An Ode to Construction Workers on a 57th Street Art Deco Tower
February 8, 2021
There’s a lot to love about the Fuller Building, the Art Deco-Art Nouveau beauty built in 1929 that rises 40 stories over Madison Avenue and 57th Street.
A few favorites: the black granite facade on the lower floors, geometric designs at the top of the tower, and the medallions on the lobby floor showing various buildings constructed by the Fuller Company, an early developer of steel-skeleton skyscrapers. (These included the Flatiron Building, which was called the Fuller Building when it opened in 1902—but “flatiron” stuck because of the shape of the lot it was built on.)
The sculptures, by Elie Nadelman, seem to be an ode to the men who literally constructed the Fuller Building and other mighty towers that raised New York’s skyline higher toward the heavens in the early 20th century. Perhaps the most eye-catching feature of this iconic tower sits above the entrance: two idealized and shirtless construction workers flanking a clock while standing in front of a cityscape of skyscrapers.
It makes sense. The Fuller Company was a construction company that depended on the strength and skill of men in the building trades. Without these workers and advancements in engineering, Manhattan would have remained a low-rise metropolis topping out at six or so stories.
240 EAST 72nd STREET
Art Deco poetry on a 1929 East Side high-rise January 25, 2021 You don’t see a lot of green glazed terra cotta on New York City high-rise facades. But then 240 East 79th Street isn’t just another residential building on the Upper East Side.
This “rather plain brick building” completed in 1929 features a showstopping Art Deco entrance, “completely faced in colored glazed terra-cotta squares, with glazed terra cotta surrounds for the windows and the main entrance,” noted Anthony Robins in his book New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture.
The building’s awning carries the address in a recognizable Art Deco typeface, as does the “No. 240 East 79 St” inscribed above the entrance
Isn’t that eight-sided emblem amid all the green terra cotta unusual? Robins has this to say about it: “Above the inscription sits an octagonal piece of stone, set within a terra cotta frame and capped by a flowering form that curves out from the facade to hover protectively over it.”
“Frederick Godwin, the architect, was a great-grandson of American poet William Cullen Bryant—and his ornamental treatment here is quite poetic.”
F9EBD7The Gateway Arch is a 630-foot (192 m) monument in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Clad in stainless steel and built in the form of a weighted catenary arch,[it is the world’s tallest arch the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, and Missouri’s tallest accessible building. Built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States, and officially dedicated to “the American people,” the Arch, commonly referred to as “The Gateway to the West” is the centerpiece of Gateway Arch National Park and has become an internationally recognized symbol of St. Louis, as well as a popular tourist destination.
The Arch was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen in 1947; construction began on February 12, 1963.
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EDITORIAL
Walking in Manhattan, Queens or any neighborhood reveals low-key wonderful design, especially around entryways, doors and vestibules. Look up and you will spot gargoyles and decorative terra cotta trim! Judith Berdy
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In the past months, many of us have wondered about the future of our country. Let me take you to a time when many leaders felt our country’s future was very grim. This essay is a Cliffs Notes version of a (now Zoom) course I am preparing for the Osher Program at Carnegie Mellon University. I thought I might share it with you, and hope you find it interesting.
We assume that the United States’ march across the continent was inevitable. That’s how it worked out. But at the time, in the 1790s and early 1800s, it did not seem so. The more likely bet would have been that North America would be shaped like a flag, with north-south stripes of the US and British, French and Spanish territories, rather than a sandwich, with a thick, coast to coast US between the Canadian “bread” to the north and Mexico to the south.
The Founding Fathers feared, with very good reason that the mainland of North America would continue to be a cockpit of diplomatic intrigues and military struggles among the European powers, that these struggles would reflect issues centered outside of the continent, and that the new nation would be embroiled in all of this. The way things worked out was, as the Duke of Wellington said after the battle of Waterloo, a damn close thing.
So, what’s the story?
The result of the French and Indian War in 1763 (part of a global struggle between Britain and France) was that the French were out of North America – though they retained several islands in the Caribbean. London’s relations with their American colonies worsened, leading to the Revolution and the independence of 13 of their former colonies. (Why Quebec and Nova Scotia didn’t join the revolution is interesting but too much for this brief piece.)
Peace left the new nation with twice as much territory – from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. But geography was a problem: the Allegheny Mountains, not large by Rocky Mountain standards, but a formable barrier to westward movement. The Alleghenies divided the old seaboard colonies from the new territories.
Growing numbers of settlers in the trans-Allegheny west were cut off from the older Atlantic front states. They could get goods to market only by boat down Mississippi, through New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico and then around Florida and up the Atlantic Coast to eastern US ports and rivers. From earliest days, the new republic faced the danger that the trans-Allegheny region would be separated from new nation.
Britain was another problem. Even after peace, London didn’t’t give in. The British maintained forts south of the new border with British North America and, Americans believed, continued to embolden Native American anger and fear. Many Brits, King George III included, assumed that, after a few years of anarchy, the States would beg to be taken back into the Empire.
The trans-Allegheny west became the focus of a complex ballet with Spanish, French and British adventurers (some sponsored by their governments, some working on their own) seeking to detach pieces of these territories while Washington struggled to respond to demands of those crossing the mountains for land, security and access to the Mississippi to trade their goods and, as well, to control the Native Americans in the region who responded with increasing violence to these incursions (and, it was believed, were being supported by the British).
