Jun

5

Wednesday, June 5, 2024 – A TREASURED INTERIOR IS NOW A LANDMARK

By admin

City Landmarks Victorian Atrium
at
The Beekman Hotel

The nine-story Victorian atrium at the Beekman Hotel is now a New York City landmark. The Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday voted to designate the central atrium at 5 Beekman Street in the Financial District as an interior landmark, recognizing both its stunning architecture and the restoration project that returned the space to its 19th-century glory. Built as part of the commercial building Temple Court, and now the centerpiece for the converted Beekman Hotel, the space consists of eight tiers of galleries topped by a pyramid-shaped skylight.

“The Temple Court Building’s stunning skylighted atrium combined engineering ingenuity with beautiful design and incredible workmanship and helped make this building one of the most celebrated downtown towers of its era,” LPC Chair Sarah Carroll said. “Looking up through multiple stories of decorative cast-iron galleries to the skylight is truly breathtaking.”

“Thanks to a careful and sensitive restoration that adapted this tower and atrium to meet a new use and reopened this space as part of the site’s transformation into The Beekman Hotel, this historic atrium is once again able to be viewed and appreciated, and its designation ensures it will be enjoyed for generations to come.”

Located at the corners of Nassau and Beekman Streets, Temple Court was one of the city’s first skyscrapers when it opened in 1883. The red brick and terra cotta building was designed by Silliman & Farnsworth and featured more than 200 offices opening onto the ornately decorated galleries surrounding the central atrium. At the top, is a pyramidal skylight with decorative metalwork.

Considered to be a fire hazard, the atrium was walled off starting in the 1940s. The last tenants moved out of Temple Court in 2001 and the building sat vacant, and inaccessible to the public, until the restoration was completed in 2016.

As part of the hotel-condo conversion led by GFI Capital Resources Group, GKV Architects restored much of the original interior, including the cast-iron balconies, the skylight, the atrium, and the millwork on the doors and window openings surrounding the atrium.

“GFI Development LLC is proud to have restored the Temple Court Building to its former spectacular glory,” Eric Bass, GFI Capital Resources Group Executive Vice President of Development, said. “We are delighted to be the stewards of this newly designated interior landmark which we feel is one of the most architecturally significant interiors in New York City.”

The owner supported the landmarking of the interior but expressed concern about the ability to make changes to non-historic elements, including the first-level bar and some windows and doors. The commission on Tuesday said the regulatory framework will allow for flexibility with the configuration of this level, which includes the two restaurants Le Gratin by Chef Daniel Boulud and Temple Court by Tom Collichio.

The commission calendared the atrium in February and a public hearing was held last month. Tuesday’s designation marks the city’s 122nd interior landmark.

Next to the historic Temple Court building is a new 51-story condo tower dubbed The Beekman Residences, where homes are currently starting at $1,400,000.

For years I walked by this abandoned and deteriorated building.  Today the interior was landmarked.  The hotel has been open for a few years just a minute from City Hall. 

CREDITS:

6SQFT
Architect’s Newspaper
The Beekman Hotel

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

Jun

4

Tuesday, June 4, 2024 – TAKING A RIDE IN CENTRAL PARK

By admin


The mystery of the

 

“phantom phaeton”

driving in

Central Park

and

astonishing crowds in 1893

Ephemeral  New York

On a Saturday in late November 1893, The World ran an article about what headline writers dubbed the “phantom phaeton.”

In the late 19th century city, everyone would have known what a phaeton was—a horse-drawn carriage with short sides and oversize wheels. Wealthier New Yorkers tended to be the ones riding and driving this light, sporty vehicle.

But the phantom phaeton The World wrote about had no horses pulling it, and its driver went unidentified. “For the past week a mysterious, self-propelling carriage has astonished the afternoon throng in Central Park,” the article stated.

“It threads its way easily among the crush of equipages on the East Drive, turning, winding in and out, and checking or increasing speed as readily as any of the vehicles drawn by horses.”

After cruising through Central Park following a 3:30 p.m. stop in front of the Plaza Hotel, the phantom phaeton would then turn west and end up on Riverside Drive. “It moves noiselessly and without smoke, gliding along without any locomotive-like clankings or puffings,” wrote The World.

