Another famous architect on Roosevelt Island! Alexander Jackson Davis (1803–1892) is widely considered America’s greatest architect of the mid-nineteenth century. “Imaginative, innovative and influential, Alexander J. Davis was an extraordinary figure in American architecture…He introduced and developed new ideas and new forms while producing some of the finest buildings of his time,” writes Jane Davis in the introduction to the splendid volume, Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect 1803-1892.
Davis’ work covers a broad range of fields – public buildings, universities, grand mansions, interiors and, perhaps his greatest love, gardens. And, back to our island, he and his partner, Ithiel Town, designed our Lunatic Asylum – our Octagon.
Born in New York City on July 24, 1803, the son of a bookseller and publisher of religious tracts who moved around the Northeast in search of a market for his works, Davis grew up in Newark and then the rapidly growing towns of Utica and Auburn in central New York State.
In these years, the US was booming. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 doubled the size of the new nation, and from 1800 to 1860, 17 new states joined the Union. In these years, millions of immigrants came from other countries. US population more than tripled from 1800 to 1850, from 7 million to 24 million. Our fiscal system remained chaotic and bank failures were not uncommon (in 1837, the country suffered a huge fiscal crisis). Issues of the future of slavery roiled politics, but there was a lot of money about and a new class of wealthy drove the emergence of a new American cultural life
Grace Hill for Edwin C. Litchfield, Brooklyn, New York (front elevation)1854
Alexander Jackson Davis American
Davis’ greatest Italianate villa, Grace Hill, is now the headquarters of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. The original stucco has been removed from the house, and many of the interior details, including the elaborately painted ceiling murals, have been lost. Davis also designed a coach house, greenhouse, and chicken house for the property, none of which are extant.
Proposal for Astor House (Park Hotel), New York (perspective)ca. 1830–34
Designed by Ithiel Town American
This drawing shows a design produced by A.J. Davis and Ithiel Town (as Town & Davis, 1829-1835) for the Astor House, the first luxury hotel in New York City envisioned by John Jacob Astor. Although Town & Davis’ imaginative study was very modern and quite spectacular, the actual commission went to Isaiah Rogers in 1834 and the hotel opened in 1836 as the Park Hotel. The south side of the building was demolished in 1913 to make way for the subway constructions, and the rest of the building was torn down in 1926.
Davis at 14 was sent to Alexandria, Virginia, to learn the printing trade in a half-brother’s newspaper office. When his apprenticeship was completed in 1823, he returned to New York City where he studied at the American Academy of the Fine Arts and other top art schools.
New York City was growing rapidly, with an 1820 population of 122,000, but it was still a pretty small community for artists. Young Davis knew many, including John Trumbull, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Rembrandt Peale. His friends advised him to concentrate on architectural drawing – and he went to work as a draftsman in 1826 for Josiah R. Brady, a New York architect who was an early exponent of the Gothic revival.
He was successful as an architectural illustrator and his drawings were widely published, but he soon moved on from drawing buildings (though his drafting skills remained central to his identity) to designing them. Davis set up a practice and his first executed design was a country house outside of New Haven, Connecticut for the poet James A. Hillhouse. His Greek Revival design piqued the interest of Ithiel Town, one of the premier architects of the time and the leading designer of Greek Revival style buildings. Davis joined the firm of Town and Martin E. Thompson and, in 1829, became a partner. Working with Town gave Davis, just 26, extraordinary opportunities. It brought him to the cutting edge of American architecture—Town was not only a leader in the Greek Revival style, he was also a respected engineer and enjoyed wide social contacts.
ABOVE: INDIANA CAPITOL BELOW: lLYNDHURST
BLACKWELL’S ISLAND ASYLUM PLAN AND RENDERING
In the six years he spent with Town, in what became the first recognizably modern architectural office, Davis developed into a brilliantly original designer. He designed many late Classical structures, including several well-known buildings in Washington DC. We recognize him because he and Pool were the architects of the Custom House of New York City (now known as Federal Hall, where in an earlier iteration George Washington was sworn in as our first president). Federal Hall is one of the best surviving examples of Greek Revival architecture in New York, and was the first purpose-built U.S. Custom House for the Port of New York.
After the Town-Davis firm submitted the winning design for the State of Indiana capitol building (modeled on the Parthenon except for a large central dome) and then completed it ahead of schedule, the firm was consulted on the design of several other state capitols –- North Carolina, Illinois and Ohio. Back in New York City, they designed the Greek Revival “Colonnade Row” on Lafayette Street, the first apartments designed for the prosperous American middle class, and built several iimportant New York churches and several impressive residences: Samuel Ward’s New York City house (1831-33) included an art gallery, pilasters and introduced columns in the townhouse doorways. “Glen Ellen,” a large country estate built for Robert Gilmor outside of Baltimore, Maryland, was an early indicator of Davis’ future career. Davis designed buildings for the University of Michigan in 1838, and in the 1840s he designed buildings for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At Virginia Military Institute, Davis’s designs from 1848 through the 1850s created the first entirely Gothic revival college campus.
Davis and Town also designed the Blackwell Island Lunatic asylum, though only some of which was ever built. More on this will come.
The partnership with Town was dissolved in 1835, and Davis worked without an architectural partner for the remainder of his career. In 1836, he began writing Rural Residences, the first American book about the design of country houses, illustrated with hand-colored lithographs that helped introduce the concepts of picturesque architecture to the United States. His many drawings and watercolors provide idealized documents of mid-nineteenth-century designed landscapes as they were built and imagined.
Because of the 1837 financial panic, only two of the proposed six parts of the book were issued. But in 1839, he joined with the influential landscape and architectural theorist A. J. Downing in a most important collaboration. Davis designed and drew illustrations for Downing’s widely read books, such as The Architecture of Country Houses (1850) and his journal, The Horticulturist. Together, they popularized the ideas and styles of the picturesque.
Yes, the same Downing who invited Frederick Chase Withers to come to the United States and became his partner (and brother-in-law), a partnership which included Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead. Talk about small worlds!
In the 1840s and ‘50s, Davis shone brightly as a designer for country houses. Over 100 of his designs for villas and cottages were built among which “Lyndhurst” at Tarrytown is the most famous. Davis developed two main types of residential structures: large, asymmetrical villas for wealthy clients and smaller rectangular cottages intended for clients of more modest means. Both types featured a veranda or porch wrapped around the building, which connected the house to its immediate surroundings, while his villas often incorporated “prospect towers” or “prospect rooms” that provided sweeping views of the landscapeFor some houses he drew interior details, and occasionally designed furniture. Many of his villas were built in the Hudson River Valley— and his style called Hudson River Bracketed gave Edith Wharton a title for her last novel — but Davis also sent plans and specifications to clients far away from New York. He was crucial in transforming the English idea of picturesque into an American Romanticism. Davis felt the English house style was too grand for the new republican nation, and insisted on the individualism of Americans by varying each house design to it landscape as well as owner’s tastes. His designs were instrumental in opening up the boxy American house form, and moved toward open floor plans. (Are we thinking Frank Lloyd Wright?) All of this was carried out as the Hudson River setting was being popularized and romanticized by the Hudson River School of artists – again the close connections in style and setting among these new America-focused artists and designers.
