I’m often asked what my favorite weird/obscure fact about New York City was. Ironically, as the founder of Untapped New York, this question frequently proves difficult because there are just so many amazing things about this city. So I went back into my memory archives, thinking what about New York City impelled me to create Untapped New York. The pneumatic tube mail system is top on that list.
The first pneumatic tube mail system was installed in Philadelphia (sorry New York) in 1893. New York City’s came in 1897. Each tube could carry between 400 and 600 letters and traveled at 30-35 miles per hour. In its full glory, the pneumatic tubes covered a 27-mile route, connecting 23 post offices. This network stretched up Manhattan’s east and west sides, from Bowling Green and Wall Street, all the way north to Manhattanville and East Harlem.
Anecdotal stories indicate that the system may have extended into the Bronx, with sandwich subs reportedly being delivered via pneumatic tubes from a renown subway shop in the Bronx to downtown postal stations. Maps at the National Postal Museum show proposed extensions to the Bronx and other areas within Manhattan, many which were never completed. The system even crossed boroughs into Brooklyn (using the Brooklyn Bridge), taking four minutes to take letters from Church Street near City Hall to the General Post Office in Brooklyn (now Cadman Plaza).
The system, which was located 4 to 6 feet below the city streets, was created and owned by private companies, to which the city paid rent and labor. According to The Smithsonian National Postal Museum, “Installation of the tubes was problematic, with previously laid pipes for sewage and gas limiting the size and thus the amount and kind of mail a pneumatic tube could carry. Water table levels also presented difficulties. Later, the New York City system was purchased and operated by the U.S. Postal Service. Using power from old-school electric motors, made by the likes of General Electric and Westinghouse, air pressure was created by rotary blowers and air compressors. Each canister was labeled on the outside with its destination, but all the tubes had to come out at each station. So if a canister was destined for another station, it would be sent back again into the tubes and on its way.
To feed my growing obsession with pneumatic mail, I went to Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian National Postal Museum where I met with Manda Kowalczyk an Accessions Officer at the Museum. She pulled all the items in the Postal Museum that are connected to the pneumatic tube mail systems in America. One of them you can see on a regular visit to the museum is the pneumatic tube mail canister which is on exhibit. This 24 inch long, 8 inch wide metal canister could carry somewhere between 400 and 600 letters. And, it could have definitely fit a small black cat.
Pneumatic Tube Mail system map of New York City from November 1937. Photo courtesy National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution
The Postal Museum also has several maps of the New York City pneumatic tube system, mostly from the 1930s and 40s. A 1947 map has some fun facts, including the time it took to send mail between the General Post Office and other stations, the number of canisters that went through the system daily (95,000), the pressure needed (3 to 8 lbs per inch), and the speed (5 tube carriers per minute and 30 mph). That year there were 26.969 miles of 2 way pneumatic tubes tubes. It even has the hours of operation: Weekdays from 5 AM to 10 PM, Saturday from 5 AM to 10 AM, and no service on Sundays and legal holidays. I love the thought of mail getting shot underground at 5 AM to arrive just time for the beginning of the work day.
A message you’d get from the Postmaster if your mail was damaged in the pneumatic tube. Photo courtesy National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution According to Kate Ascher, author of The Works, “The high operating costs of the pneumatic system ultimately proved its downfall. By 1918, the federal government considered the annual rental payments ($17,000 per mile per annum) made by the post office to be ‘exorbitant’ and endorsed a new alternative with greater capacity–the automobile–as the delivery method of choice.” In New York City, a successful lobby by contractors led to the reinstatement of pneumatic mail service in 1922. A complete stop didn’t happen until 1953. Paris’ system, which covered 269 miles, continued for an additional 34 years (but was more limited in what it could carry–the pipes were only 2 inches diameter).
Pneumatic tube mail remnants inside the Old Chelsea Post Office And what’s left of the pneumatic tubes? Not much, if at all. The location of the tubes within a city’s underbelly basically guaranteed its destruction once no longer in use. The only known remaining remnant of the pneumatic tube mail system is in the Old Chelsea Post Office at 217 W 18th Street, where tubes come through a wall in the basement. They sit at the end of a forgotten brick-lined hallway filled with office supplies. Kate Ascher also notes that there was a time when remnants of the pneumatic tubes were still being found, but not often any longer. Some additional fun facts about the pneumatic tube mail system: According to this incredible article by Robert A. Cohen, the first cylinder tube to travel through the New York City system contained “a Bible, a flag and a copy of the Constitution. The second contained an imitation peach in honor of Senator Chauncy Depew (He was fondly known as “The Peach”). A third carrier had a black cat in it, for reasons unknown.” It had set hours of operation: 5am to 10pm on weekdays, and 5am to 10am on Saturdays The size of the carriers in New York City was 24 inches long, 8 inches across 95,000 letters were moved daily, about 1/3 of all first class letters It took 4 minutes to get from the General Post Office (now Moynihan Train Hall) to Grand Central using a tranverse tube that cut across Manhattan It took between 15 and 20 minutes for mail to get from Herald Square to Manhattanville and East Harlem It took 11 minutes to get from the General Post Office to the Planetarium Post Office, near the Museum of Natural History
PHOTO OF THE WEEK
EARLY VOTING ON ROOSEVELT ISLAND AT SPORTSPARKS VOTE TODAY FROM 7 A.M. TO 4 P.M. (I WILL BE THERE TO GREET OUR LOYAL READERS!)
VINTAGE MAP OF NEW YORK ED LITCHER GOT IT!WE ARE WORKING EARLY VOTING SO WE WILL BE A LITTLE DISCOMBOBULATED THIS WEEK!
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)
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
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Georgette Sinclair’s art training started in her childhood when she attended the Public School of Art in Romania where she took drawing and painting classes.
After Ms. Sinclair immigrated to the United States, she started a new life as an American citizen while attending school at night. She obtained a Master of Science and a Doctoral degree in Audiology, which adds to her Master degree in Special Psychology and Pedagogy already earned back in Romania from Cluj-Napoca University.
In New York, she attended the Art Student League of NYC, studying under Richard Pionk and John Foote, in addition to attending workshops at Woodstock School of Art and the Hudson River Valley Art School. She also studied with master pastelist, Elizabeth Mowry, at various workshops in France in the Artist’s Retreat Program.
Ms. Sinclair works mostly in pastels and oils and is fascinated by the beauty of nature. She finds poetry in ordinary scenes and her landscapes express a mood and speak to everyone by freezing a moment before it is gone forever. In her vision, expression of mood is the response to a fragment in time. She delights in painting outdoors but is also fascinated by peeking in and out of the windows which are the subject of some of her paintings. She travels extensively and her trips, a great source of inspiration, have a big impact on her work.
Ms. Sinclair has been a member of the Salmagundi Club and Pen & Brush, Inc, NYC since 2001 and RIVAA (Roosevelt Island Visual Art Association, NYC) since 2000.
