Spread over an archipelago of islands nestled amongst the marshes of the northern Adriatic coast, Venice was founded in the fifth century AD by refugees who fled the “barbarian” onslaught after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
In 811 its seat of government transferred from the island of Malamocco (one of the earliest settlements) to an area corresponding to present St Mark’s Square which was less vulnerable to attacks from sea.
The move marked the start of a grand engineering experiment. Settlers dredged marshes to create land fit for cultivation. They dug canals, drained swamps, and reclaimed land.
The “floating” city symbolized man’s ability to control his surroundings. Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) and other master-builders turned Venice into an architectural jewel.
First Italian American
In 1630 Venice suffered a serious outbreak of the bubonic plague. The disease was spread by rats and fleas which made this trading hub vulnerable. The city suffered dreadful losses; almost a third of its residents died during the epidemic. The decline in population would contribute to Venice’s eventual downfall as Europe’s leading political and commercial power.
Pietro Caesar Alberti was born on Malamocco in 1608 at the height of Venice’s might. A successful merchant, he decided to leave the devastated city in 1635 and seek a new career elsewhere. He traveled to the Dutch Republic where he converted to Protestantism. Having signed on as a merchant mariner aboard Den Coninck David (The King David), he set sail in July 1634 to cross the Atlantic.
Alberti made New Amsterdam his home. Even though the situation in the city was worsening as the West India Company (WIC) neglected its duty of governance, Peter Caesar Albertus (his newly adopted name) integrated quickly into the settlement’s multi-lingual environment.
In 1639, he negotiated with Pieter Janse Montfoort (a Walloon immigrant) to cultivate part of the former’s plantation on the Long Island shore of the East River. Four years later, he secured the deed of ownership. By then he had married Judith Manje (Magnée) in the Dutch Reformed Church. Born in Amsterdam in 1620 into a family of French-speaking Walloon refugees, she had arrived in the colony with her parents some years previously.
The couple first lived on Broad Street, Manhattan, before moving to the plantation in 1646. They had seven children, all of them born and baptized in the colony (one of them died in infancy). Both were killed by Native Americans on their plantation in November 1655, casualties of Willem Kieft’s ill-conceived “Indian War.”
The Dutch authorities appointed a guardian to look after the orphaned children and records show that all of them prospered. Over the centuries, the Alberti family name recurred with variations in spelling.
Some Americans bearing the surnames Alburtis or Burtis can trace their ancestry back to Pietro Caesar Alberti. A marker in his memory stands at The Battery, Manhattan. The first Italian settler in New York State was a Venetian.
Venetian Inspiration
A Venetian immigrant sparked New York’s passion for opera. Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749 – 1838) was born Emanuele Conegliano on March 10, 1749, at Ceneda in the Republic of Venice. Jewish by birth, his widowed father (a leather merchant) converted to Roman Catholicism in 1764 as he planned to remarry.
Having studied at Ceneda’s Seminary, Lorenzo was ordained a priest in 1773 and then moved to Venice where he became a poet and language teacher. A friend of Giovanni Casanova (1725-1798), he lived a life of scandal.
Once defrocked, he fled to Vienna and wrote the words for Mozart’s three celebrated operasDon Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, and Così fan tutte. With the death of his patron Emperor Joseph II and the passing of his creative partner Mozart, Da Ponte’s career took a dive.
Forced to leave Vienna, he moved to London (via Trieste). Fearing arrest for indebtedness, he fled to the city of New York by way of Philadelphia in 1805, lived for seven years in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, and returned to Manhattan where he remained until his death.
The story of Da Ponte’s adventures (a libretto in itself) has obscured the contribution he made in transposing European Enlightenment ideals from Europe to America. He was the first Professor of Italian Studies at Columbia College; he welcomed the first Italian opera troupe to the United States; and he founded the New York Opera House, the nation’s first company dedicated to opera.
Venice also manifested itself in Manhattan’s building history. Palladian architecture (in the style of Andrea Palladio) is renowned for its elegant balance and classical elements. While its roots lie in sixteenth-century Venice, its design principles have been relevant throughout the ages, both in Europe and America.
Having established trading links with Venice, Flemish merchants reported the magnificence of “La Serenissima” (the most serene) to citizens in Bruges. Their accounts fired the local ambition to create a “Venice of the North.” When Amsterdam began to prosper, ambitions were unleashed to combine style with functionality. The concept of a “city beautiful” entered the urban consciousness.
Venetian Gothic dominated English architecture from around 1850, a vogue championed by John Ruskin in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851).