The phantom phaeton wasn’t New York City’s first automobile; in 1885 a manufacturer on West 53rd Street was making a type of motor car called the Allen.

But it might have been one of the first to make regular appearances along the crowded drives of Central Park, where people were stunned by what The World called “a novelty” that could “cover a mile” in two minutes.

The World addressed the mystery: where did this “motor wagon” with rubber tires come from, and how does it work? A reporter tracked the phaeton to Jones’ Wood, a tract of land between Lenox Hill and the East River that was once considered as the ideal spot for Gotham’s first public park.A specific owner was never identified, but the reporter wrote that it was “of a type said to be popular in Germany….The motor is driven by gas which is generated as needed by ordinary benzine, which is carried in a closed copper tank under the seat….The speed is regulated at will and the steering done by the valves before the seat.”What the article doesn’t say is what we know now: the era of the automobile was beginning. In 1899, the city held its first “automobile parade,” featuring electric and steam-powered cars. (Video below)
To see movie go to:

A year later, Madison Square Garden became the site of the first National Automobile Show (fourth image)—the same year New York State counted 500 registered privately owned cars, and “automobile stages” began ferrying passengers on Fifth Avenue.

By 1910, cars were a regular part of the streetscape, and in 1920 the first traffic signal went up on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. (A little too late for Henry Bliss, the first New Yorker to be killed by a car; in 1899 he was struck by an electric taxi at Central Park West and 74th Street.)

The World article ended by asking a coachman who worked at the West Side stable of John D. Crimmins what he thought of the phantom phaeton, which cruised past the stable on its daily trips across Manhattan.

The coachman said automobiles should be a success for country driving. “‘But for city use,’ he added, ‘no machine can take the place of a skilled hand on the box.'”

“But then, people scoffed at Robert Fulton when he began,” concluded The World.

CREDITS:

EPHEMERAL NEW YORK

[Top photo: driving past the Hotel Empire on Broadway and 62nd Street; MCNY, 1898, X2010.11.8213; second image: The World, 1893; third image: 1905, MCNY, X2010.34.1657; fourth image via Wired; fifth image (video): Library of Congress; sixth image: NYPL Digital Collections]

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

Jun

3

Monday, June 3, 2024 – HARD WORK AND TALENTS CELEBRATED

By admin

Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright

May 30 

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Zuckerman Auditorium

2024 Women of Distinction Honors

Roosevelt Island Women

2024 Women of Distinction Honorees

FRANCINE BENJAMIN AND GLADYS DIXON , REPRESENTING COLER LONG TERM CARE FOR THEIR
WORK TO MAKE RESIDENT’S LIVES BETTER. 
(MS. DIXON WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND)

JUDITH BERDY, REP. SEAWRIGHT, FRANCINE BENJAMIN, VERNA FITZPATRICK

5 MINUTES BEFORE THE CROWDS ARRIVE A GROUP PHOTO OF THE VOLUNTEERS LED BY LISA FERNANDEZ, CENTER DIRECTOR

LISA COULD NOT RESIST READY TO PHOTOGRAPH THE SCENE AS THE DOORS OPENED!

CREDITS:

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

May

31

Weekend, May 31 – June 2, 2024 – HOUSTON STREET, NOT A GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD

By admin

HARRY HILL’S

CONCERT SALOON

AND THE

UNDERBELLY

OF

GILDED AGE NYC

On June 12th, uncover more sordid tales of the Gilded Age with Carole Lawerence, author of the novel Cleopatra’s DaggerThis virtual talk is free for Untapped New York Insiders! Not an Insider yet? Become a member today with promo code JOINUS and get your first month free!

Cleopatra’s Dagger follows the story of fictional 19th-century journalist Elizabeth van den Broek. When Elizabeth and her bohemian friend Carlotta Ackerman find a woman’s body wrapped like a mummy in a freshly dug hole in Central Park―the intended site of an obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle―the macabre discovery leads Elizabeth on an investigation through New York City’s darkest shadows. Her hunt for the truth takes Elizabeth to the Bowery where she braves the debaucherous crowds of Harry Hill’s to get information on the mysterious murder.