I am working early voting this week, so forgive me if I miss some names. KATZ, ED LITCHER, MITCH HAMMER 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 Roosevelt Island Historical Society
GEORGETTE SINCLAIR
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
William Steinway at his Queens mansion, around 1885. Photograph by Frederick Steinway, Astoria, New York. Courtesy of Henry Z. Steinway Archive.
William Steinway appeared in several recent essays (the Queensboro Bridge, LaGuardia airport) and was much involved with the development of Astoria, so I felt it was time for a deeper look.
Steinway was born in Brunswick, Germany in 1835, the fourth son of Henry Engelhard Steinway. After elementary school with special training in languages and music, he apprenticed in a piano factory. With his father and brothers, William came to the United States in 1850 and they all began working for established New York piano firms.
Soon they struck out on their own, going into business as Steinway & Sons in 1853, with a factory at Park and East 53rd. The company grew quickly, secured dozens of patents for innovations in the mechanics of the piano, and moved on to larger manufacturing spaces in the city, even becoming the largest employer in the city in the 1860s.
William was the marketing genius of the family. In 1866, he built a concert hall behind his showroom, on 14th Street, the heart of Manhattan’s theater and shopping district. It was the first Steinway Hall, and an important showcase for artists, a concert hall only surpassed by the building of Carnegie Hall, in 1891.
Astoria and Steinway Village In 1870, Steinway bought 400 acres of land in Astoria, where German immigrants, mostly furniture and cabinet makers, were settling. The Steinways moved the factory there for more space and to keep his workers from the ferment of labor organizing and radicalism, some of which had roiled their own factory. (Their factory was almost burned down in the Draft Riots.) Operations expanded to include key inputs – a sawmill to prepare lumber and a foundry to make the cast iron plates that sit the piano.
In 1880, William and his brother Theodore established a new piano factory in Hamburg, Germany. Theodore headed the German factory, and William returned to Queens. The Hamburg and Queens factories regularly exchanged experience about their patents and technique despite the distance between them, and continue to do so.
Beyond the Astoria factory complex, Steinway created an entire company town. Steinway Village spanned from what is now Ditmars Boulevard up to the East River/Bowery Bay; and from 31st Street to Hazen Street. His diary entries reflect his pride in creating a company town where workers could own brick homes, drink fresh water, and stroll under shade trees on Steinway Avenue—still the main thoroughfare in this part of Queens.
Almost all of his workers were German immigrants, and German was spoken in the factory. Steinway Village had a public school that provided instruction in German as well as English (and one of the country’s first free kindergartens), singing clubs, German beer halls, the Steinway Reformed Church (built in 1890 on land donated by William Steinway, still standing at 41st St and Ditmars), and the Steinway Library, started with books from William’s own collection (now a branch of the Queens Library). Steinway helped develop a network of transportation, including streetcars, trolleys, and horse-car railroads to make the neighborhood more convenient and bring in additional revenue, and a ferry for German workers from across the East River in Yorkville to ferry across to work in the factory.
In 1886, William and George Ehret, a fellow German immigrant who had opened the Hell Gate Brewery in 1866 across the East River in Yorkville, decided to create a beach recreation area nearby where Steinway’s employees could go for entertainment. It was also open to the public, as Steinway hoped other working-class visitors from Manhattan would travel on his streetcars, trolleys, and ferries. In its heyday (1895-1915), 10,000 visitors were showing up each Sunday and it became known as North Beach. During the day it remained a wholesome family retreat, but at night it was the hot spot for young singles to drink beer, dance, and mingle. At one time it was more popular than Brooklyn parks, as “the Coney Island of Queens.”
Getty Images
Steinway was a visionary with big ideas for the city and its transportation systems. In addition to the ferry that transported workers across the East River, he began a tunnel that would connect Queens to Manhattan via underground subway trains (though never finished, today the subway tunnel doing that bears his name). He also helped develop other industrial and business endeavors in the area, buying a natural gas distributor, and investing in several banks.
Daimler One other business adventure was Daimler AG’s first venture into American markets. Steinway met Gottlieb Daimler during a stay in Germany in 1888. Like Daimler, he believed in a bright future for the internal combustion engine automobile. After he returned, plans quickly materialized. On September 29, 1888, Daimler Motor Company of New York was founded and initially produced gasoline and petroleum engines. Steinway and Daimler also started seriously considering the production of automobiles in America, as shipping costs and custom duties prevented import of highly coveted “old-world” automobiles. From 1892 until 1896/97 full copies of the German cars were produced in the premises of the Steinway Astoria plant.
Rapid Transit
During the 1890s, Steinway began a project to extend his company town’s horse-drawn trolley line under the East River and into midtown Manhattan. This project would eventually lead to the IRT Flushing Line. Although he died before the completion of the project, the tunnels that were dug under the East River were named the Steinway Tunnels after him. The dirt removed from the tunnels was formed into a small island in the middle of the East River, now called U Thant Island.
He remained deeply involved in developing public transportation in the City. Steinway spent the last seven years of his life serving on—and chairing—rapid transit commissions that were confronted with every conceivable obstacle to planning a subway for New York City.
Every time the rapid transit commissioners got close to approving a route system there was a catch: legal restrictions, opposition from the owner of existing elevated railways, unhappy property owners, court and political battles, arguments over an above-ground or underground system, and contention over public vs. private funding.
Despite these controversies, Steinway stayed with the project. He had a vision for what New Yorkers needed to get around town speedily: a four-track, largely underground system, with two middle tracks for express trains. “No citizen should have to walk more than three or four blocks to a station,” he told the New York Times. Steinway and his fellow commissioners recommended that trains run on a relatively new and clean power source: electricity.
Scandal Steinway married Regina Roos in April 1861. He was 26 and she 17 and the couple seemed deeply in love. The couple had three children; George, Paula, and Alfred, who was born in 1869. In 1875, he learned that Alfred was not his son. Regina’s affairs were a severe trauma for him and, after learning of her infidelities (Alfred’s father was not her only lover) in September 1875, heard many sordid details over the ensuing months until the couple divorced in August 1876. After the divorce, Alfred moved with his mother to France. Steinway later happily remarried.
Final Note
Steinway died in 1896, at the scarcely ripe old age of 61. He was ambitious and aggressive and successful. He did not rise to the level of the great Robber-Barons of the age, and was never condemned as they were. He was fascinated by the emerging City, and by the City’s need for public transportation and was a vigorous advocate for the infrastructure that would support it. He was an immigrant and German to the core. All in all, a pretty fair New Yorker.
Ed Litcher, Nina Lublin, Jay Jacobson, Hara Reiser, Andy Sparberg, Aron Eisenpreiss all got it right
Stephen Blank
RIHS June I, 2021
Sources
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
On the typical apartment house, the front door is a cookie-cutter item, straight out of a catalog. But 7 Gracie Square, just off East End Avenue, is hardly typical, the project of a muralist who got into real estate.
