Socrates Sculpture Park, artist Guadalupe Maravilla expands on their interest in Indigenous holistic healing practices through sculpture. The piece was created in response to a curatorial invitation to use the park’s five-acre landscape as a sanctuary for recuperation. Made on site, Maravilla’s work focuses on physical and emotional health through mutual and holistic care works in harmony with the park’s sheltered green space.
Over the course of the Planeta Abuelx exhibition, Maravilla will activate the projects on view through a series of public programs including community workshops and therapeutic sound baths. The exhibition will be on view through Sept. 5.
M. FRANK, JOAN BROOKS, HARA REISER, LAURA HUSSEY, MITCH ELINSON,
ALL SAID HAVANA!! MUY BUENO
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)
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
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Romanticized by Hollywood as a fearless and dashing mob boss, Lucky Luciano was one of the biggest criminal minds of the 20th century. Should he have lived in a different era and applied himself to a legitimate business venture, he could have climbed to the very top of the corporate ladder. He is considered the father of modern organized crime, since he was the one who redesigned the structure of mafia essentially molding it into “organized” crime. He replaced traditional rule by the “Boss of all Bosses” in favor of a ruling committee – the commission – the governing body of the American Mafia.
Salvatore Lucania, born in 1897 in Sicily, arrived in New York with his family at the tender age of 9, settling on the Lower East Side and quickly becoming a crime prodigy. Earning a meager, honest living through diligent, hard work didn’t appeal to him. By the age of 10, he was already involved in mugging, shoplifting, gambling, and extortion. Sometime later he was jailed for selling heroin, which served as an opportunity to complete his criminal education.
By 1916 he was a leading member of the Five Points Gang but, most importantly, befriended Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, young Jewish gangsters who became his companions in crime for life.
On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, otherwise known as Prohibition, took effect, opening a world of possibilities to the young criminal minds. At the time Lower Manhattan was run by two competing mafia bosses: Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. Acting as a hired gun for Masseria, Luciano earned his first serious gangster stripes. In the early 1920s, Luciano and his associates offered their services to Arnold Rothstein, known as The Brain or The Man Uptown. Mr. Rothstein was the person who first realized that the Prohibition was a business opportunity and a means to enormous wealth. According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Rothstein “transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top.” Seeing talent and ambition in Lucky, Rothstein groomed him and taught him how to run bootleg alcohol as a business, as well as how to dress, appreciate finer things in life and move in high society, transforming a street rat into a polished, well dressed, respectable mobster. Rothstein met his end in 1928 when he was assassinated for failing to pay a gambling debt.
In contrast with poor mannered, crude, traditional mafia bosses, Lucky Luciano was a progressive mobster with “equal opportunity” employment policies – he was willing to work not only with Italians but also Jewish and Irish gangsters, as long as there was money to be made.
In 1929, Luciano was forced into a limousine at gunpoint, beaten, stabbed, and left for dead on Staten Island. He somehow survived the ordeal but was forever marked with a scar and droopy eye. The incident most likely earned him the moniker “Lucky.”
Young Luciano was not only fearless but also smart and calculating which insured his survival in the brutal world run by mafia cut-throats. Collaborating with brainy, cool-headed Meyer Lansky, he figured out a way to play Masseria and Maranzano against each other, eventually assassinating them both.
With Maranzano and Masseria out of the way, Luciano climbed to the top of the ladder, controlling illegal gambling, extortion, bookmaking, loansharking, drug trafficking, garbage hauling, construction, Garment District businesses, and trucking. Instead of going the traditional route and crowning himself as “capo di tutti capi” – Boss of all Bosses, he created the Commission to serve as the governing body for organized crime. The Commission was originally composed of representatives of the Five Families of New York City, the Buffalo crime family, and the Chicago Outfit of Al Capone. In theory, all the decision-making was done democratically by majority vote, but in reality, was controlled by Luciano.
By the 1930s Luciano was presiding over bootlegging, narcotics, loansharking, labor union rackets and prostitution. He was swimming in money and power, he dressed like a dandy and kept a very expensive suite in Waldorf Astoria. It all came crashing down in 1936 when Lucky ran out of luck and was arrested by special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey on charges of facilitating prostitution. Luciano was convicted and sentenced to 30 to 50 years.