And indeed, the efforts of the new US government to slow the flood of Americans across the mountains in search of cheap land were no more successful than the British has been earlier. Kentucky’s population soared from perhaps 12,000 in 1783 to 221,000 in 1800.
Spain was a big problem. After 1763, Spain gained all of French territory west of the Mississippi (“Louisiana”) and, under Emperor Carlos III, tried to revive its North American holdings. Spanish explorers advanced up the California coast, establishing new colonies as far as San Francisco. Spain threatened to bottle up Mississippi passage and sought to entice trans-Allegheny settlers to switch to Spanish allegiance. This was not too difficult: the most famous was Aaron Burr. In Kentucky, the first state west of the Alleghenies, many argued that they should join Spain rather than the US.
France, too, threatened again. Big time. Napoleon had been determined to put down slave rebellion in in Saint-Domingue (later Haiti), the source of 40% of the world’s sugar and France’s most profitable colony. Meanwhile, France had secretly reacquired Louisiana (and control of the Mississippi) by a deal with Spain, which had switched sides in the Napoleonic War. Many French troops were sent to Saint-Dominique. During the Peace of Amiens (between two parts of the Napoleonic wars), these troops were viewed as a potential invasion force that could restore France’s colonial empire in North America. The result? This would import the Napoleonic wars into the North American mainland, creating much greater European military involvement and risking drawing the US into the fray and marginalizing it at the same time. American leaders were deeply divided about allying with Britain, but even Jefferson, who had been a forceful French supporter, said that “the day France takes possession of new Orleans…we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”
How did it all work out? Disease in Saint-Dominique massively slew French troops, and the resumption of war in Europe forced Napoleon to abandon any North American aspirations. Instead, he offered to sell Louisiana.
Jefferson’s envoy, James Monroe, was forced to make a quick decision: What would Jefferson do? Lacking any Constitutional mandate by which the federal government could acquire new territory – but certain that Jefferson would approve, the Americans purchased a territory of some nine hundred thousand square miles, roughly equal in size to the existing nation. What would happen to all of this land was totally uncertain. Whether it might become a permanent colony of the United States, whether it might lead to the creation of several new, larger states or even to emergence of several sovereign nations in North America were all possibilities.
Meanwhile, the Spanish role in North America collapsed. After the US Revolution, Spain’s position in North America was never stronger. In fact Spain was on the defensive, losing its position in the Pacific Northwest and Florida. But the catastrophe took place at home. In 1807, the French invaded Spain, and replaced the Spanish king with Joseph Napoleon. This plunged Spain into years of chaos and civil war. Lacking central authority in Madrid, Spain’s North American colonial empire disintegrated.
With the purchase of Louisiana, the size of the new US was doubled and the issue of control of the Mississippi was resolved. Efforts to detach parts of the country continued – see Aaron Burr – but that danger had passed. The addition of these new territories, soon followed by Texas, California and a large section of Mexico would bring the US to its coast to coast reality. But this would also intensify the existing and near fatal problem – the extension of slavery.
Still, the story was not entirely over. Taking advantage of US Civil War, France, Spain and Britain invaded Mexico in 1861 to pressure Mexico to settle its debts. Spain and Britain withdrew in 1862 after negotiating an agreement. But France’s Emperor Napoleon III invited Austrian archduke Maximilian in 1864 to establish a new pro-French monarchy in Mexico, overthrowing the administration of President Benito Juárez. (A holiday many celebrate here, Cinco de Mayo, marks the beginning of struggle against the French.) Maximillian was executed in June 1867.
And finally let us not forget the so-called Zimmerman telegram. In January 1917, British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause.
The historian’s dilemma is that one knows how the story ends. The task is to write from the perspective of those who don’t know what the outcome will be. Certainly the young nation’s leaders in the post-Revolutionary War years were deeply uncertain, often pessimistic, about the country’s future.
Thanks for reading,
Stephen Blank RIHS February 8, 2021
If you would like to see a longer iteration of this essay, with full footnotes and references, you can find it on my website: www.stephenblank.info under “Articles”, “Slow Blogs”, “The Map of North America”.
The Valley Forge War Memorial, one of many designed by the architect Paul Philippe Cret.
Architects have long created memorials to commemorate dead from wars and other mass casualty events. In America, these structures, from the Washington Memorial to lesser known monuments located across the country commemorating the Union victories of the Civil War, play an important role in shaping and projecting a certain vision of American history.
The French-American architect Paul Philippe Cret, active during the first five decades of the 20th century, is perhaps the most prolific American memorial designer.
We featured the architecture of Paul Phillipe Cret in a previous edition.
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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New York City Transit Authority Objects, from the collection of and photographed by Brian Kelley, published by Standards Manual. Introduction by Eric Greene
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Kelley (b. 1988) moved to New York City in 2006 and received his BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts. Kelley’s work resists the hurried march of consumerist modernity, seeking to halt the cyclical emptiness of our material lives to capture a sense of culture at “the end of history.” A mixed-media approach has allowed him to pursue artwork with disruptive capacities—exhaustive research, slow & meditative composition, and the repurposing of photographic mediums—all employed to reveal the artifacts left behind by the precession of simulacra. Kelley was born in Horseheads, NY and currently lives in Lumberland, NY.