The double doors and flanking ironwork are a frenzy of swirling shapes in brass and iron, plated with zinc, nickel and cadmium, populated by gazelles, elephants and sinuous plants. Now these 1929 masterworks of metal gleam in the north light from Carl Schurz Park, reinstalled earlier this month after a restoration.
The maisonette entrance to the left bears, in intricate script, the name Crisp, for this was the project of Arthur W. Crisp, a Canadian muralist who made good, very good, until the Depression hit. Born in 1881, Crisp came to New York around 1900, and studied at the Art Students League. By the 1910s he was getting mural commissions for theaters, institutions and private houses.
His private work was free and playful, but his public murals tended toward the conventional; in 1933 Lewis Mumford offhandedly described one as “sweet and dreadful.” Nevertheless, Crisp did well enough to buy real estate, including some old buildings on far East 84th Street. He bought in early 1928, just before the stubby dead end was renamed Gracie Square.
Crisp retained George B. Post & Sons, along with Rosario Candela, and they designed a tepid Art Deco facade of red brick, with vertical runs of brick set at an angle.
Magnificent metalwork doors, recently restored, distinguish 7 Gracie Square on far East 84th Street.Credit…Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Renting began in the spring of 1929, when four- to seven-room apartments cost from $160 to $290 per month. The building had a gym and extra maids’ rooms. Some idea of the residents may be gained from a 1930 account in The New York Times: a tenant, Fanny Parsons, said that a handbag with $45,000 in jewelry had been stolen from her apartment. It turned out that she had left it in a taxicab. Whoops!
Mrs. Parsons and her $45,000 bag of jewelry went in and out through two brass-framed doors decorated with tendrils of nickel-plated bronze sprouting from howdahs borne by bronze elephants and coiling to fill the space.
Above the doors, a bowed-out tympanum of cadium-coated cast iron showcases two gazelles surrounded by a panoply of spiraling plants, all in a deep, rich silver.
Just inside the main doors, the radiator grilles are square-rigged ships of hammered iron plated with nickel.
Do not fail to notice the cunning little grilles on the doors of the flanking maisonettes. The one to the left with “Crisp” intricately worked into the metalwork was apparently the artist’s apartment, and directories list him here at the sub-number, 8 Gracie Square. The 1930 census records Crisp as paying $833 per month, far more than anyone else there, which is hard to explain. One tradition in the building has it that he occupied the penthouse, complete with organ loft.
A final touch is on the inner doors: The brass kick plate is cut in the shape of a rolling form called a Vitruvian wave, the whole package a perfect demonstration of the metalworker’s art. And what metalworker was that, exactly?
The apartment building at 7 Gracie Square, designed by George B. Post & Sons, was a project of Arthur W. Crisp, a Canadian muralist.Credit…Museum of the City of New York
Crisp is not known to have designed in metal, and the doors call to mind the work of the French designer Edgar Brandt, who had a few other commissions in New York, like the magnificent doors of the Cheney Brothers’ showroom at Madison and 34th.
The 1920s were good times in real estate. Crisp was on a roll, and in early 1929 engaged the Post firm for two more 15-story apartment houses, although these were not built. In May, five months before the stock-market crash, he bought 238 acres upstate. But the 1930s were not so swell, both for real estate and for business in general; in 1934 he appeared on a panel promoting the increased use of artwork in architecture.
And then, in 1935, the bank took back 7 Gracie Square, metalwork and all, at a foreclosure auction, paying $625,000 against the loan balance of $733,000. Crisp and his wife, Grace, also an artist, moved to Charlton Street.
In 1945 the tenants bought 7 Gracie for $500,000. The facade was rebuilt in 1993. The doors did not become a problem until recently, when the plating began to rub off, allowing the iron underneath to rust. In 2010 the co-op board retained Conservation Solutions of Washington to inspect and analyze the doors. Mark Rabinowitz, the company’s vice president, thinks it is likely the metalwork is by Brandt.
Suzanne Charity lives in Crisp’s old maisonette apartment, and has served on the board. She was active in an earlier renovation campaign, and says the building hired craftsmen in France to make gates, radiator covers and other details for the lobby that had always been lacking. The new fixtures are indistinguishable from the originals.
It is easy to pass by short little Gracie Square, until you know of the striking doors.
THE FDR PARK IS NOW FULLY ACCESSIBLE TO ALL WITH NEW LIFT AND UNDER TREE PAVING
EVER SINCE THE PARK OPENED IN 2012 (AND FOR MANY YEARS BEFORE) ISLANDERS COMPLAINED THAT THE PARK WAS NOT PLANNED TO BE FULLY ACCESSIBLE TO PERSONS WITH LIMITED MOBILITY.
A NEW STAIR LIFT HAS JUST BEEN INSTALLED ALONG WITH NEW PAVING UNDER THE LINDEN TREES.
WE HOPE THAT THIS WILL ENCOURAGE ALL TO VISIT AND FULLY ENJOY THE PARK.
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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STREETSCAPES CHRISTOPHER GRAY NEW YORK TIMES (C)
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Underfoot all over New York City are late 19th and early 20th century manhole covers embossed with unusual shapes and designs. There’s a practical purpose for this: raised detailing helped prevent people from slipping (and horses from skidding) as they traversed Gotham’s streets in wet weather.
They’re also a form of branding. The city’s many foundries of the era manufactured manhole and coal hole covers. Each foundry company seemed to have chosen a specific design or look to represent them.
And let’s not leave out the artistry that went into these. Manhole covers aren’t typically thought of as works of art, but there’s creativity and imagination in the different designs we walk over and tend not to notice.
J.B. and J.M. Cornell, who operated an ironworks foundry at 26th Street and 11th Avenue, added bubble-like details and smaller dots to their covers, as seen on the example (at top) found in the East 70s near Central Park. They also added swirly motifs on the sides, prettying up these iron lids and making the name and address easier to read.
McDougall and Potter, on the other hand, went for a classic star to decorate this cover on East 80th Street (second photo above). This foundry on West 55th Street also chose bars and dots, within which they included the company name and address.
This cover (above) on 23rd Street near Fifth Avenue, likely by Jacob Mark & Sons on Worth Street, once has colored glass embedded in that hexagram design. A century and then some of foot and vehicle traffic wore them down and pushed some out.
Could those be flower petals decorating the hexagram shape on this cover, also by the Mark foundry? Located near Broadway and Houston Street, it’s unique and charming, especially with the tiny stars dotting the lower end.