In his 1882 work New York by Sunlight and Gaslight, James McCabe describes concert saloons as “places where the devil’s work is done.” He goes on to describe the scene inside: “They provide a low order of music, and the service of the place is rendered by young women, many of whom are dressed in tights and all sorts of fantastic costumes, the chief object of which is to display the figure as much as possible.” These fantastically costumed women were “waiter girls” who served drinks.

These venues likely sprang up in the years preceding the Civil War and grew in popularity over the next decade. They were a combination of the English music hall and American tavern. According to the book The New York Concert Saloon: The Devil’s Own Nights by Brooks McNamara, there were roughly seventy concert halls operating in Manhattan by 1862. They tended to be concentrated in rougher parts of the city like the Bowery (described as “the centre of one of Satan’s strongholds”), Hell’s Kitchen, and the Tenderloin. Harry Hill’s was located at Houston and Crosby, just a few blocks west of the Bowery and east of Broadway.

Harry Hill’s Dance Hall was remembered in a December 1927 issue of The New Yorker in an article recalling “When New York was Really Wicked.” The report described Harry’s as a “sprawling, dingy, two-story frame house which had two front entrances, a small door for the ladies who were admitted free, and a larger one for gentlemen, who paid twenty cents.”

Image viaNYPL

Inside there were multiple rooms and bars and a small simple stage where various acts were performed. The proprietor himself took to the stage every week to recite some of his own poetry. Mark Twain wrote of his visit to Harry’s in 1867, describing the female dancers who “did spin around with such thoughtless vehemence that I was constrained to place my hat before my eyes.”

Harry posted a list of rules for his establishment on the wall including no profanity, no loud talking, and no drunkenness. Thanks largely to the owner’s low tolerance for any truly disruptive behavior, Harry’s was a cut above the worst of the dance halls where robbery and violence were rampant, but still on a lower rung than the more reputable theatres of Broadway further uptown. In his New York Times obituary, Harry Hill was described as “a queer combination of the lawless, reckless, rough, and honest man.”

In April 1862, New York passed the Concert Saloon Bill. The New York Times reported that this ambiguous bill would “purge our places of public amusement of most of their evils” and” to “make respectable and popular those that are properly conducted.” Essentially, the bill required all venues to obtain a license for any spoken or sung performances, though no licenses were granted to places that served alcohol or had waiter girls. Hefty fines were imposed on venues that skirted these rules, though many concert saloon proprietors took their chances, either ignoring the bill entirely or finding crafty way around the new rule.

Image via NYPL

At Harry’s, the entertainment offering shifted to boxing matches. Some of the most well-known boxers got their start on Harry’s stage. Hill even put on a fight between two female boxers.

Due to financial struggles from his other business ventures, Harry was forced to close the dance hall in the 1880s. By the turn of the 20th century, most concert saloons had closed but their influence led to other forms of entertainment like burlesque and vaudeville.

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

May

30

Thursday, May 30, 2024 – TWO EYESORES REMOVED FROM MAIN STREET

By admin

THE 

U.S.P.S.

WORKS FOR YOU


On May 14th I looked at these two USPS Relay Boxes in front of 510 Main Street.

They were in very poor condition, rusted and peeling paint.  I asked one of our postal carriers if the boxes were used. The answer was negative.    These boxes are used when more mail is delivered to a relay box and the carrier picks it up while on their route.  This is service is not needed now on Roosevelt Island.

The boxes were eyesores, I decided to e-mail the USPS and see if they could be removed.

I sent an e-mail to the USPS on their website on the 14th.  Three days later I got a call from Erica, the manager of our Post Office on Main Street.
She told me she would visit the site and see the boxes condition in person.

Yesterday the boxes were gone. All that remained were some nuts and bolts.

A clearing in the sidewalk with no more eyesores.

A few years ago the mailbox in front of 552 Main Street was removed by the USPS.
Try e-mailing the USPS and maybe you will have good luck and a box will be placed there again.