But this is not how the story ends. With connections and money, Lucky ran the prison as well as the Commission from the inside, but, alas, could not buy himself an appeal. His lucky break came during WWII. The US government was paranoid about German war vessels entering NY Harbor. Since the Mafia controlled the waterfront, a deal was struck in which the mafia would cooperate with the US Navy in providing intelligence, assuring lack of sabotage, and tightening waterfront security in exchange for a commutation of Luciano’s sentence. He was released from prison in 1946 and immediately deported to Italy.
The criminal mastermind did not enjoy his forced retirement, especially when he knew there was so much money to be made in heroin. Since running the operation from overseas was not very convenient, Luciano secretly moved to Havana, Cuba. His objective was to be closer to the US so that he could resume control over American Mafia operations and eventually return home. At the time, Lansky was already established as a major investor in Cuban gambling and hotel projects. In 1946, Lansky called a meeting of the heads of the major crime families in Havana, dubbed the Havana Conference. The Conference, which took place at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, was organized to address the following important topics: the heroin trade, Cuban gambling, and what to do about Bugsy Siegel and his floundering Flamingo Hotel project in Las Vegas.
After Luciano was deported from Cuba, he was shipped back to Italy where despite the fact that he was under close Italian police scrutiny, he continued to direct the drug traffic into the US. Lucky Luciano died of a heart attack in 1962 at the Naples airport, where he had gone to meet with a movie producer considering making a film based on his biography. With the permission of the US government, Luciano’s relatives took his body back to New York for burial. He was laid to rest in St. John’s Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens.
BEMELMAN’S BAR AT THE CARLYLE LAURA HUSSEY AND ARLENE BESSENOFF 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)
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PortableNYC – New York history, architecture and secrets
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Meredith Ward Fine Art is pleased to present Frank Diaz Escalet (1930-2012), an exhibition of 18 paintings and inlaid cut leather works and on view from May 14 through June 25, 2021. This will be the first exhibition of Escalet’s work since the artist’s death. Almost entirely self-taught, Puerto Rican-born Escalet was a painter and master leathercrafter, and developed his own technique for creating images out of cut leather that vividly capture the dynamics of a scene.
V.E. DAY 1976
FROM THE CATALOG:
Frank Diaz Escalet (1930-2012) was filled with a desire to make things from a young age. Almost entirely self-taught, Escalet picked up what he knew about creating art wherever he could. His story is one of invention, adversity, and resilience, but perhaps more than anything else, curiosity was the true wellspring of his work. Escalet was born on March 16, 1930, in Ponce, Puerto Rico. At the age of four, he moved with his family to New York City, where he was raised in Greenwich Village and Spanish Harlem. Growing up in a poor, immigrant family, Escalet drew his own comic books. When he discovered that the model airplanes he designed on brown paper shopping bags could actually fly, he sold them to his friends. At the age of 13, Escalet started working to help support his family. He delivered blocks of ice, firewood, and cans of kerosene around the neighborhood before and after school and on the weekends, and would be lucky to get a nickel tip. After eighth grade, Escalet dropped out of school to work full-time factory jobs and always felt the lack of formal education. Yet, he took full advantage of whatever opportunities he had, and through perseverance, achieved success and recognition. “The more of a challenge something is,” he once said, “the more fanatical I become. There’s a tremendous drive within myself that I will not stop. I will not let it beat me.”
Escalet enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1947. After serving for three years, mostly in Texas, he briefly went to school under the GI Bill for automotive mechanics. However, when the Korean War broke out in June of 1950, he reenlisted hoping to travel. Stationed in Liverpool, England for three years where he was in charge of unloading American ships, Escalet noted, “I identified with the Irish laborers in the Liverpool docks. We would party and everything else, and I really got to know those people. I have a deep love for them.” In 1953, Escalet married his first wife. They had two daughters, but marriage was short lived and they divorced in 1955.