RUTH AND IRVING BERDY From what I heard the weather was 87 and humid for the rooftop wedding at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn
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 (C)
Tags: 19th Century Manhole Covers, beautiful manhole covers, Manhole cover art, manhole covers New York City, Old Manhole Covers New York City, vintage manhole covers, Why Manhole Covers Have Designs
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
WE KNOW OF JAMES RENWICK, JR. AS THE ARCHITECT OF THE SMALLPOX HOSPITAL & OUR LIGHTHOUSE. THE GRACE CHURCH WAS ALSO OF HIS DESIGN.
Henry Brevoort’s country estate engulfed 86 acres between East 9th and 18th Streets and Fifth Avenue to the Bowery. Wealthy and apparently stubborn, when Broadway was extended to meet the Bloomingdale Road he demanded that it take a sharp bend at 10th Street so as not to intrude on his land. And because the family house sat directly upon the proposed site of 11th Street, between Broadway and the Bowery, he prevented the opening of 11th Street throughout the 1830’s. But following Brevoort’s death in 1841, his son, Henry, Jr., began selling off the family lands.
Grace Episcopal Church had been located at Broadway and Rector Street since its organization in 1808. Rector Thomas House Taylor and his congregation were considering an uptown move, following the northern migration of its fashionable members. Two years after Henry Brevoort Sr.’s death, the trustees bought the large plot of land at the northeast corner of Broadway and East 10th Street.
It is possible that Henry Brevoort, Jr. worked a deal into the transaction. His nephew, 23-year old James Renwick Jr., was an engineer with a bent towards architecture. An engineer on the massive Croton Reservoir project, completed in 1842, he was responsible for its hulking Egyptian Revival design. He had also designed a fountain in Bowling Green. Nevertheless, with no formal training his architectural credentials were sorely lacking.
Renwick was given the commission to design the new Grace Church. Rev. Taylor had spent extensive time in Europe touring the great Gothic cathedrals and it was most likely he who influenced Renwick’s design choice. Gothic Revival architecture was relatively new and Grace Church would be the first significant structure in the style in Manhattan. The masterful white marble church was completed in 1846, followed closely by the rectory. Sitting back within a grassy yard encircled by a magnificent Gothic Revival iron fence, the charming marble house echoed the church looming above it. Renwick’s skill at design resulted in a romantic edifice that refused to be overshadowed by its cathedral-like neighbor.
Although having the appearance of a cozy cottage, the rectory was essentially a mansion. Renwick hid the actual symmetry of the floorplan by adding different faceted bays on either side of the centered entrance. Gothic tracery, spires and crockets, and pointed arch windows combined to form an excruciatingly picturesque structure.
The charm of the rectory was deserving of its own postcard around the turn of the last century. from the collection of the New York Public Library
The charm of the rectory was deserving of its own postcard around the turn of the last century. from the collection of the New York Public Library
Grace Church was the second wealthiest Episcopal Church in New York, after Trinity Church. In his 1882 New York by Gaslight, James D. McCabe, Jr. would point out, “At the morning service a greater display of wealth and fashion is presented here than at any other city church. Grace Church has been the scene of more fashionable weddings and funerals than any other place of worship.”
Rectors of such churches were highly paid. They and their families lived in a style similar to their millionaire congregants. Many owned country estates and traveled to Europe or fashionable resorts in the summer months when their churches were closed.
Rev. Henry Codman Potter was rector in 1875 when his wife, the former Eliza Rogers, planned an extended trip abroad. She placed an ad in the New York Herald on September 30 hoping to find positions for excess servants who would not be needed in her absence:
804 Broadway, Grace Church Rectory–A lady, going to Europe, wishes to obtain situations for a cook, a seamstress and lady’s maid, and a waitress, whom she can highly recommend. Call for one week.
In 1880 James Renwick, Jr. was called back to design Grace House, a seamlessly matching 30-foot wide, three story structure that connected the church to the rectory. The New-York Tribune reported on August 10 that it would have “a handsome white marble front, each story possessing a well-proportioned bay window. Completed in 1881, it completed the country-like yard.
Renwick’s Grace House perfectly complimented the rectory and the church. from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.
Henry C. Potter was elected Assistant Bishop of New York on September 27, 1883 and the rectory next became home to Rev. William Reed Huntington. He and his wife, the former Theresa Reynolds, had two daughters, Margaret and Theresa, and a son, Francis. Like their predecessors, they moved among society’s elite.
During the debutante season of 1885-86 the rectory was the scene of a glittering entertainment. On December 30, 1885 The New York Times reported “There was a tea and reception yesterday afternoon in honor of Dr. Huntington’s second daughter, Miss Theresa, at the Grace Church Rectory. The parlors in which the guests were received were hung with evergreens and decorated with flowers. Miss Theresa, who reached her eighteenth birthday a few days since, wore a white satin dress, with a cluster of roses at the waist and diamond ornaments.” The guest list included society names like Depew, Tiffany, Dix, Reid, Duncan, and Kingsland.
Among Huntington’s staff in 1893 were assistant ministers Rev. Hubert M. Wells and Rev. George H. Bottome. The kind-hearted men became victims of a masterful scam artist that year. George Stabell traveled alone to New York from Denmark in 1891 at the age of 14. With no friends and no money, according to The Sun, “he turned his good looks, easy manners, and quick intelligence to account.” He realized that the clergy were easy marks for a sad story and lived comfortably off his scams.
One-third of the rectory was enveloped in ivy in this late 19th century stereopticon view. from the collection of the New York public Library
In January 1893 he turned his attentions to Grace Church. The Sun reported a month later that he told Wells and Bottome “that he had not lived an exemplary life…He admitted he had been playing the races and living a fast life. ‘Now I want to reform,’ said he, with tears in his eyes…’I want to be a Christian and a gentleman. I’m out of money and have no place to eat or sleep. Give me a chance, just one chance.'”
Moved by the repentant teen’s story, Wells took him to a boarding house on West 31st Street and paid a week’s rent in advance. He gave the boy letters of recommendation to use in finding a job.
The following week Stabell returned. He said while he had made friends at the boarding house, he still was unable to find a job. Wells gave him $10 to pay the next week’s rent (about $295 today). The very next day the boy returned, telling Rev. Wells:
A strange thing happened last night. When I went to my room I found there my brother, my own brother, ragged, penniless, and cold. His hat was gone, his shoes were flapping on his feet, and his clothes were in rags. He begged for money. What could I do? I bought him a ticket back to Baltimore, and with what was left I got him a pair of shoes, a hat, and something to eat. Did I do wrong?”
Stabell had so carefully planned his story that he knew the exact amount of a ticket to Baltimore. Wells gave him another $10.
The Sun reported, “The next day the boy was back again, this time to see the other assistant, Mr. Bottome. It was bitter cold, and he had on no overcoat. ‘I didn’t tell Mr. Wells last night,’ said he, ‘but I had to pawn my overcoat to get my brother home. Now I’m almost frozen without it.” He needed money to get his coat out of pawn.