Dutch Reformed Church, Newburgh, NY
With the onset of Civil War in 1861, patronage in house building dried up, and after the war, new popular styles were unsympathetic to Davis’s work. He closed his office in 1878 and built little in the last thirty years of his life. Rather he spent his easy retirement in West Orange drawing plans for grandiose schemes that he never expected to build, and selecting and ordering his designs and papers
So what about the Lunatic Asylum?
This section is taken largely from the fine materials prepared by the RIHS (think Jude Berdy.) The Blackwell’s island Asylum was the first lunatic asylum for the city of New York and the first municipal mental hospital in the country as well as the first in what later became a larger system of New York City Asylums comprised of hospitals on Blackwell’s, Ward’s, and more briefly Hart’s and Randall’s Islands. Up to 1825, the city’s insane were either kept in the city almshouse or at the Bloomingdale Asylum. In 1825 the insane of the city were moved to the basement and first floor of a building built as a General Hospital on Blackwell’s Island. Here the mentally ill remained in conditions described by the very commissioners in charge of the hospital as “a miserable refuge for their trial, undeserving of the name Asylum, in these enlightened days”.
Only in 1834 did the city approve the construction of a separate institution for the insane on the island. Designs for the Asylum were prepared by Davis and Town in 1834-35, and the building was opened in 1839. Their plans called for a much more elaborate scheme than was actually built; the Octagon was to have been one of a pair within a great U-shaped complex, ordered around a central rectangular pavilion. As built, the single Octagon, from which two long wings extended, became the focal point of the building.
North Carolina Hospital for the Insane
The architectural historian, Talbot Hamlin, has praised Davis’ “consistent feeling for logical planning.” The original symmetrical plan for the Asylum took into account efficient supervision of patients, ease of circulation and ample provision for good lighting and ventilation in the wards. Davis’ plan was a variant of the influential “panoptic plan,” which was centralized with radiating wings, developed in Great Britain by Jeremy Bentham (1742-1832), a philosopher and jurist interested in prison reform. While only a portion of Davis’ original proposal for the Lunatic Asylum was actually built, the plan still functioned very effectively. Davis’ New York City Asylum project was also significant in that it served as the prototype for his North Carolina Hospital for the Insane at Raleigh.
Dr. R.L. Parsons, Resident Physician of the Lunatic Asylum during the 1860s, remarked in his annual report of 1865 that the Octagon “has a symmetry, a beauty and a grandeur even, that are to be admired.” These qualities are still in evidence, not only to the visitor to Roosevelt Island, but also from Manhattan where the picturesque silhouette of the Octagon is a prominent feature of the island’s skyline.
Did you guess them?Trestle Bridge, Roosevelt Island Bridge London Tower Bridge, Pont Neuf, Paris Bow Bridge, Central Park., Hellgate Bridge, New York
References Wikipedia https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/davs/hd_davs.htm https://tclf.org/pioneer/alexander-jackson-davis https://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php/Alexander_Jackson_Davis http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/davis/bioghist.html https://rihs.us/landmarks/octagon.htm Amelia Peck, ed., Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect 1803-1892
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THE THIRD EAST RIVER BRIDGE WAS MALIGNED AND IGNORED UNTIL WILLIAMSBURG BECAME MECCA.
Williamsburg Bridge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carries 8 lanes of roadway, 2 tracks of the “J” train”M” train”Z” train trains of the New York City Subway, pedestrians, and bicycles Crosses East River Locale Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York City Maintained by New York City Department of Transportation
Characteristics Suspension bridge and truss causeways Total length 7,308 feet (2,227 m) Width 118 feet (36 m) Longest span 1,600 feet (490 m) Clearance above 10 feet 6 inches (3.2 m) (inner roadways only) Clearance below 135 feet (41 m) at mean high water
History Architect Henry Hornbostel Designer Leffert L. Buck Opened December 19, 1903; 116 years ago Statistics Daily traffic 105,465 (2016)
Completed in 1903, it was the longest suspension bridge span in the world until 1924. The bridge is one of four toll-free vehicular bridges connecting Manhattan Island and Long Island. The others are the Queensboro Bridge to the north, and the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges to the south. The Williamsburg Bridge once carried New York State Route 27A
CONSTRUCTION
Construction on what was then known as the “East River Bridge”, the second to span it, began in 1896 after approval by the Governor of New York on May 27, 1895. The new bridge was to be built north of the Grand Street Ferry, terminating at Delancey and Clinton Streets on the Manhattan side and at South Fifth Street and Driggs Avenue on the Brooklyn side. Leffert L. Buck was the chief engineer, Henry Hornbostel was the architect, and Holton D. Robinson was the assistant engineer.
Engineers first constructed caissons on either side to support the future bridge] The caisson on the Manhattan side was completed in May 1897,upon which time the caisson on the Brooklyn side was launched. The caissons were manufactured in a shipyard in Williamsburg. In January 1898, Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck removed the members of the East River Bridge Commission due to “charges of extravagance”.[ A commission of six people appointed by the state was proposed, but the bill was rejected.
As part of the Williamsburg Bridge’s construction, the section of Delancey Street between the bridge’s western end and the Bowery was widened. The portion of Spring Street between the Bowery and Lafayette Street was also expanded. This was the third plan for the bridge’s western approaches that was publicly announced. Public opposition had caused the cancellation of previous proposals, which included a wide street extending from the end of the bridge to either Cooper Square or the intersection of Houston Street and Second Avenue.[To accommodate the bridge’s approaches, 600 houses were demolished in total, including 330 on the Manhattan side and 270 on the Brooklyn side. More than 10,000 people were evicted from these houses during construction.
The bridge’s supporting wires were ready to be installed by February 1901.The first temporary wires between the East River Bridge’s two towers were strung on April 9, 1901. They were to be replaced later with permanent 18 3⁄4-inch-thick (48 cm) main cables made up of 7,696 smaller cables twisted together.[ The pair were fully strung by April 16, and work on the bridge’s pedestrian deck begun soon afterward.] The pedestrian path on the East River Bridge was completed in June 1901.] Afterward, construction progressed at a fast pace, owing to the ease of manufacturing the steel.Ornamental lights were also placed on the bridge .[The East River Bridge was renamed the “Williamsburg Bridge”, after its Brooklyn terminus,
In 1902
The bridge was damaged by fire while under construction in 1902There were several deaths during construction, including a worker who fell from the Manhattan approach in May 1900;[the main steelwork engineer, who fell from the Brooklyn approach in September 1900; and a foreman who drowned in March 1902Additionally, a fire occurred on the Brooklyn side’s tower in November 1902, which nearly severed the bridge’s cables. The bridge opened on December 19, 1903, at a cost of $24.2 million ($624 million in 2016).[At the time it was the longest suspension bridge span in the world, and remained so until the opening of the Bear Mountain Bridge in 1924.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVE FRIEDER (C) New Orthotropic Deck was being installed
Rebuilding the Bridge During the 1990’s, the DOT invested more than $600 million in the Williamsburg Bridge. In 1991, the DOT began a major rehabilitation of the Williamsburg Bridge. The program was designed to undo the effects of age, weather, increased traffic volumes and deferred maintenance and prepare the bridge for another 100 years of service to the City of New York.