You never know, maybe one will be placed back, send an e-mail:

https://emailus.usps.com/s/postal-facility-inquiry

CREDITS:

Judith Berdy
USPS

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

May

29

Wednesday, May 29, 2024 – ONE MEMORIAL REPLACED BY ANOTHER

By admin

A Vanished

Henry Hudson Memorial

on

Riverside Drive,

and the

Sculpture that Replaced it

It looked like an elegant streetlight: a slender pole of bronze standing on a granite base 18 feet high over a circular sitting area that’s part of Riverside Park.

Planted into a bed of flowers and shrubbery at 72nd Street and the beginning of Riverside Drive, the globe-topped monument consisted of inscriptions and bas reliefs inspired by Henry Hudson, whose namesake river ran just to the west.

You won’t find the monument there anymore; it’s long since been carted away.

So how did a memorial to Henry Hudson end up on Riverside Drive, opposite the Drive’s row house mansions and free-standing palaces, including the 75-room, Chateau-like Schwab Mansion (at right)—and why was this remnant of early 1900s Gotham removed?
 

The idea for the Hudson monument goes back to the turn of the century city. That’s when New York began planning the Hudson-Fulton celebration—a massive two-week event commemorating the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river that bears his name, as well as the 100th anniversary of Robert Fulton’s Clermont paddlewheel steamboat.

The celebration would run from September 25 to October 9, 1909. Festivities in the works were unlike anything the city had ever seen, at least since the Washington Centennial in 1889.

To honor these maritime pioneers, officials scheduled a (above) flotilla of naval ships (with replicas of the Clermont and Hudson’s Half-Moon), fireworks, two parades, signal fires from Governor’s Island to Spuyten Duyvil, and the nighttime lighting of bridges, statues, and city buildings with thousands of incandescent bulbs.

Amid the excitement of all these plans, the Colonial Dames of America decided to build the bronze monument to Hudson. It was unveiled on September 29, 1909, in then middle of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, to a crowd of Americans and Dutch dignitaries.

“There was a great fanfare of trumpets, a little woman in a pongee suit pulled a cord and ran from under, the Stars and Stripes came down, the Dutch colors followed, and the tall bronze and granite shaft . . . stood revealed,” wrote the New-York Tribune.

For the next five decades, the Hudson Memorial remained on Riverside Drive. And it might be there today if it wasn’t “toppled by a truck in the 1950s” as NYC Parks put it.

Evidently it was too damaged to repair, or perhaps the popularity of the monument had run its course—especially in a city that honored Hudson with an eponymous river, a northern Manhattan bridge, and a parkway.

But there is a memorial at this circular spot once again: a sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt. Dedicated in 1996, “this piece depicts Roosevelt in heroic scale half-seated against a boulder with her hand on her chin in contemplation,” notes NYC Parks.

Surrounded again by greenery, the circle is a gathering spot for strollers and loungers. Instead of the magnificent Schwab mansion, the memorial stands in the shadow of Schwab House, the red-brick co-op that replaced the chateau in 1950.

It’s a fitting tribute to a New York City-born First Lady, and like the sculpture of Joan of Arc 21 blocks north at Riverside Drive and 93rd Street, it’s one of the few statues in a city park that honors a woman who actually lived—not a mythological or fictional female.

Riverside Drive is lined with fascinating memorials from the early 1900s, from recognizable figures like Joan of Arc to dramatic monuments honoring fallen firefighters and Civil War veterans. Find out their backstories by signing up for Ephemeral New York’s Riverside Drive Mansions & Monuments walking tour. Sunday, June 16 still has openings—click here for more info!

PHOTO OF THE DAY

CREDITS:

EPHEMERAL NEW YORK

[Top image: LOC, 1910; second image, 1912: MCNY, X2010.11.3083;
third image, 1909: MCNY, F2011.33.560]

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

May

25

Memorial Day Weekend, May 25-27, 2024 – THE GLORIOUS COLORS OF HILDRETH MEIÈRE’S MOSAICS

By admin

INSIDE THE DAZZLING

“RED ROOM”

AT ONE WALL STREET

At the corner of Broadway and Wall Street is a hidden gem. Art aficionados might be aware that a floor to ceiling mosaic room exists inside One Wall Street, but it has been closed off to the public for decades. That is soon going to change when the transformation of One Wall Street, the 52-story former Irving Trust Company skyscraper is complete. Visitors to the staged apartments can already see this famous “Red Room” which is being used as the sales gallery.