Since 2011 Brian Kelley has been collecting and photographing Metrocards and other ephemera from the New York City Transit Authority. He now has a collection of thousands of items from the TA. Some were trash, found items and donations from employees and others.
We will learn how Brian’s collection have overtaken his studio and how he shares his collection with a contemporary audience.
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Tuesday, March 16 “Abandoned Queens” Author Richard Panchyk takes us on a journey through Queens’ past. Revealing haunting reminders of the way things used to be, he describes fascinating, abandoned places, including the chilling Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, the meandering remains of the country’s first modern highway, a defunct airport reclaimed by wilderness, an eerie old railroad line in Forest Hills, and a destroyed neighborhood in the Rockaways.
Tuesday, April 20 “Mansions and Munificence: the Gilded Age on Fifth Avenue” Guide, lecturer, author and teacher of art and architecture, Emma Guest-Consales leads a virtual tour of the great mansions of Fifth Avenue. Starting with the ex-home of Henry Clay Frick that now houses the Frick Collection, all the way up to the former home of Andrew Carnegie, now the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, she takes us through some of the most extravagant urban palaces the city has ever seen.
Tuesday, May 18 “Saving America’s Cities” Author and Harvard History Professor Lizabeth Cohen Provides an eye-opening look at her award-winning book’s subtitle: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age. Tracing Logue’s career from the development of Roosevelt Island in the ‘70s, to the redevelopment of New Haven in the ‘50s, Boston in the’60s and the South Bronx from 1978–85, she focuses on Logue’s vision to revitalize post-war cities, the rise of the Urban Development Corporation.
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Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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John Hultberg, Monhegan Dock, 1961, oil on canvas mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1980.137.42
John Hultberg studied at the Art Students League with artists Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. In 1952 his work was included in an exhibition of emerging artists, and two years later he won first prize at the Corcoran Gallery of Art Biennial. In 1955, Time magazine declared him the “latest darling of modern art.” (Jacks, John Hultberg: Painter of the In-Between, 1985) Hultberg exhibited his work all over the world, published many poems, and taught in art schools across the country. His paintings often show surreal landscapes of indistinct objects that evoke stormy wastelands or long-forgotten ruins.
John Hultberg, Road through the Labyrinth, 1979, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1980.137.35
John Hultberg, Desecration of the House, 1977, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1980.137.37
John Hultberg, Sculptor’s Garden, 1968, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1980.137.46
John Hultberg’s paintings of imaginary environments often show strange groups of art objects and old artifacts. In Sculptor’s Garden, he included paintings, easels, and other tools to suggest artists working out-of-doors. But there are no people in the image and the works on the easels appear unfinished, as if whoever was working here had to leave suddenly; the threatening clouds and desolate landscape in the distance emphasize this sense of abandonment. Hultberg wanted to infuse his landscapes with uncertainty and ambiguity, and once wrote that “I rejoice that I find in painting a way to create my own earth.” (Jacks, John Hultberg: Painter of the In-Between, 1985)
John Hultberg, Blue Black Destruction, 1958, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1980.137.55
John Hultberg, Machine Shop Showing Gantry Cranes Newport News Shipyard, 1957, gouache, charcoal, pencil and crayon on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1980.137.59
John Hultberg, New City, 1957, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1980.137.58
John Hultberg, After De Chirico, 1953, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1980.137.57
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A WALK AFTER THE SNOW
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Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
Judith Berdy
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An unidentified Brooklyn street in March 1888. Photo by Breading G. Way via Brooklyn Museum
Snow? You missed the Big One
The storm, from my windows at least, was disappointing. Not two feet of snow, no sprawling drifts.
But the real big one, the snowstorm that did the most damage and had the greatest impact on our City was in 1888. So return with me to the thrilling days of yesteryear, to March 11, 1888.
This is what the New York Herald had to say, a few days later when the City began to move again:
With men and women dying in her ghostly streets, New York saw day breaking through the wild clouds yesterday morning. Nature had overwhelmed the metropolis, and citizens were found dead in the mighty snowdrifts. White, frozen hands sticking up out of the billowed and furrowed wastes testified to the unspeakable power that had desolated the city.
Had Jules Verne written such a story a week ago New Yorkers would have laughed and pronounced it a clever but impossible romance.
Yet here was the stupendous reality. Within forty-eight hours the city was converted into an Arctic wilderness, cut off from all railway and telegraph communication. The white hurricane had strewn her busiest and gayest thoroughfares with wreck and ruin. Courts of justice were closed and the vast machinery of commerce was paralyzed. Groans of mutilated humanity filled the air. (Oh, to have been a journalist then!)
Yes, March. The temperature had hit a warmish 50 degrees on March 10. And this wasn’t the most snow. Storms in 1947, 2006 and 2016 laid down more. But March 1888 was one of the worst blizzards in American history, killing more than 400 people in the Northeast (where 25% of Americans lived) and dumping as much as 55 inches of snow in some areas – the greatest snowfall since the formation of the United States.
On March 11, Arctic air from Canada collided with Gulf air from the south and temperatures plunged. Rain turned to snow and winds reached hurricane-strength levels – the 1888 storm became known as “The Great White Hurricane”. By midnight, gusts were recorded at 85 miles per hour in New York City. Along with heavy snow, there was a complete whiteout in the city when the residents awoke the next morning, and the storm worsened that night and into the 12th. Simply walking the streets was perilous.