Completed projects have
rehabilitated the main cables; reconstructed the south roadways; reconstructed the BMT Transit Structure between the Manhattan and Brooklyn approaches; reconstructed the North roadways. Now that the DOT has completed work on Contract #7, all of the bridges supports and roadways, walkways and subway tracks have been completely rebuilt. For the City of New York and the many users who drive, walk or ride across the bridge every day, a major component of the New York City infrastructure has been preserved for future generations.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVE FRIEDER (C)
Painting contract
Our adventurous friend Dave Frieder has published a wonderful book of his spectacular bridge photographs. This beautiful edition is a wonderful gift for New York (and New Jersey) admirers. For more information go to davefrieder.com
FRIDAY PHOTOS OF THE DAY
CHECK OUR RIVERCROSS WINDOW DISPLAY. BUILDING BRIDGES IS REAL FUN! CAN YOU IDENTIFY EACH OF THE 6 BRIDGES?
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
FDNY TRAINING SCHOOL ON WELFARE ISLAND LOCATED JUST NORTH OF NOW MOTORGATE CLOSED IN 1970 AND RELOCATED TO WARD’ ISLAND NINA LUBLIN GOT IT FIRST JAY JACOBSON GOT IT NEXT
EDITORIAL
Yesterday, I finished climbing thru the Rivercross Display window putting the final touches on our holiday display. Our great friend Melanie Colter was the great train display engineer. We have all kinds of goodies hidden in the scenery. We have everything to make kids happy in the window. The fun thing of standing inside, is watching little kids see the trains and bridges. Can they find the three owls? We have all kinds of gifts for everyone at the visitor center. We have gloves for kids and adults, goodies for all and even NYC themed face masks. WE NEED A BIG CHEERFUL SAFE HOLIDAY. STOP BY THE KIOSK AND DO YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING WITH US!!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Judy Berdy Bill, Jon. Ellen, Barbara- The Kiosk Staff
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 Roosevelt Island Historical SocietyMATERIALS USED FROM:
GOOGLE IMAGES
DAVE FRIEDER NYC DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION WIKIPEDIA
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While riding by this corner of Forest Park in Queens, this building stands out. What is it? Our friends at UNTAPPED New York answered our question. Story by Jeff Reuben (c).
Spread across the five boroughs of New York City, the Fire Alarm Telegraph Stations stand in City parks as reminders of the City’s efforts decades ago to improve the efficiency of its fire fighting system. They are architecturally distinctive buildings set in bucolic park settings, with minimal signage to indicate their purpose.
During the 1910s and ’20s, the Fire Department of New York built Fire Alarm Telegraph Stations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, to serve as central dispatching offices. Unlike firehouses and the Fire Headquarters, they were deliberately placed in isolated park sites, so as to minimize the risk that fires from neighboring buildings could endanger. It also provided space for freestanding radio towers.
Reflecting the City Beautiful Movement of that era, which emphasized that public buildings should not only be functional but also should enhance the visual character of their surroundings, New York’s Fire Alarm Telegraph Stations could easily be mistaken for being cultural or educational buildings.
But, the Fire Alarm Telegraph Stations were built to save lives first and be beautiful second. Plans for the first three facilities were approved in 1912, just a year after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed 146. McClure’s magazine declared in December 1911 that “the New York fire-alarm system is the worst in the United States.”
Manhattan Fire Alarm Telegraph Station In Manhattan,
The Fire Alarm Telegraph Station was placed hard up against the 79th Street Transverse Road that cuts through Central Park in a trench. Even though this low-slung one-story building is hidden from the view of most park visitors, it was designed in an English Gothic style with a stone facade to be compatible with other structures and buildings in the park, including Belvedere Castle which is located nearby. The Manhattan station was designed by Morgan & Trainer architects, who also created several firehouses across the city. The emphasis on architectural quality was not only for the exterior; the plans also included Guastavino tile for the vaulted ceiling of the instrument room.
Bronx Fire Alarm Telegraph Station
The Bronx and Brooklyn Fire Alarm Telegraph Stations, which are virtually identical in appearance, are Italian Renaissance Revival style buildings featuring a triple-arch entry loggia and a red tile hip roof. They were designed by Frank J. Helmle, an architect responsible for many buildings in Brooklyn including the Prospect Park Boathouse.
The Bronx station is located at the southeastern corner of Bronx Park, near the Bronx Zoo, while the Brooklyn station is located on parkland adjoining the Botanic Garden. Both are set back slightly from the street with lawns, creating stately settings along major urban thoroughfares. The Brooklyn station is a NYC Landmark (designated 1966), but its Bronx twin is not.
Queens Fire Alarm Telegraph Station
Following the opening of the three original Fire Alarm Telegraph Stations, a Queens Fire Alarm Telegraph Station in Forest Park was built and started operating in 1928. It sits prominently on a grassy knoll facing Woodhaven Boulevard and Park Lane South with a grove of trees rising behind it. The one-story station features an octagon-shaped central section with arch windows and a hip roof crowned by a cupola. There are flanking wings with limestone framed entrances. Curiously, this impressive building, incorporating Beaux-Arts and neo-Georgian design elements, is attributed to John R. Sliney, the Fire Department’s Building Inspector. Any architect who assisted Sliney is unrecorded.
The placing of the Fire Alarm Telegraph Stations in parks was not without controversy. For example, after widespread opposition, original plans to put the Bronx station near a playground in Crotona Park were dropped and the Bronx Park site was selected instead.
Staten Island Fire Communications Center
Staten Island did not get a dedicated facility of this type until 1962, when the island’s fire communications center moved from Borough Hall to a new building in Clove Lakes Park. Apart from the adjoining 200-foot tall radio tower, it’s easy to miss and lacks the architectural character of the earlier Fire Alarm Telegraph stations. Reflecting the Cold War times it was built in, the Staten Island facility was designed to withstand an atomic bomb attack, “except in case of direct hit or near miss,” the New York Times reported. It was built with a 35-foot below-ground bunker capable of operating for up to two weeks after an atomic bomb attack.