The dazzling array of red and gold mosaics inside the Red Room, the former banking room of the building, are by the famous Art Deco artist Hildreth Meière. Her works can be found all over the United States and elsewhere in New York City at Radio City Music HallTemple Emanu-El and St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. The tiling was pre-fabricated in pieces in Germany, each stamped so that the installers, the Ravenna Mosaic Company, could put it all together. The Ravenna Mosaic Company also installed the mosaics in Rockefeller Center and Meière’s design in the Basilica Cathedral in St. Louis. The Red Room was a private banking hall for the wealthiest of clients, and was never intended to be the lobby of the building. Inside there were desks with matching lamps for the bankers and chairs for clientele. It is one of the only abstract mosaics by Meière, and thus all the more rare.

Photo from the Ralph Walker Archives, courtesy Macklowe Properties

Meière created additional mosaics in the main lobby of One Wall Street, but they were already removed before Macklowe Properties purchased the building in 2014. Macklowe has recreated the entrance along Broadway using architect Ralph Walker’s original drawings and added a new canopy which was approved by the New York City Landmarks Commission but not part of Walker’s original design.

Photo: DBOX for Macklowe Properties

The interior of One Wall Street is not landmarked, but Macklowe put in a little over a million dollars in the restoration of the Red Room alone, mostly in cleaning and repair. “It wasn’t in terrible condition, it just needed some TLC and we had to bring it up to code with sprinklers, lighting, things like that.” says Richard Dubrow, Properties Director at Macklowe Properties. Nothing was modified or attached to the original walls. The plan is for the room to eventually become a retail space.

The Irving Trust Company was looking to make its mark when it moved from the Woolworth Building to One Wall Street. According to Dubrow, Irving Trust “bought the most expensive piece of real estate in Manhattan, here on the corner of Wall and Broadway. In the ’20s, the closer you were to the New York Stock Exchange, the more prestigious you were. So they are about thirty feet away from the stock. You can’t get any closer. They hired the most famous architect of the day, Ralph Walker.” Walker is also known for his other New York City masterpieces 100 Barclay (the former New York Telephone Building)Stella Tower and Walker Tower.

One Wall Street was so connected with Walker’s persona that he dressed as the building itself at the 1931 Society of Beaux-Arts Architects Ball. Dubrow says, Walker “was looking to celebrate the machine age with the design. Not so much the power of the machine but the precision of the machine” which is reflected on the relief sculptures and pattern of the limestone-clad facade of the building. The interiors of One Wall Street were treated with equal attention.

On the terraces of the apartments at One Wall Street, you can see how the limestone facade undulates

CREDITS:

UNTAPPED NEW YORK

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

May

22

Wednesday, May 22, 2024 – HOUSING FOR ALL, A RADICAL EXPERIMENT

By admin

THE ALLERTON COOPS

IN THE BRONX


NEW YORK ALMANACK

The Allerton Coops in The Bronx: Some History

May 20, 2024 by Guest Contributor

The United Workers Cooperative Colony (called “the Coops” or the “Allerton Coops” by residents), located at 2700 Bronx Park East, was a radical experiment in cooperative housing in the 1920s. Large numbers of Jews, fleeing oppression in the Russian Empire, began settling in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late nineteenth century.

Some had already been involved in revolutionary politics in their homelands. Crowded living conditions, high rent, and economic exploitation in their new home attracted more to various alternatives to capitalism.

The United Workers Cooperative Association was one among many of these alternatives developed by working-class Jews, most of whom were laborers in the needle trades, one of the largest industries in New York City at the time.

The Association focused much of its early cooperative efforts on Harlem. Its largest and most ambitious project, however, was in the northern Bronx, where it bought land on Bronx Park East in 1926 in order to build a large complex of cooperative housing.