A researcher who dug through newspaper files in 1988 found many stories about 1888:
“I saw a man for one and a half hours trying to cross 96th Street. We watched him start, get quarter way across, and then be flung back against the building on the comer. The last time he tried it, he was caught up in a whirl of snow and disappeared from our view. The next morning seven horses, policemen, and his brother charged the drift, and his body was kicked out of the drift.”
Although “only” 21 inches of snow fell, the City ground to a near halt in the face of massive drifts rising up to 30 feet and powerful winds. Thousands of people were stranded on elevated trains; in many areas, enterprising people with ladders offered to rescue the passengers for a small fee. Telegraph lines, water mains and gas lines were all above ground and froze and were inaccessible to repair crews. Wall Street was forced to close for three straight days. New Yorkers camped out in hotel lobbies waiting for the worst of the blizzard to pass. Mark Twain was in New York, stranded at his hotel for several days and P.T. Barnum entertained some of the stranded at Madison Square Garden.
The New York Times, March 13, 1888, reported:
Before the day had well advanced, every horse-car and elevated railroad train in the city had stopped running; the streets were almost impassable to men or horses by reason of the huge masses of drifting snow; the electric wires – telegraph and telephone — connecting spots in the city or opening communication with places outside were nearly all broken; hardly a train was out from the city or came into it during the entire day; the mails were stopped, and every variety of business dependent on motion or locomotion was stopped.
In New York City, damage done by the storm was estimated at $20 million (by comparison, this was close to 10% of the U.S. Federal Government’s entire expenditures in 1888), and, it is said, 200 New Yorkers died because of the storm.
The 1888 storm had a lasting impact on the City. Like most American cities that had entered the era of electric illumination and the telephone in the late 19th century, vast forests of poles carrying a helter-skelter network of wires lined and crisscrossed New York streets. Unsightly and dangerous: Wires snapped, spraying sparks and occasionally injuring (or killing) an unlucky passerby.
The wires belonged to Western Union Telegraph Co., Gold and Stock Ticker Co., and the United States, Metropolitan, Brush and East River electric lighting companies, as well as those of burglar alarm companies and the police and fire departments. They were draped from poles that ranged from 55 to 150 feet tall, with dozens of cross arms. Adding to this confusion, each company erected its own poles.
The city had passed a law in 1884 ordering the various utility companies to place their wires below the ground, which they simply ignored, saying the costs were too high.
Library of Congress
After the storm, The New York Tribune printed an editorial reminding New Yorkers that not only had a law had been passed to bury the wires, but that the companies, which owned them, had more than enough money to make it happen. The New York Times chimed in: “If the telegraph wires had been placed underground as contemplated by the law, they would have been made to serve a specially important duty at a time when they were most sorely needed.”
In the fall of 1887, Mayor Abram Hewitt had tried without success to get a proposal through the state legislature to put wires underground. Then, in January 1889, a new City administration under Mayor Hugh Grant coupled with two very public deaths from the downed wires finally resulted in an end to the injunctions for the companies that owned the wires. Within the next few years, all of the poles and wires were dismantled and the wires were buried underground where they would be more secure. This ensured that neither wind nor snow would cut off electricity to New York City again. “When we fix a time, we mean it,” said Grant. “When the time is ended, the poles will come down.” When financier Jay Gould, who owned Western Union, contended in court that the city’s action was “unconstitutional,” the court supported the city.
Thanks for reading,
Stephen Blank RIHS
EDITORIAL
To this day, just ride over the R.I. Bridge into a neighborhood of overhead wires and a hodge-podge of phone, cable, electric lines jerry rigged on poles. Some also hold sneakers and abandoned grocery bags. These unsightly masses of dangerous lines are there for all to see and for the squirrel Olympians and for the critters to feast on!
FROM A READER Thanks for great history of knitting in WW I and II. I remember some classmates in first and second grade knitting during recess for brothers and family members. Jay Jacobson
Arc de Triomphe, Paris Where the American Soldiers dreamed of marching by at the end of the Great War. Susan Rodetis, Ed Litcher, Andy Sparberg and Gloria Herman got it right
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SOCKS OVER THERE: HAND KNITTING FOR THE WORLD WARS
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Socks “Over There:” Handknitting for the World Wars
Rachel Maines
2 February 2021
In the summer of 1944, American forces pushed south and east from their beachhead in Normandy, forcing the Germans to retreat from an ever-larger territory in Southern France. Although it had been planned to the smallest detail many months in advance, the Normandy invasion fell behind almost at once, as German resistance prevented the capture of major ports. Without essential ports along the French coast, necessary supplies, troops, and weaponry could not be landed.
After the breakout, supply continued to be a problem. By D+100, the front lines were about 200 miles from the supply depots. Daily deliveries by truck, the famous Red Ball Express, brought necessary supplies to troops fighting at Metz, Verdun, Antwerp and Liège. These transport units carried ammunition, rations, gasoline, and one further supply item needed at the American front: dry socks.
The horseshoe-nail role of dry socks had become apparent the previous year, when forty per cent of the casualties in the Attu Islands campaign, 1,200 of 2,900 total, were due to trench foot. In November 1943, trench foot, caused by exposure to cold and wet, accounted for twenty per cent of the casualties of the winter campaign in Italy.