ARM OF STATUE OF LIBERTY PLACED IN MADISON SQUARE PARK AS A FUND RAISER TO BUILD BASE ON LIBERTY ISLAND Susan Lees and Lisa Fernandez guessed correctly
LETTER FROM A READER
Oh hello Ms. Berdy, thank you for the reply! I share your wonderful Editions with a colleague of mine who is in charge of our Greenacre Library at MAS (Erin Butler) and I was actually trying to tell her that you mentioned us! But please let me take this opportunity to tell you (and all involved) that your RIHS Editions have helped me thru these very difficult times we are all going thru, especially the first three months! It is something I look forward to reading every day, something that is so very interesting, beautiful, varied, and often featuring my favorite subject, Art (and in so many different forms!). It is just AMAZING that you have been able to put this out EVERY day!! Again, my thanks to you and all involved. Sincerely, Maia p.s. Lovely kitties today!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
UNTAPPED NEW YORK (C)
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One of the best ways to celebrate the season is to enjoy wonderful public art this winter.
Most are free and easily accessible.
Many of the sites are available by NYCFerry.
http://Photo by Yunkai. Courtesy of LuminoCity Festival.
December this year is going to be an unusual holiday season for many New Yorkers, with winter ahead amidst a worsening pandemic. Despite this, the holiday spirit is high in New York City, with many exciting, socially distanced art events and installations coming this month. Whether you are spending Christmas and New Year’s Eve alone or with family and friends, don’t forget to check out the many vibrant holiday light shows throughout the city. Brookfield Place is returning strong this month with Luminaries and Light Up Metrotech, while LuminoCity Festival is coming back to Randall’s Island Park.
This holiday season, let it GLOW at The New York Botanical Garden in an all-new outdoor experience illuminating NYBG’s landmark landscape and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. With lots of room to spread out, explore a glowing world of color and light featuring the Haupt Conservatory as the centerpiece—its iconic exterior a glittering canvas. Washes of brilliant colors, thousands of dazzling lights, and picture-perfect installations fill the Reflecting Pool and enliven surrounding gardens and collections. Also during your visit, enjoy artistic ice sculpting, music, and pop-up performances by The Hip Hop Nutcracker. Due to COVID, the annual Holiday Train Show will only be open to NYBG Members, Patrons, and Bronx Community Partners.
http://Photo by Julienne Schaer
Socially distant winter video art installation Light Year returns to Dumbo this month. Some of the largest outdoor video art installations in New York City will be projected on the Manhattan Bridge each first Thursday of the month from dusk to 10pm at dimensions of 65 by 40 feet. The full installations are approximately 30 minutes in length, and on December 3rd, the first installation, ”Thresholds and Beyond 1”, will show the places where disparate realities meet, overlap and create hybrid realities.
Light Up MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn, presented by Brookfield Properties. The event takes place during varied hours over December 2 and December 3, and visitors can walk amongst an exhibition of beautifully carved ice sculptures celebrating “nature emerges” by the talented NY-based Okamoto Studio. This event is free and open to the public, however, for health and safety reasons, a limited number of people will be admitted into the ice sculpture exhibition at MetroTech Commons on Myrtle Street between Bridge and Lawrence Streets at one time.
The holiday installation Luminaries returns to Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan this month, with a series of mesmerizing light shows and new touchless wishing in the Winter Garden. Designed by the LAB at Rockwell Group, the light show features a canopy of colorful lights emitting from hundreds of lanterns suspended among the palms, along with contactless wishing stations located on the ground. These wishing stations allow visitors to send a motion-activated wish to the canopy of lanterns above, prompting a magical display of lights and colors to appear. For each wish made at the stations, Brookfield Place will donate $1, up to $25,000 to Relief Opportunities for All Restaurants (ROAR). Luminaries runs from November 27 to January 3. 7.W
Long Island City-based sculptor, Jack Howard-Potter, makes large, often kinetic, figurative steel sculptures that can be seen in city governments, sculpture parks, and public art shows around the country. The outdoor public arena is the perfect setting for the academic roots to be easily recognizable and accessible, bridging the gap between the fine art institution and the public. It all comes together in an effort to brighten the landscape and shift one’s gaze to break the daily routine with something beautiful. Torso II, Swinging II, Messenger of the Gods will be on-site at Court Square Park in Queens through September 12, 2021.
Photo by Daniel Avila, courtesy of NYC Parks
Located in Hunter’s Point South through next September, this work is one of French sculptor Gaston Lachaise’s best-known, monumental works dating from the late 1920s. The buoyant, expansive figure represents a timeless earth goddess, one Lachaise knew and sought to capture throughout his career. This vision was inspired by his wife, who was his muse and model, Isabel, that “majestic woman” who walked by him once by the Bank of the Seine. This work is a tribute to the power of all women, dedicated to ‘Woman,’ as the artist referred to his wife, with a capital W. Lachaise devoted himself to the human form, producing a succession of powerfully conceived nude figures in stone and bronze that reinvigorated the sculptural traditions of Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol.
WANDA AND SPEEDY WERE THE GREATEST PAIR OF FELINES. THEY WERE NOT CONJOINED, BUT NOW ARE CELEBRATING THEIR TOGETHERNESS IN KITTY HEAVEN. CLARE BELLA AND JAY JACOBSON ADMIRED THEM
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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Hildegarde Haas, Rain, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Zabriskie Gallery, 1975.18.4
Elias M. Grossman, Rain on the Square, n.d., color etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Peter E. Blau and Andrew J. Blau in memory of their father, Alan J. Blau, 2012.13.1
Ansei Uchima, Rain in the Mountains, n.d., woodcut, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1969.1
Bertha Lum, Umbrellas in the Rain, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1981.97.3
Bertha E. Jaques, Rain on Thames, ca. 1913, etching, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Chicago Society of Etchers, 1935.13.473
Bernice Cross, Georgetown Corner in the Rain, ca. 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.76
E. Lap, End of the Rain, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1979.78.2
Tony Mattei, Rain, Ketchikan, Alaska, 1937, watercolor, oil, and pencil on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the General Services Administration, 1972.31
Peter Minchell, Amazon Region Series, 1974,Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Robert and Joan Doty, 1992.57
CLARIFICATION WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER. ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU
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
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It is a small island, but there are those who have loved it. Including several world famous architects. Most well-known, of course, is James Renwick Jr. who designed St Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue and our own Smallpox hospital. Jose Luis Sert’s firm, Sert, Jackson & Associates, did the design for Eastwood and Westview and, before that, Philip Johnson and John Burgee prepared the initial and very ambitious masterplan for the island.
Another architect, famous in his day and but much forgotten now, also left a significant mark on the island. Frederick Clarke Withers, a champion of Gothic Revival, designed The Chapel of the Good Shepherd (in many ways, the centerpiece of our island), the Strecker Laboratory and three brick structures for the almshouse.
Withers was born in Somersetshire, England, educated in King Edward’s school and then studied architecture. He came to the United States in 1852 at the invitation of the renowned American landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing. Withers and Downing were not just partners but also became family, when they married sisters: Emily Augusta and Caroline Elizabeth DeWindt, respectively. The sisters were great-grandchildren of President John Adams, and grandnieces of John Quincy Adams.