The Coops sold financial stakes in the cooperative to “tenant investors” at the rate of about half a year’s salary for working-class people at the time. As shareholders, residents had a say in the operation of the cooperative.

The Coops were a nonprofit cooperative, meaning apartments could not be sold by individuals. Departing tenants received their initial investment back, with interest, and the board of directors, elected by the tenants, decided which new applicants got the vacant apartments.

In the 1940s, the board implemented an occupancy policy that gave priority to Black applicants. A small number of Black tenants were already present as early as 1935, but thanks to this policy, the Coops became one of the first significantly interracial housing complexes in New York City, long before the end of Jim Crow in the South and de facto segregation in the North.

As the rendering from 1926 above illustrates, beauty was a chief concern of the shareholders of the Coops, many of whom had lived in the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side.

Apartments were designed with high ceilings, healthy ventilation, and windows oriented so that direct sunlight would fall into at least one room. Further, spaces in the complex were designated for a library, daycare, Yiddish-language schools, youth club rooms, a cooperative restaurant, and a lecture hall,

Ravaged financially during the Great Depression, the Coops began to recover slightly during World War II and was offered new mortgage terms by the bank in 1943 that included rent increases. The Coops was deemed a financial liability by banks and insurance companies at the time for a variety of reasons, including its small but significant number of Black residents.

Tenants voted against accepting the new mortgage, the bank refused to negotiate different terms, and the Coops became privately-owned apartment buildings.

Nevertheless, the legacy of housing cooperatives remains alive and well in The Bronx, with historic examples like the Amalgamated Housing Co-operative, built shortly after the Coops and remaining a cooperative to this day, and Co-Op City, the largest cooperative housing development in the world, built starting in the late 1960s and located along the Hutchinson River in the northeast Bronx.

CREDITS:

This essay was first published in The Bronx County Historical Society’s newsletter. The Bronx County Historical Society, founded in 1955, is a non-profit educational and cultural institution chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. The Society is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of the history and heritage of The Bronx.

Learn about The Bronx Historical Society at their website bronxhistoricalsociety.org.

Illustrations, from above: Artistic rendering of the Allerton Coops, ca. 1926, from the At Home in Utopia Collection of The Bronx County Archives; and Allerton Coops in 2017 (courtesy Wikimedia user Jim Henderson)

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

May

21

Tuesday, May 21, 2024 – FAMILIAR NAMES POP UP IN NEW JERSEY

By admin

During a visit to the Roebling Museum on Sunday, the guide discussed the many generations of the Roebling family. Apparently, not every descendant was destined to lead the family business. Washington A. Roebling, a race car aficionado, ventured into race car manufacturing and driving. The guide also mentioned that a Roebling traveled to Europe with a member of the Blackwell family, Stephen Weart Blackwell, from Hopewell Junction, NJ. The majority of the Blackwells migrated from Astoria to the Trenton area, and here was one of them!

Both perished on the Titanic, but the chauffeur and car made it back to the U.S. on a later sailing.

THE ROEBLING-BLACKWELL

CONNECTION

Washington Augustus Roebling II in driver’s clothes.

The 1911 Mercer Raceabout, which took second in the hands of Washington Augustus Roebling II at the 1911 International Light Cars Race.

CREDITS:

ROEBLING MUSEUM

JUDITH BERDY

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

May

20

Monday, May 20, 2024 – THE TOWN THAT PRODUCED THE COMPONENTS OF HUNDREDS OF BRIDGES

By admin

A VISIT TO

ROEBLING, NEW JERSEY


ROEBLING MUSEUM

JUDITH BERDY

Town of Florence Historical Society
Aerial view of Roebling,NJ.

The museum on Open House Day

One of the relics of the factory.

One of the wire turning machines,

As you moved up in the company, your home was father away from the plant and closer to the river.

A showcase of employee ID badges

The grounds home to much equipment.

The Company Store is still a store to this day, but it is a contmporary deli in the original structure.

Now county administration buildings, to this day they ae connected by a suspension bridge

CREDITS:

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com