After the war, Escalet returned to New York. While working in a garage changing tires and pumping gas, he took the opportunity to apprentice in coppersmithing after meeting a customer who made copper tables and lamps. Escalet then began silversmithing and opened his own jewelry shop in 1956 called, “The Talent Shop.” Soon after, he moved into the more profitable leather goods and, with just $80 in his pocket, opened a leathercraft shop in 1958 in Greenwich Village, The House of Escalet.
Escalet spent 17 years as a master leathercrafter. By the early 1960s, he had developed a celebrity clientele, designing and creating leather garments for Sly and the Family Stone, The Rolling Stones, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and Aretha Franklin. At one point, his shop was so successful that he had five salesmen working for him. The House of Escalet undertook high-profile commissions from Pablo Casals to make a leather cello case, and from the Museum of Modern Art to design and create leather cushions for the stone slab seats in the museum’s sculpture garden.
In 1964, Escalet married his second wife, Marjorie, a painter who worked in oils and had some training. They moved into a large loft in the Bowery, in which Escalet built rooms so that they had living space in the center and each had a studio on either end. Marjorie recalled that Escalet would frequent jazz clubs to unwind after work. In February 1968, their son Frank Danny Escalet (Danny) was born. Concerned about raising a child in New York City, in 1971 the Escalets moved to Eastport, Maine, in Washington County, where they lived for the next 11 years.
Speaking about Washington County, Escalet remarked, “I got taken in by the beauty, I mean, it was nature in the raw, it was really fantastically beautiful up there.” (3) Despite the beauty of their new surroundings, these were tough years for the Escalets. They opened a shop called Pandora’s Box and, for extra income, Escalet taught leathercraft to the native Passamaquoddy people through a government program. However, the social acceptance and business success they had enjoyed in New York City did not transfer to the remotest reaches of downeast Maine. There was no way for them to earn a living and they struggled to make ends meet.
Perhaps it was in response to these hardships that Escalet began making his inlaid leather compositions in 1974. Drawing on memories and personal experiences, he created bold and innovative works that speak to the joys and hardships of ordinary people. Conceived with what he called a “birds-eye-view of the world,” his compositions chronicle the dignity and determination of laborers, iron workers, lobstermen, and railroad workers. Images emerged from his childhood in Puerto Rico, his time in Texas and England, and from hanging out in New York City jazz clubs. They tell the stories of his life and the lives of those around him, and reflect the experiences of immigrants, Latin Americans, and people of color. “I always portray life, the story-telling of people,” he said. “Today my work tells of Latin Americans, their struggles, hopes, dreams, and sorrows.”
The social atmosphere of Washington County was starkly different from bohemian lower Manhattan. Whereas they felt part of the cultural fabric in New York, the Escalets were outcasts in Washington County and their son, Danny, was brutally bullied in school. When he was forced to stand on a fractured leg, the Escalets sued the town and settled out of court. Shortly after, they moved to Kennebunkport, where Escalet reestablished The House of Escalet as a gallery and studio. In 1986, Danny, who was severely depressed and had become a heavy drug user, committed suicide at the age of 18. Escalet attributed this act to the psychological damage his son had suffered from being bullied in school.
Heartbroken, Escalet threw himself into his work. At the age of 55, he began painting more consistently, first with his wife’s oil paints and then with acrylics, which better suited his quick painting style. Instead of using an easel, he preferred to paint on his leather workbench. Escalet noted, “I paint people. I paint life. Disaster or happiness. Nothing is planned. That’s how I capture things—in the spur of the moment.” (5) In the late 1980s, he also began working in sculpture using found metal pieces scavenged from building sites. Speaking on the diversity of his art practice, Escalet remarked, “as a rule, it happens by being dictated by what materials are available, what’s on hand.” (6)
Within a decade, Escalet was featured on three different television programs, including a 1988 episode of La Plaza, a Public Broadcasting program targeted at Latin Americans. In the 1990s, Escalet began exhibiting widely. In 1991, 135 of his works were selected to travel abroad in a five-year World Peace Art Tour through 7 countries and 15 museums behind the Iron Curtain. Escalet had multiple one-person shows at higher education institutions, including Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Pennsylvania State University. He was also included in group exhibitions at the Housatonic Museum, Bridgeport, Connecticut and the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut.