At a meeting with clergy of other churches it was discovered how widely Stabell had been carrying out his scams. The ministers had a policeman “come and talk to the boy to frighten him by threats of arrest and imprisonment.”
The end to the teen’s infamous career began on February 11 when he came to Wells for another $10. “He got it on promising to return $3 of it, his necessary expenses being but $7,” explained The Sun. “By this time the clergyman had been to the boy’s boarding place and discovered that instead of being busy in the morning trying to find work he was lying abed; also that he usually came home about 3 A.M.” Stabell did not return that afternoon with the $3 as promised.
That night Wells went to the boy’s room and waited until 2:00 in the morning before giving up and going home. Stabell showed up at the rectory the next morning and Wells “taxed him with treachery and deceit.” The teen “confessed, and begged for forgiveness with all the dramatic power which he possesses.” He was told to return the next day.
He returned, without the $3, and Wells and Bottomes “had a long talk with him which resulted in a conviction on their part that he was a hopeless case.” While Bottome detained him, Wells swore out a warrant at Jefferson Market Court for the theft of $3. The Sun reported that at Stabell’s arraignment, “He begged for just one more chance before he was sent to prison, but Mr. Wells had been through it all before and he declined to be deceived again.” None of the other clergymen he had duped would answer the plea-filled notes he sent from jail. One said “He could make one believe that he was a saint in ten minutes, no matter how much appearances might be against him.”
A disturbing incident occurred on April 27, 1894. Policeman Sullivan arrested John Sullivan, described by the New-York Tribune as “a homeless, insane man, fifty years old,” after he was caught “pushing his fist through the windows of Grace Church rectory.” By the time the officer arrived, he had broken several of the panes of glass.
In 1899 Rev. Huntington added a notable ornament to the rectory garden–an ancient Roman jar. In his comments in the Year Book that year he explained that when excavations in Rome were being dug for the Rectory of the Church of St. Paul, “some six of seven terra-cotta jars” dating from Nero’s reign were discovered about 30 or 40 feet below the surface. Two were brought to the surface.
When I was in Rome in 1884, the two jars, covered with ivy, were standing one on either side of the entrance to the church. I was hard-hearted enough to urge upon Dr. Nevin, the Rector, the propriety of his showing his appreciation of all that Grace Church had done toward the building of St. Paul’s by giving us one of his two jars; and he was kind-hearted enough to acquiesce in the suggestion.
When the relic finally arrived in New York a bronze mounting was created for it and it was placed in the garden where it sits today.
At around 10:00 on the night of February 7, 1900 servants discovered a man in a room in the basement. The Sun reported, “He seemed to be very much startled, but when one of the servants returned with a policeman, he pretended to be intoxicated.” Burglar tools were found on him and he was locked up “as a suspicious person.”
The incident was a precursor to a more significant incident one year later. On the morning of April 30, 1901 a maid entered the dining room to find silverware littered over the dining room carpeting. “It was evident to her at once,” reported The New York Times, “not only that burglars had gotten in, but that they had been frightened off, without having been able to take all that they had prepared for removal.”
The thieves had carefully plotted their heist down to the point of apparently watching through a dining room window to see where the maid hid the key to the silver safe. They had entered through a basement door, as the intruder the previous year had, and stealthily crept upstairs by the light of a candle. That they had been scared off was evidenced by the candle, a box of matches and the chisel they had used to jimmy the basement door, all of which they left behind in their haste.
Despite their rapid departure, they managed to carry off “knives, spoons, salt cellars, and other small pieces which could be stuffed into pockets or carried away under a waistcoat or coat.” The article noted “The unfortunate feature of the robbery is that Dr. Huntington lost through it a number of heirlooms, which as he explained last evening, had been in the family a long time.”
The detectives and patrolmen on duty in the area received a “lecture” from Police Captain Chapman who called it “a shame that men in his precinct should have allowed a burglary to be committed in so prominent a place.”
More than a century later James Renwick Jr.’s charming rectory, along with its garden complex behind the cast iron fence, is a Victorian time capsule. The rectory warrants almost as much attention for its architectural beauty and significance as does the church beside it.
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
ON THIS DAY, JUNE 8th, 1941 Ruth Katz married Irving Berdy Our love to you, Judy, Alan and Elle
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
City Hall Broadway and Park Row ANDY SPARBERG, HARA REISER, ARON EISENPREISS, JAY JACOBSON, LAURA HUSSEY, ARLENE BESSENOFFF, NINA LUBLIN 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 Sources
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
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Last week we featured two stories on Civil War Union soldiers, Underwood and Clark who died at the Smallpox Hospital days after being mustered into the army. They never saw a battlefield and died of Smallpox weeks after joining up. Today, our story is about Col. Ellsworth who removed a flag from a building in Alexandria, Virginia. He was shot for his effort and his assailant was bayoneted by a fellow soldier.
The metal coffin reached Jersey City by train at half past three o’clock on May 31, 1861. It was loaded into a hearse and onto a ferry, and when it arrived in Manhattan it was brought to a parlor inside Astor House—at the time New York’s most luxurious hotel, on Broadway between Vesey and Barclay Streets.
For several hours there, the coffin lay under a large draped American flag. Family, friends, and National Guardsmen mourned the man, whose “pallid features,” as the The Sun described them the next day, could be seen through a piece of oval glass. “Few would have recognized in the ghastly features the gallant commander once so full of life and intelligent,” the newspaper wrote.
At 10 pm, the coffin went back in the hearse for the short trip to City Hall, where flags stood at half-mast and black and white crepe hung over the entrance. “Here an immense crowd had assembled on the steps and in front of the building, awaiting the funeral cortege,” wrote The Sun. Politicians, such as mayor Fernando Wood, paid their respects. Soon the public was allowed to enter, and over the next few hours 10,000 New Yorkers passed by the coffin that contained Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth, 24, the first Union officer to be killed in the Civil War.
“Remember Ellsworth” was a popular rallying cry among Union supporters during the War Between the States. Today, Col. Ellsworth, who commanded a funeral cortege similar to that of Abraham Lincoln’s four years later, has largely been forgotten. Who was he, and why did the death of this young lawyer from upstate command such an elaborate farewell in New York City?
Part of it had to do with his status as a dashing young law clerk and National Guard Cadet who took a job in the Springfield, Illinois office of future President Lincoln. “The young clerk and Lincoln became friends, and when the president-elect moved to Washington in 1861, Ellsworth accompanied him,” stated Smithsonian magazine.
Ellsworth also had a deep interest in military science. When President Lincoln put out the call for Union troops after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861 launched the Civil War, he responded by “raising of the 11th New York Volunteer Infantry, which he dressed in distinctive Zouave-style uniforms, fashioned after those worn by French colonial troops,” according to the NPS.