The U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps made frantic efforts to acquire adequate footgear for the Normandy invasion, but they could not get delivery of critical items in time to prevent 70,000 cold-injury casualties in the European theater during the winter of 1944-45. Most of the men affected by these injuries were trained, battle-hardened riflemen. Each spent an average of sixty days in field hospitals before returning to the front. Some were so seriously disabled that they were removed from active duty and sent home. The price exacted by wet socks from American military efforts in Europe was so impressive that it was the subject of an investigation in 1945. Army historian Roland Ruppenthal reports that by January 1945, “loss of personnel from trench foot and frostbite already approximated the strength of three divisions in the 12th Army Group.”
People were recruited to send comfort packs with needles, thread, stationery, buttons, chocolate bar and other necessities to the soldiers on the front.
Trenchfoot, a common trauma of battle, is an injury to the lower extremities caused by damp cold, tight and/or infrequently-changed footgear, standing for long periods, and, of course, wet socks. Military physicians Tom Whayne and Michael DeBakey (later of heart surgery fame), analyzing the nearly half a million cold injuries to American soldiers in World War II, observed that “the upper limit of temperature at which cold injury can occur has not been established.”
In both World Wars, combatant nations, including the United States, Britain, and Germany, learned that inadequate or poorly-maintained footwear produced costly and preventable casualties from trench foot and frostbite. While provision of shoes and boots to troops were major issues in earlier conflicts, no nation before World War I had fully appreciated the significance of warm, dry, well-fitting socks to the effectiveness of soldiers in the field. The large numbers of trench foot casualties in World War I, especially among the French and British, convinced policymakers that this vital commodity must receive a higher priority in military production planning, but few nations in wartime could shift production to knitting mills rapidly enough to make a difference. Thus, in Britain and the U.S, the best policy option proved to be recruiting women and children civilians to knit socks by hand for the military in the first war, and for refugees, prisoners and civilians in the second.
Knitting instructions for the heel of a sock
When World War I began in Europe in 1914, the United States was the world’s premier manufacturer of knitting and spinning machinery. Exports of this equipment, however, did nothing to increase the manufacturing capacity of American knitting mills, which proved to be a significant bottleneck for military textile production. Despite the conversion of silk and cotton knitting equipment to wool, industrial knitters were unable to supply the Army with the more than 150 million pairs of heavy wool socks it required in 1917-1918. Two strategies were employed: the hasty construction of 1200 knitting machines, which were by the end of the war capable of producing 8 million socks a month, and home production by hand knitters.
The hand knitters may not have been as fast as the machines, but they could be mobilized much more quickly. In the First World War, women, the elderly and children worked with such voluntary associations as the American Red Cross to make up the shortage of knitted wool socks for the Army, and to produce hospital bedding and surgical textiles from fabric and cotton lint (unspun fiber), with some work done by hand sewing and the rest by on sewing machines. Clothing was made at home and in Red Cross workshops for both American servicemembers and allied refugees. School children mobilized to produce socks, sweaters, wristlets, washcloths, Balaclava helmets and similar goods for the “Sammies” in France.
You could make hot water bottle covers, eye bandages and bath mitts. The Red Cross set out instructions for all kinds of items to make the soldiers time easier.
By the last month of 1917, the reorganized Red Cross had shipped 13,336 cases containing some 13 million dressings and hospital items to Europe, 424,000 articles of hospital clothing, and a quarter of a million hand-knitted items. Not even this monumental labor met the demand; the Red Cross had to purchase half a million commercially knitted sweaters in 1917 to clothe soldiers still not fully outfitted by the War Department. By October 1918, the Red Cross had distributed nearly three million garments made by a membership of more than 8 million. At the end of the war, 371.5 million relief articles had been produced, about 11 million garments had been knitted for members of the U.S. armed forces, and close to two million French refugees had been fed and clothed.
World War I was in fact the last occasion on which knitting for the military had official U.S. War Department sanction: by World War II such work was limited to production for hospitals, prisoners of war and refugees. The former conflict accounted for the largest Red Cross membership in U.S. history; the Second World War brought half a million fewer volunteers into the organization, mainly because more women workers were employed in war industry.
War Work for Willing Hands was publicized in Star Needlework Journal
The problem of wet socks at war in World War II was ultimately resolved for the U.S. Army in late 1944 by the approval for distribution of a new type of footwear that later revolutionized civilian cold weather gear: the M-1944 shoepac, “a moccasin-type rubber boot” with a leather upper and removable wool felt lining, the type of footwear now sold to civilians as the “L.L. Bean Boot.” After a few false starts in the refinement of this footgear, the chief surgeon for the European theater determined in December 1944 that “the shoepac had been found to be the only mechanical aid which contributed substantially to the prevention of trench foot.” The U.S. military establishment had finally figured out how to keep its socks dry without enlisting home knitters.
LOTS OF CORRECT ANSWERS TODAY: HARA REISER, ARLENE BESSENOFF, BILL SCHIMOLER, LISA FERNANDEZ, ANDY SPARBERG AND SUSAN RODETIS
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 RACHEL MAINES
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Editorial Just about 10 months ago, people were pulling out their sewing machines and making face masks for protection from Covid-19. Soon the mask business became big time business and home sewing was limited. In World War I, many women followed the instructions put out in journals and by the Red Cross and provided thousands of necessities to the fighting forces abroad.