Always mindful of the value of the education that he had missed, Escalet donated hundreds of lithographs of his work to public schools in Massachusetts, New York, and Texas in the mid-1990s. He enjoyed exhibiting at colleges and universities, and used those exhibitions as opportunities to share his story. In 1996, Escalet stated:
I have quite a track record as far as achieving things, although it wasn’t quite mapped out for me. The road wasn’t even paved. I want to give kids some inspiration, to bring out their talents. … I always worked with my hands. I grabbed everything that was anything, and was able to turn it into things. … I know there are kids going through the same things. This is to wake up a sleeping giant. The one thing about art is there is no end to it. … You reach your goal and you are beat and exhausted, but if you just look into the horizon, there is never enough time in the day to continue. (7)
The Escalets lived in Kennebunkport for the rest of their lives. Escalet continued to exhibit locally late into his life and died February 12, 2012, a little over six months after Marjorie passed away. He is buried in the Southern Maine Veterans Cemetery.
(1) Frank Diaz Escalet, “Mask of Solitudes: A Portrait of Frank Diaz Escalet,” interview for La Plaza, PBS/WGBH Boston, Nov. 3, 1988. (2) Interview with Derek Fowles, “Portrait of an artist’s life: Frank Diaz Escalet paints from experience,” University of Massachusetts Amherst Student Newsletter, Sept. 29-Oct. 20, 1994. (3) Escalet, “Mask of Solitudes,” interview for La Plaza, 1988. (4) Michael R. Vosburgh, “Latin artist portrays ‘life’ in his work,” The Daily Globe, Worthington, Minnesota, Oct. 1995. (5) Jared Quinn, “MultiCultural Center Showcases African-American Exhibit Illustrating Cultural Influences,” UC Santa Barbara Daily Nexus, Santa Barbara, California, Oct. 8, 1999. (6) Escalet, “Mask of Solitudes,” interview for La Plaza, 1988. (7) Interview with Jenifer McKim, The Boston Globe, Nov. 10, 1996.
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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!!
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PortableNYC – New York history, architecture and secrets
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In 1920 Park Avenue was much-changed. Once a mixed bag of small houses and businesses like butcher shops and groceries; it now saw the rise of modern apartment buildings and mansions. The soot-belching locomotives had years ago been moved below street level, making the avenue acceptable to well-heeled residents. No. 1145 Park Avenue was a narrow three story brownstone, just 16 feet wide. By 1898 it was home to Doctor Jennie E. Gore, a permanent member of the Homoeopathic Medical Society of the State of New York and a member of the staff of the Hospital of the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women. Dr. Gore leased the house from another physician, Dr. James V. S. Wooley, who owned several other properties. Unlike many doctors at the time, she preferred to operate her medical office not from the house, but at No. 615 East 79th Street (office hours were 11 to 2 “except Sundays’). On November 5, 1912 The Sun pointed out the feverish buying and redevelopment of the area around No. 1145 Park Avenue. No. 1215 Park Avenue, “a three-story high stoop dwelling,” had just been sold, and Mrs. Frederick Bronson purchased the northeast corner of Park Avenue and 91st Street, abutting No. 1145, “where she is building two private residences.” She then acquired and resold No. 1145. The newspaper said that almost simultaneously “Robert S. Minturn acquired for the site of two residences, one for himself, the old Ursuline Convent property at the northwest corner of Ninety-third street and Park avenue. Last month the sale of the northeast cor5ner of Park avenue and Ninety-fourth street was reported, and the purchaser will alter the building, a dwelling of the American basement type for his own use.” No. 1145 became home to Horatio N. Gardner. Ignoring the flurry of redevelopment, Gardener seems to have been satisfied with the Victorian appearance of his old brownstone. In the meantime silent films had evolved from nickelodeon attractions to “photo plays” and lavish motion picture theaters were being constructed. The star status of stage actors and actresses was suddenly being shared by motion picture artists. Far away in Dallas, Texas, young Mae Elizabeth Hampton longed for the live of a silver screen star. Despite family reservations (she later told a reporter “but you should have seen my grandmother! She was a Quakeress and she brought me up), she traveled to New Orleans where she enrolled in the Sophie Newcomb School. After she won a newspaper beauty contest “there were several immediate and flattering offers to act in the silent drama,” reported the New-York Tribune several years later. But Hampton (she took the name Hope for professional purposes) held out. “Miss Hampton, conscious of her own limitations, realized wisely that without experience, as she was, her career on the screen would be disappointingly brief.” Hope Hampton relocated to New York City, the epicenter of the film industry, and enrolled in Sargent’s Drama School—a two year course. After a single year, in 1919, the faculty graduated her, feeling “she had made herself ready.” Part of the graduation process was an “annual presentation of the dramatic talent of the school.” Forty-eight-year old Jules E. Brulatour was in the audience that year and Hope Hampton caught his attention. Brulatour was, as described by the New-York Tribune, “one of the deans of the motion picture industry.” Hope Hampton was on the way to stardom.