The 11th New York Volunteers were also known as the First Fire Zouaves, since many members of this unit—with their distinctive flashy uniforms and billowy pants—were recruited from New York’s volunteer fire departments. In May 1861, Ellsworth returned to Washington with his Fire Zouaves. On May 24, the unit went to Alexandria, Virginia to remove a large Confederate flag that had been flying from the roof of a hotel called Marshall House, which could be seen from the White House roof 10 miles away. The next day, “Ellsworth succeeded in removing the flag, but as he descended the stairs from the building’s roof, the hotel’s owner, James W. Jackson, shot and killed Ellsworth with a single shotgun blast to the chest,” wrote the NPS.”
Jackson, a “zealous defender of slavery,” Smithsonian magazine stated, was then shot to death by one of the fire zouaves, Cpl. Francis Brownell.
The death of Col. Ellsworth so shook President Lincoln, he reportedly said, according to a PBS.org article on Ellsworth, ““My boy! My boy! Was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?” Before Col. Ellsworth’s body came New York’s City Hall, Lincoln had it laid in state at the White House.
Col. Ellsworth became something of a folk hero, his image and actions reproduced in lithographs and sheet music. His story stuck in New York City’s memory through the first half of the 20th century. In 1936, an Ellsworth memorial was dedicated in Greenwich Village: It’s the flagpole at Christopher Park, the triangle across from Sheridan Square. (Above, a marker on the flag pole.)
Photograph of Marshall House, Alexandria, VA. The view of Alexandria shows that the town was rather built up. The Marshall House is on the corner surrounded by many other buildings, such as the Dry Good Store, the Bookstore, and the “Great Western Clothing House”. There are a couple women standing outside the shops, which are surrounded by sidewalk.
A massive, iconic Confederate flag, torn down by a Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, a soldier born in Saratoga County and widely remembered as the first Union officer killed in the Civil War, was on display at the New York State Museum.
Ellsworth is buried at Hudson View Cemetery Mechanicville, Saratoga County, New York, USA
THOM HEYER, ED LITCHER, ALEXIS VILLEFAE, LAURA HUSSEY, SUSAN RODETIS, JAY JACOBSON ALL GOT IT RIGHT
Thank you for the wonderful article on Wanda Gag. I loved Millions of Cats since I was a child & first heard it read on Capt. Kangaroo!
I guess that dates me now, doesn’t it? ;^)
I knew nothing about her or her other black & white prints. They’re so beautiful & uniquely her own style. Thanks again for a great article! Have a great weekend– Thom
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
First image: Billy Hathom/Wikipedia photo of a portrait; second image: whitehousehistory.org; third image: Currier & Ives lithograph/Wikipedia; fourth image: Musicology for Everyone; fifth image: Corbis via Smithsonian magazine; sixth image: The Historical Marker Database]
ephemeralnewyork | May 31, 2021 at 3:12 am | Tags: Elmer E. Ellsworth in New York City, Elmer Ellsworth Abe Lincoln, Elmer Ellsworth Civil War NYC, Elmer Ellsworth FIre Zouaves, Elmer Ellsworth Flag Pole NYC, Elmer Ellsworth Funeral City Hall NYC, First Union Soldier Die Civil War | Categories: Disasters and crimes, Lower Manhattan, War memorials, West Village | URL: https://wp.me/pec9m-8Rj
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Wanda Gag’s restored family home (now museum) in New Ulm, Minnesota
WEEKEND, JUNE 5-6, 2021
The 382nd Edition
WANDA GAG
ARTIST AND AUTHOR
WANDA GAG HOUSE & SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
Wanda Gag
Wanda Hazel Gág (1893-1946), author and illustrator of Millions of Cats, was the eldest of seven children in a talented family growing up in New Ulm, Minnesota. A distinguished printmaker, her rural landscapes and homey interior scenes demonstrate a compassion for the ordinary things in life. Her art has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and abroad, bringing her awards and honors. Wanda Gág exhibits continue today.
Wanda Gág, Easter Morning, 1926, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.89
Wanda Gág, Two Doors–Interior, 1926, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1973.24.2
Wanda Gág, Spring (Spring in the Garden), 1927, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Olin Dows, 1983.90.41
Wanda Gág, The Forge, 1932, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1977.7.2
Wanda Gág, Grandma’s Parlor, 1930, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.90
Wanda Gag Wanda
Gag Photo of Wanda GagWanda Hazel Gag (1893-1946),
Author and illustrator of Millions of Cats, was the eldest of seven children in a talented family growing up in New Ulm, Minnesota. This community in the Minnesota River Valley, noted for its German heritage, is about 95 miles southwest of the Twin Cities.
Millions of Cats, considered a classic in children’s literature, is one of several children’s books by the famous artist and author. Among them are A B C Bunny, Gone Is Gone, and Tales from Grimm, which she translated from German and illustrated.
A distinguished printmaker, her rural landscapes and homey interior scenes demonstrate a compassion for the ordinary things in life. Her art has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and abroad, bringing her awards and honors. Wanda Gág exhibits continue today.
Her childhood home is located three blocks west of New Ulm’s downtown shopping and business district. The house was purchased November 15, 1988 by the Wanda Gág House Association of New Ulm for preservation and restoration as an interpretive center. It had been placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Built in 1894 for the Gág family, the Queen Anne-style home has large windows filling the rooms with light. Unique features include two skylights and an attic artist’s studio. Wanda’s father is said to have painted a blue sky, clouds and cherubs on the dining room ceiling. The house is open for tours by appointment and on weekends during the summer.
Wanda’s parents, Anton and Lissi Gág, were of Bohemian descent, and the children grew up in an atmosphere of Old World customs, folklore and folk music at home and in the community. Anton was a photographer, an artist of regional renown, and a painter and decorator for homes, churches and buildings. Lissi assisted in his photography studio, posing subjects and retouching photographs.
Anton painted in a second-floor studio until his growing family needed the space for a bedroom. He moved his studio to the attic where a separate room served as a rainy day playhouse for Wanda, her five sisters and one brother, playing dress-up in costumes worn by Anton’s models and reading his German art magazines.
Drawing, painting, reading and music were commonplace in the Gág household. From the time when small fingers could hold a pencil, Wanda and her siblings were encouraged to draw. Kitchen pantry cupboard drawers overflowed with their efforts. The dining room was a family gathering place, and there Lissi rocked her babies. In the parlor were Anton’s guitar and piano.
Wanda was 15, and the youngest child just one year old, when Anton died. A family of modest means, the surviving Gágs were impoverished without his support, and Lissi’s health was failing. At times, Wanda attended high school half days in order to care for her mother and the younger children. To earn a small income, Wanda wrote stories and illustrated them for the Minneapolis Junior Journal and sold drawings to local residents. She won an art award at a young age and eventually received art school scholarships.