Soldiers were provided with sewing kits to keep their uniforms in good shape.
In the middle of winter with snow on the ground and masks on our faces, it is time to think of a park of whimsy that will open this summer in the Hudson River at Pier 55.
THE MATERIAL IN THIS EDITION COMES FROM THE SPONSOR LITTLE ISLAND AT PIER 55. WE OFFER NO OPINIONS JUST THE IMAGES OF WHAT WILL SOON BLOOM IN THE HUDSON RIVER. MAY IT BE GREETED WITH AS MUCH ENTHUSIASM AS MOYNIHAN STATION
From Little Island at Pier 55: In 2013, Barry Diller, in partnership with Hudson River Park Trust leadership, embarked on the unique opportunity to envision a solution for the repair and reactivation of Pier 54, recently damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Diller chose to reimagine an entirely new type of public space for New York, one that would create an immersive experience with nature and art.
Diller called on the expertise of industry leaders in the arts—Scott Rudin, Stephen Daldry, George C. Wolfe, and Kate Horton—to explore the vast possibilities of creating a new public park with the arts as an integrated component. This team, together with Hudson River Park, selected the design firms of Heatherwick Studio and MNLA to realize this vision. The two firms combined architectural innovation with a captivating landscape to provide visitors with an oasis from urban life where they could play, relax, imagine, and restore.
Little Island is an initiative of The Diller – von Furstenberg Family Foundation (DVFFF), with support from the City of New York. The DVFFF’s considerable philanthropic history extends to several other New York City parks and arts organizations including The High Line, The Statue of Liberty Museum, Signature Theatre, Carnegie Hall Society, and the Central Park Conservancy.
Born from a collaboration of the UK-based Heatherwick Studio and the New York-based landscape architecture firm MNLA, led by Signe Nielsen, the park’s imaginative design offers all New Yorkers and visitors a new public space that is whimsical, captivating, and restorative.
STRUCTURAL DESIGN
Heatherwick Studio explored the idea of designing a new pier that could draw from the remaining wooden piles from Pier 54.
“My studio and I became interested in the remains of the old piers on the west side of Manhattan, where their top surfaces had long gone, leaving only hundreds of ancient structural wooden piles sticking out of the river.”
“We wondered if the identity of our new park and performance space could emerge from the water, just like these structural piles, but without needing to add any slab on top. This idea evolved to take the new concrete piles that would be needed to connect to the granite at the base of the river, and to then continue them out of the water, extending skyward to raise sections of a generous green landscape with rich horticulture. Fusing at they meet, these 280 individual piles come together to form the undulating topography of the park, angled perfectly for performance and theatre spaces.Once complete and open to the public in 2021 the result should be a unique and thrilling landscape over the water for everyone to enjoy.”
-Thomas Heatherwick Founder, Heatherwick Studio
LANDSCAPE DESIGN
MNLA’s landscape design was conceived as a leaf floating on water – a space that could be both visually surprising and inspiring for New York City.
“The pier’s landscape will be a sensory delight in all seasons and times of day.”
“The lifted corners of the pier create distinct microclimates that reveal themselves through color, texture, light and shadow. Whether meandering along paths or taking alternate routes of stairs or boulders scrambles, the eye is at times directed downward to the rich palette of plants or outwards to spectacular views of the city and harbor. Little Island will be a maritime botanic garden with 35 species of trees, 65 species of shrubs, and 270 varieties of grasses, perennials, vines, and bulbs, many of which have been selected for their fragrance and attractiveness to birds and pollinators. The landscape is one of sweeping swaths of textures and seasonally calibrated color themes punctuated by magnificent trees.”
-Signe Nielsen Principal, MNLA
Explore the Island
The park features seating lawns, gentle slopes, winding pathways leading to dazzling views, and a variety of spaces for performances and play as well as rest and relaxation. The undulating topography of this oasis will surprise and inspire visitors with its range of elevations, lush landscaping, and hidden meadows, encouraging visitors to return time and again to explore all that Little Island has to offer.
ITTLE ISLAND AT PIER 55 SUSAN RODETIS AND LISA FERNANDEZ GOT IT RIGHT!!
EDITORIAL
When I saw this plan, I thought it was nuts. I do not know if I was crazy of just my jaded skeptical self. Let’s see how the park works out this summer. Yes, we will have to traverse Manhattan Island to get there!
Judy Berdy
WE ARE WORKING ON A LINK TO RESERVE YOUR PLACE AT THE ZOOM EVENT. STAY TUNED.
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
Sources LITTLE ISLAND AT PIER 55 (C)
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One of the promises of our early Roosevelt Island was that it would be auto-free. That would never be the case, but this suggests that many of us were charmed by the notion of living in a heaven with no auto noises, fumes or congestion. Well, return with me to the thrilling days of yesteryear when the automobile was viewed as the solution to transportation noise, fumes and congestion.
The problem: Horses.
A lot of horses.
In late nineteenth century, New York contained somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 horses. All transport, whether of goods or people, was drawn by horses, from fancy carriages pulled by the finest breeds to cabs and horse trollies as well as countless carts, drays, and wains, all working constantly to deliver the goods needed by the City’s rapidly growing population.