Withers was primarily considered an ecclesiastical architect and published the influential book “Church Architecture” in 1873. He was a strong advocate of the Gothic style for churches, and the Chapel of the Good Shepherd illustrates his conceptions and ideas of what a church should be.
A rendering of Glenbrook by Withers. Image via The Horticulturist
A word about Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. Its momentum grew in the early 19th century among opponents of the neo-classic style (think Washington DC) that, to them, signified republicanism and liberalism and the flow away from more traditional religion. The Gothic Revival movement’s roots are intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with Catholicism and a re-awakening of high church or Anglo-Catholic belief concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism. By the mid-19th century, it was established as the preeminent architectural style in the Western world (see for example, the British parliament’s Palace of Westminster in London, the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and the Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest).
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
Back to Withers
Although he retained his British citizenship, Withers was one of the first members of the newly founded American Institute of Architects. After Downing’s death in the explosion of the steamboat Henry Clay, Withers volunteered for service in the Union Army in 1861. He was invalided out of the service the following year, recovered, and resumed practice in New York City, joining Calvert Vaux, Downing’s former partner, and Frederick Law Olmstead in a partnership that lasted until 1871. Finally, in 1888 Withers formed a partnership with Walter Dickson. Together as supervising architects for the Board of Charities and Correction they designed several buildings on Roosevelt Island. In 1897 Withers retired to his home in Yonkers.
Withers was known for his church architecture, but undertook other projects as well. His most enduring monument in New York City is the Jefferson Market Courthouse and Jail designed in the Italian Gothic style that currently houses the Greenwich Village branch of the New York Public Library. It is an ingenious organization of spaces compacted into an odd, triangular site. A bell tower in the corner commands a view up and down Sixth Avenue in New York City. Withers incorporated the functions of police court, district court, and fire observatory in a structure which many consider his masterpiece. (The building was called “Jefferson Market” because the site chosen, in 1870 was at the time the Jefferson Market, the local produce market.) Other New York commissions included the commercial building at 448 Broome Street in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District, the high altar in Trinity Church, the lich gate of the “Little Church Around the Corner” (Church of the Transfiguration), and the City Prison which replaced the original “Tombs.”
Rendering of Good Shepherd 1889
The Chapel of Good Shepard
The Chapel was commissioned by George M. Bliss (1816-1896), an important New York banker, who began his career in the dry goods business. It was established by the Protestant Episcopal Mission Society to serve Protestant inmates of the almshouses on Blackwell’s Island.
Originally to have cost $5000 the cost of the chapel eventually exceeded $75,000, due to the ever increasing demands and generosity of its donor. Francis Kowsky, in his book The Architecture of Frederick Clarke Withers, tells us something about the architect’s vision for the Chapel: “The nature of the Welfare Island parish compelled Withers to devise an unusual church for the society.
To maintain the segregation of the male and female inmates, Withers introduced twin entrance porches, one for each sex, on the western elevation. The portals lead into a deep vestibule, which contains two stairways in line with the entrances. These flights of steps ascend to doors in the north (male) and south (female) sides of the wide nave. Between the stairways, a central flight of steps descends to a reading room and other facilities in the basement.
This triple division is developed on the entrance wall of the nave, where a baptismal font sits in a large niche between the two portals. The present interior preserves the warmth and simple dignity of Withers’s original scheme. ‘The brick walls are…faced on the inside with brown enameled brick as high as the stone string-course under the windows,’ records a contemporary description, ‘and above it the whole of the interior walls are of buff-colored pressed-brick laid in red mortar. . .
The roofs (of the nave and apse) are open timbered, constructed in Georgia pine and finished in panels with moulded ribs, etc.’ In the northeast corner of the nave, Withers located the organ chamber, which projects on the exterior to form an L-shaped mass with the tower. By placing the tower at the juncture of the nave and apse, Withers avoided the jumble of forms that could have resulted had the tower been positioned near the western facade. The location of the tower on the north side also insured a satisfactory composition for the elevation that faced the primary approach road.
The Chapel of the Good Shepherd illustrates that Withers still possessed the ability to seek imaginative solutions for out-of-the-ordinary commissions’ He expressed obvious, pride in the work by conspicuously placing his monogram in the apex of the facade gable.” What Kowsky does not discuss is the lovely acoustics of the Chapel beloved by many Roosevelt Island residents who have luxuriated in the soft, splendid sound of music performed there.
Chapel after abandonment in the 1960’s, before 1970’s restoration
Strecker Memorial Laboratory
Strecker Memorial Laboratory, although small in size, is monumental in its overall effect. Essentially Romanesque Revival in style, similar in manner to the late work of Henry Hobson Richardson, suggested by the broad arched openings and the use of rough-faced stone-gray gneiss, quarried on the island and used for many of its institutional buildings. The use of contrasting orange brick for quoins, sting courses, and the arches gives the building a vivid polychromatic effect that is reminiscent of Wither’s earlier compositions in the Victorian Gothic style. As a result of the non-ecclesiastic building type as well as the change in the style from Gothic, which Withers generally favored, to Romanesque it can be surmised that Dickson was largely responsible for the design.
Live in a Withers home?
On a tree-lined street in Balmville, a hamlet adjoining the northern edge of Newburgh, is a house with a direct connection to 19th century Gothic Revival architects. Glenbrook was designed by Withers around 1856 for David and Pauline Clarkson and is more of a grand villa than a modest country cottage. Among his other interests, Wither who settled in Newburgh when he came from England, together with Downing and others, explored new forms for practical living and home design. Glenbrook is located at 60 Balmville Road, but alas, is no longer on the market. Guess we’ll just have to stay here.
Stephen Blank November 27, 2020
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ROBERT SOWERS
STAINED GLASS ARTIST
Robert Sowers (1923 – March 1990) was an American painter, photographer, stained glass artist, and seminal figure in the re-emergence of stained glass as an architectural art in the United States.[His architectural glass commissions cover some 20 years from St George’s Episcopal Church, Durham, New Hampshire (1955) to Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, New York (1975) and the blue cross window for Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Burlington, Vermont) (1976 – decommissioned 2019). In November 1953 he participated in the New Talent Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He designed the vast American Airlines terminal glass facade at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1958–59. It was demolished in 2008 to allow for an reorganization and expansion of their terminal.
In addition to his glass commissions he wrote multiple magazine articles and published four books on stained glass, art, and architecture. He was an exceptional photographer documenting his own as well as other artist’s glass work and spent many hours walking the streets and parks of Manhattan and Brooklyn with camera in hand.
A posthumous volume of his B/W photographs was published in 1990. In 1979 he began a series of black and white paintings that eventually transitioned into color. These were based on his 35mm slides of derelict industrial landscapes, city parks, and botanical gardens of New York City and Tanglewood in the Berkshires. He sold his first painting through OK Harris Gallery, and reviewed the first printing of his fourth book almost simultaneously with his untimely death in March 1990.