The silent screen star would become famous for her wardrobe — photo from the collection of the Library of Congress.
While the 21-year old actress’s dreams were beginning to come true, Horatio N. Gardener’s were crashing. On August 29, 1918 The Sun had reported on his petition of voluntary bankruptcy. In September 1920 his old brownstone house on Park Avenue was purchased by Holborn Realty Co. and a month later the New-York Tribune reported that the firm was “reconstructing the house into a whitestone American basement dwelling.” As Park Avenue was being transformed into an upscale, modern thoroughfare, Holborn Realty had commissioned esteemed architect Emery Roth give the house a total make-over. The result was a dignified four-story mansion with one expansive window at each of the upper levels. Roth introduced the 19th century building to the Roaring Twenties with straight lines, sparse ornamentation and up-to-the-minute interiors.
No. 1145 is third from right in this 1929 photograph. Only one unaltered brownstone remains on the block. from the collection of the New York Public Library.
As the house was being completed, the Texas girl who longed for fame and fortune was on a whirlwind ride. On March 14, 1920 the New-York Tribune had reported “her very first picture, ‘A Modern Salome,’ has been completed only recently and Miss Hampton herself has just returned from a two months’ trip to England, France and Italy.”
Jules Brulatour had no intention of letting her rise lose momentum. “The production of a second picture waits only on the discovery of a story that both Mr. Brulatour and Miss Hampton consider suitable,” wrote the New-York Tribune. The newspaper noted “the difficulty of the search, a difficulty caused by the demands of both.” As she had earlier proved, Hope Hampton was not simply a pretty face. “For Miss Hampton knows full well that she is at the mere beginning of her screen career; it is for this reason that she is so concerned with the future and so careless of the past.”
The explosive success of Hope Hampton appeared obvious when the New-York Tribune ran the headline “Hope Hampton, Actress, Buys Home on Park Avenue” on October 23, 1921. The $20,000 mortgage would translate to about $260,000 today. Decades later The New York Times would reveal that the house was a gift from her manager, Jules Brulatour.
Hope Hampton may have been new to the silent screen, but she was quick to absorb the flashy lifestyle of 1920s stars. The New York Times later described the décor of her new 10-room home. “Its interior is almost completely covered with mirrors. The furniture and decorations are French, of the Louis XV period. The floors and the winding banisters, are covered with English leopard-spotted carpeting.”
Not content with merely acting, the silent screen star turned to song as well. She began studying operatic singing under Isadore Luckstone, with some success. Four months before the purchase of her Park Avenue mansion, the New-York Tribune reported “Miss Hampton has a beautiful soprano voice which is quite wasted in the silent drama, as it is heard only when she makes personal appearances. Alf. T. Wilton heard her sing the ‘Ave Maria’ on such an occasion and has ever since been trying to persuade Miss Hampton to remain silent no longer.” Wilton gave her a “flattering vaudeville offer” which she refused.
Nevertheless, Harriette Underhill, the New-York Tribune’s version of Hedda Hopper, reported on July 9, 1922 that Luckstone “tells her that if she studies hard perhaps in four or five years she might try for grand opera.” Until that day, the aggressive and ambitious actress worked on her command of foreign languages.