After graduating from New Ulm High School in 1912, she taught a term in a rural Springfield, Minnesota school before leaving New Ulm for art study at the St. Paul School of Art and then the Minneapolis School of Art. In 1917 she won a scholarship to the prestigious Art Students League in New York City.
The New Ulm home was sold in 1918, shortly after Lissi’s death, leaving Wanda as head of the orphaned family. Her siblings joined her in Minneapolis to work and finish high school. While studying art, Wanda worked as a commercial artist to support herself and her family. In 1931, with a desire to carry on with her own work, she moved to rural Milford, New Jersey, and in that setting created much of her notable artwork and children’s books.
It was her home until her death in 1946. Wanda was the wife of Earle Humphreys, who died in 1950. The couple had no children.
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag Millions of Cats Millions of Cats Book In 1928 Wanda Gag wrote and illustrated the book Millions of Cats, considered today a classic in children’s literature. The book has never been out of print and is the oldest American picture book still in print.
In Millions of Cats, Wanda initiated the double-page spread, designing two facing pages as one panoramic scene. She had a sense of movement from left to right in order to urge the reader on to the next page. Because of her dislike of machine print, she had her brother, Howard, hand-letter the text. It is an “enchanting tale”, written in folk-art style, with simple black and white illustrations, lyrical language, and a catchy refrain. The book won a Newbery Honor award, one of the few picture books to do so, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. Learn more about Millions of Cats here.
CLICK THE LINK AND WATCH THE VIDEO OF MILLIONS OF CATS ON YOU TUBE
Copies are available at the RiHS Visitor Center Kiosk, $35- (members get 10% discount). Kiosk open 12 noon to 5 p.m. Thursday thru Sundays
HIGHBRIDGE, THE ORIGINAL PIPELINE BRINGING CROTON WATER TO NYC. M. FRANK, ROBIN LYNN, LAIRA HUSSEY 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 Roosevelt Island Historical Society
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
WANDA GAG HOUSE HISTORIC HOME AND MUSEUM
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We’re all familiar with at least one tunnel under our Island – our slightly falling down F train tunnel, formerly known as the 63rd St tunnel.
This tunnel is more than it appears. And there are other tunnels, too. So let’s escalator down and see what we can find. Several other tunnels run under our feet. It’s a wonder that buildings don’t shake given the amount of underground traffic.
A word before we descend. It would take a much finer mind to track the changes, re-routing, start-ups and halts of the New York subway system over the past century – even just the small section of it that crosses under our Island. So I have focused on tunnels, not on the system as a whole, or even the Queens segments. If you find errors, they are probably the fault of someone else.
60th Street Tunnel
This tunnel under Roosevelt Island is more than a century old. The 60th Street Tunnel carries the N,R and W trains under Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Queens. It was part of the great expansion of the subway system in the early 20th century, building on contracts between the city and private companies. The original plan put the subways over the Queensboro Bridge, but investigation found that the bridge would be unable to handle the additional weight of the trains. So the tunnel was constructed under our Island just north of the bridge. It opened to revenue service on Sunday, August 1, 1920, at 2 a.m. along with the rest of the BMT Broadway Line. Regular service began the following day. The new tunnel allowed passengers to make an 18-mile trip from Coney Island, through Manhattan, to Queens for a 5 cent fare.
60th Street Tunnel entrance from rooftop, JetBlue HQ, 27-01 Queens Plaza, Street Pinterest
Perhaps of interest to aficionados: The 60th Street tunnel from Queens to Manhattan contains the steepest grade of any tunnel under the East River. The N/W platform at Queens Plaza is an elevated station. When a train leaves, it has to go from the height of the station down to the river bed level and then back up to the level of the Lexington Ave & 60th St station. It is not uncommon for trains to accelerate from 0 to 60mph down this slope. Don’t say I never come up with new intel. 53rd Street Tunnel
This one is almost as old. Construction began on the two tubes of the 53rd Street Tunnel under the East River in spring 1927, and were fully excavated between Queens and Manhattan in January 1929, with a ventilation shaft built on then Welfare Island. The Queens Boulevard Line was one of the original lines of the city-owned Independent Subway System (IND), planned to stretch between the IND Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan and 178th Street and Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. The tunnel crosses the island just south of the Cornell campus. I believe (but am not certain) that the Strecker Memorial Laboratory is a power substation for this line.
A Forgotten Roosevelt Island Subway Entrance?
“No, the above image is not of a forgotten subway station. It is simply a picture of an emergency exit from the 53rd Street subway tunnel that is beneath Roosevelt Island.” http://rooseveltisland360.blogspot.com/2007/12/forgotten-roosevelt-island-subway.html
And a little extra: The 60th Street Tunnel Connection This is a short subway line connecting the BMT 60th Street Tunnel with the IND Queens Boulevard Line west of Queens Plaza. The 11th Street Connection name comes from the street above the split from the 60th Street Tunnel. The line has no stations, and carries R trains at all times but late nights. Now the one we know best, the 63rd Street Tunnel
The newest of the East River tunnels, and the newest rail river crossing in the New York metro area. In February 1963, the New York City Transit Authority proposed a two-track East River subway tunnel under 76th Street with unspecified connections to the rest of the transit network. The proposed site of the tunnel was switched to 59th Street and then shortly after, Mayor Wagner suggested that a tunnel around 61st Street “be built with all deliberate speed”. This was approved by the City Board of Estimates, but then the site was changed once again to 63rd Street because Rockefeller Institute people feared that heavy construction and later train movements so close to the Institute’s buildings might disturb delicate instruments and affect the accuracy of their research.
Construction began in 1969, and the tunnel was holed through beneath Roosevelt Island in 1972. The expectation of this connection helped make our Roosevelt Island project feasible, given the lack of other access to Manhattan. Completion of the tunnel and its connections was delayed by the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis – which led to the “short term fix”, our Aerial Tramway. The subway was finally opened in 1989 – and called the “tunnel to nowhere” because its Queens end did not connect to any other subway line until another short connector was finished in 2001.
Ventilation structure on Roosevelt Island
But there’s much more to this: East Side Access
East Side Access is a megaproject that connects the LIRR to Grand Central, giving Long Island commuters the option to travel directly to East Midtown, reducing congestion at Penn Station. The project is the first expansion of the LIRR in over a century and it is expected that over half of Penn Station’s peak traffic will be diverted to the new 8-track terminal under Grand Central.
How does this involve us? The LIRR tunnel is the bottom half of our 63rd Street tunnel. Same tunnel. The basic East Side Access plan dates to the 1950s, but nothing happened, except the construction of our 63rd St tunnel. Plans for the LIRR connection were revived in the late 1990s. The project received federal funding in 2006, and construction began the following year. The tunnels on the Manhattan side were dug from 2007 to 2011, and the connecting tunnels on the Queens side were completed in 2012.