His archives are located at the Rakow Research Library, Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.[8]
AMERICAN AIRLINES TERMINAL AT NIGHT
Queen of the Blues, 1974 Above
EARLY LIFE Robert Sowers was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1923. His family moved to Florida in 1932 because his father Ray Sowers, a respected educator, was offered a position in the state. His high school art teacher, Max Bernd-Cohen, encouraged his creativity, was a profound influence, and became a lifelong friend.
While serving in the Army at the end of World War II, Sowers was able to study art at Biarritz American University, Biarritz, France. On returning to the US he enrolled at the New School for Social Research, studied with the painter Stuart Davis, encountered the theories of Rudolf Arnheim, and graduated with a BA in 1948. In 1949 he received his MA from Columbia University. A Fulbright Award for the study of Medieval Stained Glass in the United Kingdom enabled him to attend the Central School of Arts & Crafts in London from 1950 to 1953. William Johnstone was the Principal and it was here that he completed special studies in stained glass with John Baker. Returning to Manhattan he and his wife, Terry Obermayr, at first lived in a large loft on the Lower East Side and subsequently moved to a corner brownstone on Congress Street, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, NY
Great Cross window, Immaculate Conception Cathedral, Burlington, Vermont, 1976
Career
Sowers began to pursue stained glass commissions though it was an uphill battle to get the attention of Modernist architects of that time. ] Architects whose buildings he did work on included Percival Goodman**, Fritz Nathan, Eero Saarinen, Kahn & Jacobs, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Roger Ranuio, W. Brooke Fleck, Carter & Woodruff, Stanley Prowler, Henry Dreyfuss, Chloetheil Smith, William Garwood, and Philip Ives.
In the execution of projects he utilized traditional painted and leaded glass as well as more experimental processes of lamination with epoxy resins and Dalle de verre. This period of commissioned work as an independent artist consisted of inevitable ups and downs and it was during one of these bleak periods that he decided to reconsider Autonomous Stained Glass panels independent of an architectural setting. In 1971 he was Artist-in-Residence at Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. This marked the beginning of a period of small panel making including the incorporation of various cast glass shapes salvaged from the closing sale of Leo Popper’s glass warehouse in lower Manhattan, and culminating in a series of panels exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts of the American Craft Council in 1975. ] For this panel series the design / cartoon was executed as a “painting” showing the details of the glass in full color. The panel and the cartoon make a pair. A number of these design/paintings are now located in the Rakow Research Library. In addition to the Fulbright Award, he also received the Silver Medal from the Architectural League in 1955 and 1962, a Tiffany Award in 1956, and a Certificate of Merit from the Municipal Art Society in 1961.
The destruction in post-war Germany created opportunities for stained glass installations in the reconstruction of religious and secular buildings and the emergence of such very different glass artists as Georg Meistermann, Maria Katsgrau, Ludwig Schaffrath, Johannes Schreiter, Wilhelm Buschulte, Jochem Poensgen, and Joachim Klos. Sowers developed personal relationships and enduring friendships with a number of them and, most importantly, brought awareness of their work to a younger generation of glass artists and designers around the world. In America these included David Wilson, Kenneth von Roenn, Peter Mollica, Ed Carpenter, and Robert Kehlmann. Sowers also stressed that artists in Germany operated as independent designers associating with the established studios as fabricators. He was antithetical to the prevalent system in the United States where the studios retained their own in-house designers to produce essentially commercial stained glass windows. His dissemination of this departure from the norm and his encouragement of younger individual artists was one of his great contributions. It was a stimulating period for the reemergence of stained glass in the 1960s and 1970s as a truly architectural art while simultaneously opening up experimentation in other forms of glass art.
Percival Goodman was the architect of the Central Laundry on Welfare Island and Terrace City, a plan for the island that was never built.
American Airlines Terminal
American Airlines Terminal completed stained glass mural, 1960. The American Airlines project was Sowers’ most important commission. Completed in 1960, it was an iconic glass mural 317′ long by 23′ high covering the entire facade of the building designed by Kahn & Jacobs for what was then Idlewild Airport in Queens, New York – renamed after the Kennedy assassination to John F. Kennedy International Airport.[14] It was composed partially of a German opaque glass that was quite unusual, consisting of both transparent blues and reds on a solid white base.
The design was also unusual in that it was seen in its entirety from the exterior as a form of mosaic.[Traditionally architectural stained glass was viewed, and therefore designed the other way around, from the inside looking out. Additionally, once inside the terminal it would never be experienced as a whole. Historically early church and cathedral stained glass walls read as dark surfaces, thus the need to utilize dense opaque glass. Additionally, the system was single glazed which meant that the colors were seen to maximum effect as travelers approached the terminal. The idea of developing a reversible image was picked up and pursued by the architect, Percival Goodman, whose projects included many Synagogues. He felt that as a number of services were conducted at nighttime any stained glass should work in some way under reverse conditions. Sowers completed several Synagogue projects for Goodman.
The terminal project was fabricated and installed by the Rambusch Decorating Company in New York, a long established commercial studio where he executed a considerable number of commissions. In the early 1980s, because of frame and moisture issues together with heating and cooling problems inside the building, Rohlf’s Stained & Leaded Glass Studio, Mount Vernon, New York was retained to superimpose aluminum framing and tempered glass on the exterior of the existing frame. This resolved those problems but did not improve the outside appearance due to increased surface reflection coming off the new layer of glass. By 2006 when American Airlines was expanding and rebuilding their terminal it was determined that the mural was too big to save. Notice was given for dismantling, removal, and possible destruction. Initial reuse suggestions included making key chains for airline employees but not carried out. This generated a futile movement to preserve it. A group, Save America’s Window, was formed to try to retain it as a whole, a daunting and hugely expensive proposition. A hasty email exchange between glass artists who were influenced and indebted to Sowers, glass studios and enthusiasts, Judi Jordan his second wife, and Eileen Vaquilar Clifford a flight attendant for American who had great affection for the artwork, explored all possibilities. These included acquisition by various Museums and Institutions but ultimately there were no viable options, with one minor exception whereby the Airline donated 8 sections to the Madison Museum of Fine Art, Madison, Wisconsin. It was dismantled as salvage by Good Olde Things / Good Olde Glass with individual sections to be sold as mementos
Photography Sowers immersed himself in photography when he first spent time in Europe and it became a way to document his work. Photographing stained glass requires considerable expertise to be successful. This is due to the intense variation in saturation and contrast for which the eye compensates but the camera lens does not. At that time a light meter was of prime importance to average out and bracket film exposure. On one of his trips to Europe he spent time in Chartres Cathedral gauging the intensity of the blue glass and he was astonished by the variation of light value compared to the dilation of the human eye. He also spent time in Germany photographing the work of fellow glass artists primarily for illustrating his books but also for dissemination back home. His photographic work expanded when he took his camera on long walking trips in different parts of the city shooting film in both B/W and 35mm Kodachrome slide format. Sunday wandering included downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn between the bridges when these neighborhoods were essentially deserted. One prime set of these slides were unfortunately stolen but an extensive archive still exists. For his B/W work he did all his own enlarging and printing.