“As soon as I began to sing I realized that I never could amount to anything unless I knew some of the languages, so I started with Italian, and now I’m studying French, too. It is as easy to learn two as one while you are about it,” she told Underhill. The beautiful Hope Hampton broke the hearts of men worldwide who sat in the darkened theaters and watched her on screen. The Evening World said on September 13, 1921 that every ship that pulled into New York Harbor “brings her a number of ‘mash notes.’” The newspaper copied one, from the Philippines, for its readers:
Dear Madame: I am in great pleasure when this reaches you. I can tell you I have seen you in the movies and was moved by a strong heartfull of desire to be your acquaintanceship. In delight I would have a fine picture of you and am I not very bold? But there is no blame in it when one is so pretty good like you—Andrea Crispina.
Sadly for Crispina and the other “mash note” writers, Hope already had a love interest—none other than her manager, Jules E. Brulatour. Falling in love with Brulatour was a risk for the young woman. The New York Times tried to untangle his romantic history for its readers on November 8, 1923.
“Under the terms of a preliminary separation agreement with his first wife in 1915, she was to receive $20,000 a year. In April of that year the first Mrs. Brulatour made an application in the Supreme Court to compel her husband to insure his life for $65,000 in her favor. Mr. Brulatour delayed insuring himself, and while he was still fighting the pressure brought against him he was sued by Mrs. Julia Smith for $20,000 for injuries received when she was hit by Mr. Brulatour’s automobile. When the damage action came up in court testimony revealed the fact that at the time of the accident Mr. Brulatour’s car was being drive by Miss Dorothy Gibson, who was then studying for the operatic stage. Miss Gibson was one of the Titanic survivors, and she became Mr. Brulatour’s second wife, a divorce having been obtained on incompatible grounds in the Kentucky courts. The second Mrs. Brulatour attained fame as the original ‘Harrison Fisher Girl.’ She later became a motion picture actress.”
Dorothy Gibson Brulatour filed for divorce in August 1919, asking for $48,000 alimony. That was the same year that Jule Brulatour sat in the audience of the Sargent Drama School presentation and first saw the 19-year old Hope Hampton.
Now, on November 8, 1923 friends of Brulatour and Hampton were shocked to find out that they had been married for three months. The secret ceremony took place in Baltimore on August 22, 1923. Hope had stayed in her Park Avenue house, while her new husband officially remained in his residence, No. 1207 Park Avenue about three blocks north.
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Brulatour explained the ruse saying “We kept it dark just because we wanted to be a little different. We thought we would reveal it in one year, but it became known, you see. We imagined that it would be rather original for a well-known motion picture actress not to make known the fact that she had been married.” At the time, Hope’s latest film The Gold Diggers, “in which she made her most successful screen effort,” according to The Times, had just come out. Now that the marriage was public knowledge, the pair moved into Hope’s mansion. While the actors and actresses followed the movie industry to Hollywood, they preferred New York.
The year 1927 turned out to be a litigious one for the couple. It began on December 20, 1926 when Hope, like a true 1920s movie star, emerged on the street with her Russian wolfhound in tow. According to Fred Palmer, the dog “attacked him and bit him on the right cheek.” Hope was in court on March 9 answering his charges of “permanent injuries and disfigurement.” He wanted $3,000 in damages. Later that year Brulatour’s film My Princess premiered. Produced by Alfred E. Aarons, it starred Hope Hampton and poked gentle fun at the opera business. Their mistake was to use the actual name of Italian tenor Guido Ciccolini in the dialogue. Ciccolini’s wife sat in the audience one evening “and heard her husband’s name used to describe a roustabout singer, who was called ‘you big wop’ by the actress and who in one scene tried to attack Miss Hampton,” reported The New York Times on December 20, 1927. The tenor sued all three—Brulatour, Aarons and Hampton. Although Justice Cotillo decided in their favor, he lambasted them for their “shockingly bad taste.” It was not long after this that Hope essentially retired from the film business; no doubt prompted in part by her blossoming operatic career. In 1928 she opened with the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company in Massenet’s Manon; and the following year on May 25 sailed from New York on the Leviathan headed to Paris “to begin a season with the Opera Comique,” reported The New York Times. The newspaper added “She said she would sing the leading roles in ‘Manon’ and ‘La Boheme.’ After Paris, Miss Hampton will be in concert at Deauville and Cannes.”