There were Manhattan architects who worked in this mode too. Born and raised in New York City, Peter Bonnett Wight admired Ruskin’s ideas. His blueprint for the National Academy of Design at the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and 23rd Street drew attention.
It was one of the designs selected for the New-York Sketch-Book of Architecture (1874), featuring twelve issues of plates with explanatory text. He played a leading role in the introduction of High Victorian Gothic in New York.
Although few Venetians lived in New York, social observers pointed at parallels between the two island-like port cities built by immigrants. This affinity found expression in architecture.
Designed in 1876 by the New York City firm of Jarvis Morgan Slade, the five-story surviving property at 8 Thomas Street between Broadway and Church Street functioned as a store for soap manufacturer David S. Brown. Built in brick with columns, arched windows, a gabled roof and an oculus on top, the slender building was three bays wide and ornamented with a variety of colors and patterns.
Manhattan once boasted numerous similar examples of Venetian Gothic, but few have survived.
Venetian Skyscraper & Magic Marble
In the late 1880s, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company evacuated its headquarters in Lower Manhattan and moved uptown to a newly erected eleven-story building at Madison Square and 23rd Street.
Having acquired the entire block by 1907, the company’s president John Rogers Hegeman commissioned a tower that would symbolize its success as the world’s largest insurer. Its architect Napoleon LeBrun (of French Catholic descent) modeled his design of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower after the Renaissance bell tower (“campanile”) of San Marco in Venice.
The iron-built tower held classical details and a massive chiming clock on each of its four sides. The pitched roof had a cupola on top and a lantern that flashed a signal to ships at sea (the “light that never fails”).
In 1909, the “Venetian skyscraper” was the world’s tallest office building. Ruthless restoration during the 1960s ruined its ornate presence by removing the classical features. Limestone panels replaced Tuckahoe marble.
Venetians had a passion for marble. Due to soggy ground, architects designed buildings with light-weight bricks on top of wooden piles. Marble was too heavy for structural use and applied as cladding only or for ornamental elements.
Venice imported a variety of marbles from across the Mediterranean, including porphyry from Egypt, Carrara from Italy, Parian and Pentelic white, and green-veined marble from Greece and Anatolia. This diverse sourcing contributed to the cosmopolitan look of Venetian buildings.
New York City could boast its own quarries. Until the early nineteenth century the village of Tuckahoe was part of Eastchester. It was then that stone cutter Alexander Masteron, an immigrant from Forfar, Scotland, discovered high-quality reserves along the Bronx River.
Manhattan was covered in marble. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower had been preceded by other landmarks such as St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1878. Built in 1895, the Arch in Washington Square Park is one of Manhattan’s iconic monuments.
Standing at the base of 5th Avenue, it was made of Tuckahoe marble quarried just over twenty miles away. After a near century the precious reserves were finally exhausted, causing production to end.
Lewis Hine’s “Sky Boys”
Mass Italian immigration into Manhattan began in the 1880s, establishing Little Italy (Piccola Italia) as a buzzing district. Most of the newcomers came from the poverty-struck southern regions and settled in Manhattan according to the regions they came from.
Neapolitans concentrated around Mulberry Street, Sicilians chose Elizabeth Street, and residents of Calabria and Puglia formed their enclaves around Mott Street. These close-knit communities kept their home traditions (social structures, festivals, and celebrations).
Most men worked in transportation, manufacture, or construction; others were street vendors (musicians) or shopkeepers. While a minority of migrants came from northern parts of Italy, few of them descended from the Venice region.
In October 1929, the demolition was set in motion of the Waldorf – Astoria, the world’s largest hotel, laying the foundations for the Empire State Building. Started during the Great Depression, the pace of construction was phenomenal.
The Art Deco project was under immense time pressure, with workers building approximately four floors per week to meet the deadline. Completed in 1931, it became an enduring symbol of New York City’s resilience and a tribute to immigrant labor.
The workforce of around 3,500 men featured large numbers of Italian and Irish migrants. The participation of Mohawk iron workers (“men of steel”) from the Kahnawake First Nations reserve near Montreal was crucial.
Experts in working at great heights, these skilled iron workers were employed in building the city’s landmarks since the 1920s. Ever since the building of a bridge over the St. Lawrence River in the mid-1880s, these Mohawk we workers had gained a lasting reputation for their skill and bravery.
Born in Wisconsin, Lewis Wickes Hine’s political views were honed at Chicago University. He brought this belief in progress and reform to New York when, in 1901, he began teaching at The Ethical Culture School at West 54th Street (founded in 1880 by Felix Adler as the Workingman’s School and reorganized in 1895 under the new name).