Judy Berdy in an earlier number of the Almanac, pointed out some of the City’s lovely nineteenth century stables. That’s true, but we have to look at the other end of the animal, too. Each horse produced up to 30 pounds of manure per day and a quart of urine. All of this ended up in their stables or along the street. For those of you slow on your math, that adds up to millions of pounds each day and over 100,000 tons per year (not to mention around 10 million gallons of urine).
A lot, indeed. By the end of the 19th century, vacant lots around New York City housed manure piles that reached 40 or 60 feet high. It was estimated that in a few decades, every street would have manure piled up to third story levels.
Streets covered by horse manure attracted huge numbers of flies. One estimate claimed that horse manure was the hatching ground for three billion flies daily throughout the United States, flies that spread disease rapidly through dense human populations. In the winter, manure mixed with the dirt of unpaved streets to form a detestable, smelly, gooey muck and in the summer, the dried and ground-up manure was blown everywhere. Come summer, the smell was overbearing and when it rained, poop-rivers flooded the streets and sidewalks often seeping into people’s basements.
Horses also died. Often in the middle of the street. When they died, their carcasses were abandoned on the streets, creating an additional health issue. In 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets. But sometimes a big carcass would simply be left to rot until it had disintegrated enough for someone to pick up the pieces.
Moreover, 19th-century New York was already unsettlingly unsanitary, with whole swathes of the city dominated by “a loathsome train of dependent nuisances” like slaughterhouses, facilities for fat melting and gut-cleaning, and “manure heaps in summer” that stretched across entire blocks.
Bear in mind that an increasing number of our New York predecessors shared smaller and smaller spaces with all of this. The human density of New York City rose over the 19th century from just below 40,000 people per square mile to above 90,000, and we had our own waste to deal with.
But as we have seen earlier with clean water and waste, New Yorkers were not keen to spend to improve their situation. Some cities tried to cover the cost of street cleaning by selling the manure for fertilizer. In 1803 the New York superintendent of scavengers spent about $26,000 for street cleaning and realized over $29,000 from selling the manure collected. Nevertheless, it was soon impossible to absorb the huge production distributed around the city. There was so much that farmers began to charge for taking it away.
The structural problem was that the larger and richer cities became, the more horses they needed to function, to move and haul ever growing numbers of people and amounts of goods. Technological innovation didn’t help – indeed made things worse. The horse remained essential in urban civilization, even after the development of the steam engine. As the Nation noted in 1872, though great improvements had been made in the development of such “agents of progress” as the railroad, the steamboat, and the telegraph, modern society’s continued to depend the horse. For it was the horse who fed the railroads and steamboats with passengers and freight, and who provided transportation within the cities.
The more horses, the more manure. Moreover, all these horses had to be stabled, which used up ever-larger areas of increasingly valuable land. And as the number of horses grew, ever-more land had to be devoted to producing hay to feed them (rather than producing food for people), and this had to be brought into cities and distributed—by horse-drawn vehicles. It seemed that urban civilization was doomed.
In the late 1800s, the city hired drainage engineer George E. Waring Jr., who had worked on Central Park, to start cleaning things up. He pushed for new laws forcing owners to stable horses overnight (instead of leaving them in the streets) and mobilized crews to gather manure and horse corpses to be sold for fertilizer and glue. What they couldn’t sell was dumped. And the City tried harder – sewage infrastructure was improved, and the first streetcar lines appeared (horse-drawn, but able to carry more passengers than a carriage); in addition, public transport was encouraged and street cleaning crews (known as White Wings because of their white uniforms) were established.
Still, the situation remained so grim that in 1898, then New York Mayor George E. Waring Jr. organized the first international congress on urban planning. Manure was the main topic. This event, the first environmental summit in history, was attended by representatives from other cities to develop ideas on how to resolve the manure issue. But despite their collective efforts, participants were unable to solve the problem and the conference planned for 10 days concluded on the third.
By then, things were changing. Electric streetcars were gaining traction. Rising land pricing (for stables and farmland) coupled with higher food costs increasingly made these new options more economical, too. But the rise of private cars was the final nail in the horse-drawn coffin.
Automobiles were cleaner, quieter and healthier than horses! “The horse in the city is bound to be a menace to a condition of perfect health,” warned one leading urban health authority in 1901. Public health officials charged that windblown dust from ground-up manure damaged eyes and irritated respiratory organs, while the “noise and clatter” of city traffic aggravated nervous diseases. Since, noted Scientific American, the motor vehicle left no litter and was “always noiseless or nearly so”, the exit of the horse would “benefit the public health to an almost incalculable degree.” By 1912, cars outnumbered horses on the streets of NYC and by 1917 the last horsecar was put out of commission and the issue of horse droppings slowly disappeared into history.
But progress has a price: Many businesses collapsed and many jobs lost. Not counting those who directly drove or cared for horses, in New York and Brooklyn in 1880, there were 427 blacksmith shops, 249 carriage and wagon enterprises, 262 wheelwright shops, and 290 establishments dealing in saddles and harnesses. Add to this vets and the makers and suppliers of all the goods dealt with by these enterprises.
So our lovely island was never car-free. But it could be worse. We could have had horses.