By 1939 both Hampton and her husband were, for all purposes, retired. They nevertheless remained a larger-than-life couple and newspapers nationwide covered the mysterious shooting of Jules E. Brulatour in the Park Avenue mansion on January 22, 1939. Shortly before 11 p.m. that Sunday, one of the maids “ran screaming” into a nearby drugstore. According to the clerk, David Fine, she frantically told him that “Brulatour fell and cut himself.” When Dr. Carl Theobald arrived at the house, he found Brulatour with a bloody towel wrapped around his head. The wounded man was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital where he was treated for a “wound and a nick on the ear made by the bullet that lodged under the skin of his neck,” as reported by The Times several days later. The police did not find out about the shooting until two days after the incident. On Thursday, January 26 The Chicago Daily Tribune reported “Brulatour, who made millions in the sale of film to movie companies, was arrested in bed in Lenox Hill hospital this afternoon on a felony charge of possessing a loaded gun. After he was fingerprinted and posted $530 bond, a patrolman left his bedside.” The newspaper said “Hope Hampton, actress and singer, frustrated police and prosecutors today in their feverish attempts to rip the veil of mystery from the shooting of her wealthy husband” and she “flatly refused to testify before the grand jury under a waiver of immunity.” Joining Hope in the grand jury room were three maids, a chauffeur and her lawyer. Brulatour deepened the mystery by telling detectives he had two guns, but “I destroyed them—also the bullet.” Then he contradicted himself saying, according to Assistant Chief Inspector Francis J. Kear “he had locked the guns in a vault and would produce them later.” In the end Jules Brulatour pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charge of possessing a weapon without a license and before long the public had forgotten about the entire murky incident. While her aging husband appeared in public attired in non-descript tan suits and fedoras, Hope Hampton was ever the silent screen star years after her last picture. Tagged by Walter Winchell “the duchess of Park Avenue” she was later described by actor George Hamilton in his 2008 autobiography Don’t Mind If I Do, as “a sophisticated Mae West.” The couple attended every opening night, either at the theater or the opera, and Hope was always draped in sequins, jewels and furs. The New York Times would later mention that with the opening season after their marriage “Mr. and Mrs. Brulatour began their custom of regular attendance at opening night performances on Broadway.” Drama critic Burton Rascoe described them as “models of manners for playgoers…they were always in their seats five or ten minutes before the curtain goes up. They never rattle their programs or converse while a play is in progress. They do not light cigarettes while going up the aisles. They come to a show to see the show and not to be seen. They usually speak French in the lobby, but in a low tone.” The appearance of Hope Hampton was expected and gossip columnists and movie magazine journalists waited to get a glimpse of her dazzling ensembles. The couple was routed from their home on December 20, 1942 when fire broke out in Schmidt’s Pharmacy on the ground floor of No. 1143 Park Avenue next door. The flames spread upward through the walls and into the rafters of the Brulatour mansion. Smoke filled the house and the pair was forced to spend the evening at the nearby home of columnist Arthur (Bugs) Baer. Brulatour called the damage the following day “considerable.” After an illness of several weeks, Jules E. Brulatour died in Mount Sinai Hospital on October 26, 1946 at the age of 85. His more than $2 million estate was divided among Hope, and Brulatour’s three children (one of which, Yvonne Brulatour, lived in the Park Avenue home). In 1951 Hope, now 53 years old, was concerned about the Cold War. She began construction on a country house in Greenwich, Connecticut to, as she explained, “get away from a possible atomic bombing.” On the weekend of April 14, she left New York to inspect the ranch-type house with her lawyer, Sinclair Robinson. Hope’s butler, 41-year old Charles Joseph Mourey had left the house Saturday night. A gay man, Hope Hampton would later describe him, according to the 1998 book Contemporary Perspectives on Serial Murder, as preferring “frisky young men.” When he returned to the house around 3:30 Sunday morning, he found the front door open and a light on in Hope’s third floor bedroom. Opening her door, he