Painting In 1979 Sowers went back his first love of painting full-time. He had moved to a loft building on Degraw Street in Brooklyn where the space and light were perfect. The first canvases were monochromatic in tones of black and white with an abstract expressionistic sensibility which on closer study reveal an architectural reference. From this beginning he introduced color and began working directly from his series of 35mm slides, a result of his photographic exploration of the city in all its varied landscapes of streets, bridges, buildings, trash, junk, people, parks, and gardens. Nothing escaped his eye through the lens. As a glass artist his prime concern had been with light and this was also a preoccupation in his photographs and paintings. The exploration of light, a common thread in these paintings executed in a photorealistic style, represent a clear departure from his work in glass. The canvases uniformly conform to a 40″ X 50″ format, either vertically or horizontally. They are signed on the back with the date and RWS, one of the few occasions in his professional life that he used his middle initial. In 1988 / 89 he participated in a two-person show at the OK South Gallery in Miami. His death in 1990 coincided with the sale of his first painting, “Stripes”, through Ivan Karp’s OK Harris Gallery in New York and the publication of his fourth book “Rethinking the Forms of Visual Expression”.A number of his paintings have been posthumously placed in private collections.
AMERICAN AIRLINES TERMINAL GLASS RECYCLED INTO GATE. OLDE GOOD THINGS
GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT!!! The original window was a 300-foot piece of stained glass that was designed by artist Robert Sowers in 1960. It stood in JFK International Airport, American Airlines Terminal 8, for nearly 50 years before it was carefully removed by Olde Good Things and repurposed for sale to the public to own a piece of history.
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EDITORIAL
After posting a photo of the American Airlines terminal at JFK yesterday, I decided to learn about the artist who undertook this project. Sowers work was one of the creative construction projects at the airport. Remember the round Pan Am terminal and the three chapels? Many such wonderful buildings were demolished to make way for larger and larger terminals to deal with the new jets. I remember admiring the architecture when you could see the terminals instead of the monorail that blocks the view of most of the buildings.
J. Alden Weir, Portrait of a Lady with a Dog (Anna Baker Weir), ca. 1890, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mahonri Sharp Young, 1977.92
J. Alden Weir taught painting classes in New York City while he cultivated his reputation as a portrait artist. Nineteen-year-old Anna Dwight Baker was one of his students, and after a brief courtship the two married in 1883. Anna Weir’s friends variously described her as “ethereal,” “like some beautiful dream woman,” qualities her husband captured in this portrait of her with his subtle, impressionistic style. She leans forward in a black ladder-back chair, holding her dog, Gyp, in her lap. Just over her shoulder the bedroom door is ajar, providing the viewer with a more intimate glimpse into the private life of the artist. Anna Weir died in 1892 due to complications after the birth of the couple’s fourth child. This touching, personal portrait remained in the family’s collection until it was given to the American Art Museum in 1977. (Dorothy Weir Young, The Life & Letters of J. Alden Weir, 1960)
Nationality American Education National Academy of Design, École des Beaux-Arts, Jean-Léon Gérôme Known for Painting Died December 8, 1919 (aged 67) Born Julian Alden Weir August 30, 1852 West Point, New York J. Alden Weir in the late 19th century
J. Alden Weir, A Gentlewoman, 1906, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1909.7.72
In A Gentlewoman, J. Alden Weir depicted a well-dressed young woman in a moment of personal reflection. She rests lightly on a chair with her eyes cast downward, completely unaware of the viewer. A contemporary critic praised this woman for her “mixture of sturdiness and charm,” qualities valued in turn-of-the-century gentlewomen. In the early twentieth century, modernization brought on by steam power and railroads caused feelings of anxiety among many Americans. To help alleviate such feelings, artists created images like these of quiet interior scenes, a visually soothing antidote to an unquiet age.
J. Alden Weir, Woman and Child, Seated (Mother and Child with Toy), ca. 1887-1893, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Brigham Young University, 1972.84.113
J. Alden Weir, At the Water Trough, 1876-1877, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1978.125
At the Water Trough is an early work by J. Alden Weir, which he painted in the fall of 1876 after returning to Paris from a trip to Spain. It is the only known painting from this trip, and was based on sketches and photographs that Weir made in the Spanish city of Granada. This scene, which shows people gathering at a water fountain to exchange news and take a rest from their daily chores, would have been a common sight in Spain at that time, as indoor plumbing was not yet widespread. The painting was exhibited the following year at the National Academy of Design in New York.
J. Alden Weir, On the Porch, 1889, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Brigham Young University, 1972.84.50
J. Alden Weir, (Landscape), after 1900, oil on wood, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mahonri Sharp Young, 1978.110
Julian Alden Weir was a nature lover whose Branchville, Connecticut, farm was a retreat from the pressures of New York City. His younger brother had advised him to “hang onto this place, old boy … keep it trim and untrammeled, and you will find a haven of refuge.” Weir began painting landscapes around the property after his beloved wife, Anna, died. This spindly poplar with its elegantly bending trunk might be one of those that he and Anna had planted together and that he closely identified with her. (Cummings, “Home Is the Starting Place: J. Alden Weir and the Spirit of Place,” J. Alden Weir: A Place of His Own, 1991). Perhaps the ghostly figure in the foreground is meant to suggest his wife’s spirit dwelling under the trees.
J. Alden Weir, The Frugal Repast–Isle of Man, 1889, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Brigham Young University, 1972.84.10
The wonderful Bonwit Teller building at 56th Street and Fifth Avenue. Demolished by a developer with no regard of historical value of this building.
Harriet Lieber knew this one!!!
EDITORIAL
A thought: every two to three days more Americans die from Covid-19 than died in the 9/11 attack.
Judith Berdy
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 Roosevelt Island Historical SocietyMATERIALS USED FROM:
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In 1905, Fifth Avenue gained a new mansion. Businessman and baseball team owner Morton F. Plant, the son of a railroad, steamship, and hotel baron, commissioned a marble and limestone showstopper at the southeast corner of 52nd Street.
When Plant moved in to the five-story Italian Renaissance-inspired mansion facing 52nd Street (above and below left) with his first wife, Nellie, he should have felt satisfied with his decision to build it here.
After all, his neighbors were among the wealthiest New Yorkers, including several Vanderbilts, who occupied their own mansions across the street. (Plant bought the land from William K. Vanderbilt; previously it was the site of an orphan asylum, according to a 2019 Bloomberg article by Jack Forster.)
Within a few years, though, Plant apparently realized he’d made a mistake.
An increasing number of businesses were creeping up to his stretch of Fifth Avenue (like the St. Regis Hotel and Gotham Hotels at 55th Street), ruining the exclusive, residential vibe.