When it first opened in 1766 as an outreach chapel of Trinity Church to better serve its expanding congregation, St. Paul’s was a “chapel-of-ease” for those who did not want to walk a few blocks south along unpaved streets to Trinity. A decade later, the Great Fire of 1776 destroyed the first Trinity Church, but St. Paul’s survived, thanks to a bucket brigade dousing the building with water.
Until the second Trinity Church was rebuilt in 1790, many, including George Washington, made St. Paul’s their church home. On April 30, 1789, after Washington took the oath of office to become the first President of the United States, he made his way from Federal Hall on Wall Street to St. Paul’s Chapel, where he attended services.
Over the next two centuries, the ministries of St. Paul’s expanded along with the city. Community outreach was a primary focus, with services to accommodate the needs of immigrants, working women, and the homeless.
After September 11, 2001, St. Paul’s became the site of an extraordinary, round-the-clock relief ministry to rescue and recovery workers for nine months. Though the World Trade Center buildings collapsed just across the street, there was no damage to St. Paul’s, earning it the nickname “the little chapel that stood.”
Today, St. Paul’s Chapel and Trinity Church (on Broadway at Wall Street) are the cornerstones of Trinity Church Wall Street, a vibrant Episcopal parish that serves the community with worship, arts, education, and social justice outreach. St. Paul’s Chapel is committed to leadership, social justice, and reconciliation as it carries its legacy into the future.
HARA REISER, ANDY SPARBERG, 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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Photo Credit: NYC Dept. of Records & Information Services
Blackwell’s Almanac:
In this first issue of Blackwell’s Almanac Volume VII:
RIHS brings you Part II of Old New York: Ruin to Riches, delving into City history, post-Revolutionary War.
Following is a recap of Beth Goffe’s presentation Scandals of the Upper West Side — the Society’s first virtual event of the RIHS Public Lecture Series (and certainly not the last!)
Read on to learn about the life of Emma Goldman and why she was derided in her day as “one of the most dangerous women in America.”
Click here to access the February Issue of Blackwell’s Almanac Vol. VII, No. 1
Robert Wilvers, Trinity Church, New York, ca. 1956-1957, watercolor and pencil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Ford Motor Company, 1966.36.201
Trinity Church is a historic parish church in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Known for its history, location, architecture and endowment,[5] Trinity is a traditional high church, with an active parish centered around the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion in missionary, outreach, and fellowship. In addition to its main facility, Trinity operates two chapels: St. Paul’s Chapel, and the Chapel of St. Cornelius the Centurion on Governors Island.[6] The Church of the Intercession, the Trinity Chapel Complex and many other of Anglican congregations in Manhattan were part of Trinity at one point.
The current building is the third constructed for Trinity Church, and was designed by Richard Upjohn in the Gothic Revival style. The first Trinity Church building was a single-story rectangular structure facing the Hudson River, which was constructed in 1698 and destroyed in the Great New York City Fire of 1776. The second Trinity Church was built facing Wall Street and was consecrated in 1790. The current church building was erected from 1839 to 1846 and was the tallest building in the United States until 1869, as well as the tallest in New York City until 1890. In 1876–1877 a reredos and altar were erected in memory of William Backhouse Astor, Sr., to the designs of architect Frederick Clarke Withers.
The church building is adjacent to the Trinity Churchyard, one of three used by the church. Besides its building, Trinity manages real estate properties with a combined worth of over $6 billion as of 2019. Trinity’s main building is a National Historic Landmark as well as a New York City designated landmark.
Wall Street by Arnold Ronnebeck, 1925
The market’s up! The market’s down! While the financial markets try to regain their footing, I decided to see how artists have portrayed Wall Street over the years, and came across this interesting lithograph by Arnold Ronnebeck. Executed in 1925, Ronnebeck’s view of “the Street” creates a precisionist’s canyon of shadows and light. The buildings loom tall and have taken on larger-than-life personalities. From the viewer’s vantage point, it appears as if you’ve just landed in a new country or are about to embark on a monumental quest, one step at a time.
Ronnebeck was born in Germany in 1885 and died in Denver, Colorado in 1947. As a young man he fought in the German army during World War I, then studied art in Munich and Berlin before moving to Paris in 1908 to continue his studies with Aristide Maillol and Emile-Antoine Bourdelle. When Ronnebeck immigrated to America he arrived in Washington, D.C., where he lived briefly before moving to New York City and finally settling in Colorado.
Ronnebeck’s fascination with downtown Manhattan is apparent in this lithograph. He often worked from photographs to capture the precise details of his subjects. What Berenice Abbott could do with a camera, Ronnebeck accomplished with ink and paper. Here the buildings loom tall and easily intimidate. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, as well as the steeple of Trinity Church. Of course, this image was made in 1925 . . . four years before the Street would take its record pounding.
Howard Cook, Trinity Church, 1950, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Barbara Latham, 1980.122.27
Kerr Eby, No. 1 Wall Street, 1930, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Katz, 1971.397
B. J. O. Nordfeldt, Wall Street, ca. 1907-1915,Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. B.J.O. Nordfeldt, 1974.10.24
What familiar name is mentioned in the history of Trinity Church and our island?
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
TOM OTTERNESS SCULPTURES AT 14th STREET & 8th AVENUE STATION.
LAURA HUSSEY, CLARA BELLA, HARA REISER, GLORIA HERMAN 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) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM WIKIPEDIA TRINITY ARCHIVES
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