Major construction is complete. The 15-year long, $11 billion terminal and concourse is seven stories underground, and will allow Long Island Rail Road trains to pull into Grand Central Terminal and shave up to 40 minutes off commutes into Manhattan. Crews are now doing the finishing touches on the station, and Governor Cuomo promised it will open to the public sometime next year, carrying Long Islanders under our Island.
Inside the East Side Access’s eastern cavern JAKE DOBKIN / GOTHAMIST
Water Tunnel No. 3
New and Old. Inside new Shaft 13B of City Tunnel No. 3, 2013 TOD SEELIE FOR GOTHAMIST Inside the old Croton Aqueduct, July 31st, 2017 NATHAN KENSINGER FOR GOTHAMIST
But still more. The biggest, deepest and most expensive tunnel under the Island doesn’t carry subways. Rather, water.
New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 is the largest capital construction project in New York City history, conveying water from the Croton Reservoir into Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. It’s more than 60 miles long, travels 500 feet below street level in sections, and costs over $6 billion. It serves as a backup to Water Tunnel No. 1, completed in 1917, and Water Tunnel No. 2, completed in 1936. Roosevelt Island is the key point where the eastward spur of the tunnel coming from Manhattan branches off to Queens. The Manhattan section is complete, but the spur eastward depends on finishing three shafts built to hold chambers with valves and flowmeters to direct, control and measure the flow of water in sections of the tunnel. Shaft 15B, under Roosevelt Island, between Jack McManus Field and The Octagon, is the last before water can flow into Astoria and beyond.
Wonderful mid-century modern painting signed H. Watkins at the reception desk at Graduate Hotel.
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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Neil Hamamoto — the founder of the arts nonprofit Worthless Studios — often drives his pickup around the city looking for discarded materials to use in his practice. Last summer, all the plywood that was boarding up Soho storefronts and the scraps left on the curb grabbed his attention. “It was dollar signs in my eyes,” Hamamoto says, pointing out that the cost of plywood has tripled since last year. “To see major stores, without blinking, purchase tons and tons of material just made me say wow. Artists don’t have that luxury.” It got him thinking: Eventually, all the plywood would have to come down, and it could have a second life as an artistic medium.
So last July, Worthless Studios posted hundreds of flyers in lower Manhattan neighborhoods that had lots of boarded-up storefronts; they asked businesses to call when they were ready to take down the wood and offered to pick it up. It was the start of the Plywood Protection Project, which invited five artists to make public art installations across the city with the donated and discarded boards.
Now, nearly a year after Hamamoto came up with the idea for the project, the sculptures are installed in five city parks, one in each borough. The artists — Behin Ha Design Studio, Tanda Francis, Tony DiBernardo, KaNSiteCurators and Caroline Mardok, and Michael Zelehoski — transformed the materials almost beyond recognition, but the themes of each piece reference the summer of reckoning and the protests that took over the city’s streets.
“The idea of recontextualizing the wood and installing it a year later is to try and sort of transport people to that time to think about the feelings they were feeling — if it was fear, sadness, anger, whatever it was — and how we can reevaluate those feelings in a different time,” Hamamoto says.
The boarded-up storefronts are mostly gone, and Soho is no longer a ghost town. But the social and economic dynamics that led to the stores putting up the plywood in the first place remain: Corporations still have lots of money to burn, policing is unchanged, and inequality is worsening. “I feel more joy as I walk around the city these days with things reopening. It feels like normal New York again,” Hamamoto says. “But on the other hand, I think metaphorically the [plywood] barrier gets taken down and the news dies down, and maybe people forget that there are some very large issues that continue to exist in our country.”
‘Be Heard,’ by Behin Ha Design Studio, in Thomas Paine Park, Manhattan
Photo: worthless studios/Brett Beyer
From the beginning of the project, Worthless knew the artists would want to choose specific plywood boards, so the studio meticulously catalogued each one. Behin Ha chose pieces with graffiti, artwork, and posters on them and collaged them into an octagonal cone that looks like a megaphone. “It’s a physical object to help amplify your voice and be heard, but the shape allows you to put your ear up to it and actually helps to listen as well,” Hamamoto says.
‘In Honor of Black Lives Matter,’ by KaNSiteCurators and Caroline Mardok, in Poe Park, the Bronx
Photo: worthless studios/Brett Beyer
This installation of life-size wood cutouts of protesters reconstructs the experience of last summer’s uprisings. It was developed with an art class for teens that Worthless Studios and KaNSiteCurators led at the Bronx River Arts Center. Caroline Mardok’s original proposal involved pasting photographs from her documentary project NY Strong onto the figures, but for the final installation, students in the class made their own cutouts and layered them with their own photographs and images of themselves.
‘Miguelito,’ by Michael Zelehoski, in McCarren Park, Brooklyn
Photo: worthless studios/Brett Beyer
In Ancient Egypt, obelisks were usually built in pairs, but in American monuments, they often exist on their own as symbols of power. Michael Zelehoski’s sculpture transforms them into symbols of protest by using their toppled forms to make a caltrop, a spike that protesters use to deter police cars. “Michael’s work is about reuniting the two obelisks together and sort of appropriating the appropriation,” Hamamoto says.
Set designer Tony DiBernardo’s installation references the loss that Broadway performers experienced during the shutdown. “Tell a writer to create without a page. Try and make a movie without a camera. Taking away our stages is taking away our art,” he says in his artist’s statement. His sculpture, shaped like a proscenium, is meant to be used as an actual stage for performers who need space. DiBernardo built spiraling, helix-shaped columns to flank the stage and used the original bright colors of the plywood boards, which had graffiti on them, as ornamentation.
‘RockIt Black,’ by Tanda Francis, in Queensbridge Park, Queens
Photo: worthless studios/Brett Beyer
Brooklyn-based sculptor Tanda Francis makes monumental African heads that have been installed in Fort Greene Park, Riverside Park, and Socrates Sculpture Park. Her contribution to the Plywood Protection Project references Oshun, a Yoruba river god. The sculpture, which uses plywood for the armature and body and has a sculpted face at the center, symbolizes healing energy. “She is a cleansing spirit for this world on fire,” Francis says in her artist’s statement.
LET’S DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS EYESORE
This lopsided kiosk is an affront to the eye and it is on the West Promenade just north of the new Graduate Hotel and Cornell Tech Campus.
It seems to be well stuck in the ground, so please come up with a design to enhance it and make it an attraction.
The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch is a triumphal arch at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, New York City, just north of Prospect Park. Built from 1889 to 1892, the arch is dedicated “To the Defenders of the Union, 1861–1865” HARA REISER THOM HEYER MITCH HAMMER ARON EISENPREISS LAURA HUSSEY ED LITCHER JAY JACOBSON BILL SCHMOLER GLORIA HERMAN SUSAN RODETIS ANDY SPARBERG NINA LUBLIN ALL GOT IT RIGHT!!!!
Sources
CURBED NEW YORK (C)
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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