One of those new Fifth Avenue businesses was the American outpost for Cartier, the French jewelers. In 1909, Pierre Cartier launched his first store at 712 Fifth Avenue, near 56th Street, wrote Christopher Gray in The New York Times in 2001.
Business was good for Cartier, which organized workshops in the city to meet the demand for their jewelry, states Forster. (Selling the Hope diamond in 1910 also helped from a PR standpoint, raising the jeweler’s Manhattan profile.)
But back to Plant (at right) and his mansion, which was increasingly out of character on a more commercialized Fifth Avenue. In 1914 he’d remarried a much younger woman, Maisie (above center). The two found themselves left behind as neighbors moved away and businesses replaced them.
“By 1917, life on Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street (at left, in 1900) had long since become untenable for Plant,” wrote Forster. “The ongoing encroachment of businesses, combined with the removal of virtually all the families who’d once colonized the Avenue below Central Park to new addresses north of 59th Street, had left the Plants isolated both physically and socially. Plant had already begun work, the year before, on a new and even bigger residence, on 86th Street and Fifth Avenue (below right).”
Paying for two Fifth Avenue mansions, however, was quite costly, even for a scion of wealth. But then, Maisie caught a look at a Cartier pearl necklace. “It’s really two necklaces: a double strand of enormous, natural South Sea pearls; the smaller is a strand of 55 pearls and the larger, of 73,” wrote Forster. The necklace’s value: $1 million.
“When Maisie Plant fell in love with the natural, oriental pearl necklace, Pierre Cartier sensed an opportunity,” states a 2016 article by Business Insider. “Pierre, the savvy businessman, proposed the deal of a lifetime: He offered to trade the double-strand necklace of the rare pearls —and $100—for the Plants’ New York City home.” (The house was assessed at $925,000.)
In July 1917, an article appeared in the Real Estate Record and Guide announcing the sale of the Plant mansion on 52nd Street to Cartier for “$100 and other valuable considerations,” according to Forster. (At left, in 1975)
It’s an unusual deal, but definitely a win-win. Plant unloaded his first mansion by trading it in to Cartier for a necklace his wife desired, then moved uptown in a more luxurious house on the city’s new Millionaires’ Mile. (Cartier also absorbed the elegant residence next door at 4 East 52nd Street, the Holbrook House.)
Cartier has occupied Plant’s mansion on 52nd Street ever since. The exterior looks very much the same as it did in Plank’s day, though the interior has been altered somewhat.
I tried to get in to take a look around but the line to enter was too long; I’d forgotten it’s jewelry-buying season—when Cartier wraps the building up in a big red bow to celebrate the holidays.
But I did spot this modest plaque marking the mansion’s past as a short-lived residence built on a street destined to become a commercial corridor.
Morton Plant died in 1918, shortly after moving into his 86th Street mansion. When Maisie passed away in 1957, the mansion was bulldozed and her pearls went to auction, where they were sold for $181,000.
Where are they today? No one knows. But a portrait of Maisie wearing them (above portrait) hangs in the Cartier store today, wrote Forster.
These photos came from Gloria Herman, when remembering David Dinkins
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It’s been a good century or so since New Yorkers celebrated Evacuation Day. But in the late 18th and 19th centuries, this holiday—on November 25—was a major deal, marked by festive dinners, parades, and a deep appreciation of the role the city played in the Revolutionary War.
Washington’s triumphal entry on November 25, 1783.
By John Trumbull – New York City Hall Portrait Collection, Public Domain
Following the significant losses at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, GeneralGeorge Washington and the Continental Army retreated across the East River by benefit of both a retreat and holding action by well-trained Maryland Line troops at Gowanus Creek and Canal and a night fog which obscured the barges and boats evacuating troops to Manhattan Island. On September 15, 1776, the British flag replaced the American atop Fort George, where it was to remain until Evacuation Day.
On September 21, 1776, the city suffered a devastating fire of uncertain origin after the evacuation of Washington’s Continental Army at the beginning of the occupation. With hundreds of houses destroyed, many residents had to live in makeshift housing built from old ships. In addition, over 10,000 Patriot soldiers and sailors died on prison ships in New York waters (Wallabout Bay) during the occupation—more Patriots died on these ships than died in every single battle of the war, combined. These men are memorialized, and many of their remains are interred, at the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn.
British evacuation
In mid-August 1783, Sir Guy Carleton, the last British Army and Royal Navy commander in the former British North America, received orders from his superiors in London for the evacuation of New York. He informed the President of the Confederation Congress that he was proceeding with the subsequent withdrawal of refugees, liberated slaves, and military personnel as fast as possible, but that it was not possible to give an exact date because the number of refugees entering the city recently had increased dramatically (more than 29,000 Loyalist refugees were eventually evacuated from the city).The British also evacuated over 3,000 Black Loyalists, former slaves they had liberated from the Americans, to Nova Scotia, East Florida, the Caribbean, and London, and refused to return them to their American slaveholders and overseers as the provisions of the Treaty of Paris had required them to do. The Black Brigade were among the very last to depart.
Carleton gave a final evacuation date of 12:00 noon on November 25, 1783. An anecdote by New York physician Alexander Anderson told of a scuffle between a British officer and the proprietress of a boarding house, as she defiantly raised her own American flag before noon. Following the departure of the British, the city was secured by American troops under the command of General Henry Knox. Portrait by Gilbert Stuart, 1806 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Entry to the city under General George Washington was delayed until a still-flying British Union Flag could be removed that had been nailed to a flagpole at Fort George on the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan as a final act of defiance, and the pole was greased. After a number of men attempted to tear down the British colors, wooden cleats were cut and nailed to the pole and, with the help of a ladder, an army veteran, John Van Arsdale, was able to ascend the pole, remove the flag, and replace it with the Stars and Stripes before the British fleet had completely sailed out of sight. The same day, a liberty pole with a flag was erected at New Utrecht Reformed Church; its successor still stands there.] Another liberty pole was raised in Jamaica, Queens, in a celebration that December. Finally, seven years after the retreat from Manhattan on November 16, 1776, General George Washington and Governor of New York George Clinton reclaimed Fort Washington on the northwest corner of Manhattan Island and then led the Continental Army in a triumphal procession march down the road through the center of the island onto Broadway in the Town to the Battery. The evening of Evacuation Day, Clinton hosted a public dinner at Fraunces Tavern, which Washington attended. It concluded with thirteen toasts, according to a contemporary account in Rivington’s Gazette, the company drinking to:
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ARE HANGING OUT IN THE RIHS DISPLAY WINDOW IN RIVERCROSS ALEXIS VILLEFANE, LAURA HUSSEY AND LISA FERNANDEZ WERE CORRECT
Mayor Dinkins played tennis on the island and frequently we would be on the same tram to Manhattan in the morning. He was always friendly and great with the kids, a true gentleman.
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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