found the room ransacked. Hope had most of her jewelry in a small safe, about 15 inches square, that weighed around 150 pounds. The burglars walked out of the house with the safe. The New York Times said “The gems, which had added luster to numerous social events and theatrical first nights, were valued at $300,000. They were not insured.” Hope was upset to find that other items were missing as well. Included were her $15,000 silver blue milk coat and $15,000 in cash. She estimated that 40 pieces of jewelry were gone, including “four diamond-and-emerald bracelets valued altogether at $90,000; two diamond clips worth $50,000; diamond earrings worth $15,000, and other assorted pendants, rings, necklaces and gems.” In reporting on the robbery The Times mentioned that the house “is one of the showplaces of the area.” Although the three thugs who committed the burglary were arrested in October, none of the loot was recovered. Although the amount of the loss was lowered to $150,000 after a careful inventory; that amount would still translate to about $1.35 million today. Hope Hampton and her staff were grief-stricken in 1960. Long-time butler Charles Mourney, who had discovered the burglary nine years earlier, left for vacation in Miami in August. A week after his arrival, on August 10, six gunshots were heard on North Biscayne River Drive. Police arriving at the scene found Mourney dead on the dirt road. Evidence pointed to a struggle before the butler was hit with three .22 caliber bullets. It would be 26 years before the murderer was sentenced to 10 years in prison The flamboyant former film star continued making her dramatic lobby appearances at the opera and the theater even as she grew older. Her good friend and companion Tony Carlyle later told reporters “They would hold the curtain until she arrived, and wherever she went she would be in the newsreels that night or the papers the next day, especially in the 60s.” She was unafraid to appear at nightclubs as well and haunted the Peppermint Lounge where the dance The Twist was born. In 1962, at the age of 64, she was named Miss Twist at the club. In 1977 she showed up at a gala benefit “swathed in a floor-length chinchilla coat, complete with train,” said Joyce Purnick of The New York Times later. The following year a reporter approached her on opening night of the Metropolitan Opera. She was wearing a “black broadtail with a black mink collar” and he asked “What happened to the chinchilla?” Hope Hampton casually explained “I wore it last year. It would be repetitious.” Joyce Purnick said of her “Hope Hampton loved all that glittered, and would display her sparkling wares—diamonds and emeralds to offset the sequins—everywhere.” But opening night at the Metropolitan Opera in 1978 would be the last time the opera crowd would be dazzled by her presence. That night she spotted a young woman in “dungarees.” Dashed, she told her escort “Glamour is finished, I don’t want my picture in the papers next to a girl with jeans on.” It was the last Metropolitan Opera opening night attended by Hope Hampton. On Saturday, January 23, 1982, 84-year old Hope Hampton suffered a fatal heart attack. The Eugene Oregon Register-Guard noted that she had appeared in 28 silent films. “She also appeared in ‘Road to Reno,’ a talkie with Randolph Scott and in several movies with then child star Milton Berle.” Upon her death Tony Carlyle said “She was the first lady to be photographed with Norell dresses. She had one of the greatest collections of Norell gowns. I just hope something is done with the clothes. She would have liked that.”
Little has changed to the block since the 1929 photograph above.
Indeed, Hope Hampton would have approved of what happened to her wardrobe. On March 26, 1983 a four-day auction was held at the prestigious William Doyle Galleries. The auction house announced the auction of “The fabulous fashions of Hope Hampton, ‘The Duchess of Park Avenue.” The announcement mentioned “from the 60s: Gowns by Norell, sequined jackets, evening dresses, coats, furs, capes—about 100 lots in all.”
Hope Hampton’s Park Avenue mansion remained a single family house—reportedly one of only two on the avenue. When it came on the market in 2013 (without the mirrors and leopard skin carpeting), it was listed for $18.9 million.
THE ORIGINAL WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL AT 350 FIFTH AVENUE ANDY SPARBERG 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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
A DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
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