Around this time, he took to photography convinced that images could be more striking than words. He first carried his camera to Ellis Island to document the waves of immigrants that arrived there. He also dedicated a series of photographs to the horror of child labor.
In March 1930 he was asked to produce a visual record of the Empire State Building’s construction. In a project lasting six months he followed the “sky boys” engaged in the perilous job of erecting the steel and concrete structure.
Several iconic photographs, taken from enormous heights, were published in his book Men at Work (1932).
One remarkable shot shows a worker in mid-air connecting two cables which he gave the title “Icarus atop Empire State Building,” a reference to the Greek mythological character who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death.
It was an implicit warning of “titanic” human hubris. The alert was ignored. Manhattan became defined by slender skyscrapers (“pencil towers”) with a Venetian legacy.
Venetian Blinds
Venetian blinds date back to the ancient Egyptians who tied reeds together as coverings to shield their windows from the harsh desert sun. In China and Japan slatted bamboo designs had been in use for similar reasons. The Romans are credited with the creation of the first fabric versions. Blinds with horizontal slates were (probably) developed in Persia and introduced to Venice by merchants trading in the Middle East. In France, they were known as les persiennes.
By the eighteenth century blinds had spread to America. Venetian wooden slats first appeared stateside in 1761 when St Peters Church in Philadelphia used them to complement their large windows.
Six years later London immigrant John Webster began trading venetian blinds from his upholstery shop in Arch Street, Philadelphia. Blinds seemed to have first appeared in paint in 1787 when Jean-Leon-Gerome Ferris depicted “The Constitutional Convention” at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
By the early 1900s, Venetian blinds had been introduced into public buildings. After completion in 1933 of the former RCA Building at Rockefeller Plaza, the first American skyscraper to use them for light and air control, they became a fixture of New York City architecture.
The Empire State Building boasted a profusion of windows, allowing for vast amounts of natural light to enter. The challenge to designers was to master the fierce glare of light during separate times of the day. Versatile blinds were a solution for controlling light variation, a feature that proved essential for the functionality of a skyscraper.
The Burlington Venetian Blind Company was a prominent Vermont manufacturing business set up in 1884 and running until 1953. In 1931 the Company received an order to supply shades for the Empire State Building, the largest request for Venetian blinds ever placed in history.
It safeguarded Burlington from the horrors of the Great Depression. The industry boomed: in 1936, manufacturers sold $210 million worth of blinds in New York City alone. Venice had conquered the Manhattan skyline.
Read more about architecture in New York.
I am sailing out of our harbor tomorrow, so enjoy the joys of the City until I return.
CREDITS
Illustrations, from above: A gondola ride in Central Park, with the iconic San Remo apartment building in the background; Venice, Italy, ca. 1735, by artist Canaletto; Peter Caesar Alberti marker in The Battery, Manhattan; Lorenzo Da Ponte portrait by Samuel Morse at the New York Yacht Club, ca. 1830; Designed by Jarvis Morgan Slade, the five-story Venetian-inspired building at 8 Thomas Street between Broadway and Church Street; Metropolitan Life Tower, postcard 1912; “Street Arabs in Mulberry Street, Little Italy” by Jacob Riis, 1889; Lewis Wickes Hine’s “Icarus, high up on Empire State,” 1931; and Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, “The Constitutional Convention,” 1787.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
KIOSK STAFF & FRIENDS CELEBRATES THE NEW YEAR AT GRANNY ANNIES MIRELLA, BARBARA, BOBBIE, JUDY, ARLENE, GLORIA, ELLEN AND DAVID (PAT WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND)
PHOTO OF THE DAY
NAME THE LOCATION OF THIS LIGHTHOUSE. NOT AS CLASSIC AS OUR.
CREDIT
NEW YORK ALMANACK 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.
Alice Mabel Allen (1886-1976) grew up in the village of Adams in Jefferson County, NY. Her father, William Jarvis Allen, published the weekly Jefferson County Journal. He saw to it that all three of his daughters went to college. Mabel, as she was known, first attended Stanford University and later Syracuse University. In 1908, while at Syracuse, she kept a diary in which she described the joys and travails of college life 115 years ago. Each week throughout the year New York Almanack will publish entries from Mabel’s diary.
Friday, January 3
This morning I left Adams on the 7:11 train for Syracuse. It was scarcely light when Jimmie came to the house for me. Edna [her older sister] went with me to the station. On the train I learned Prince Hal’s speech in Henry IV “I know you all” — and have now discovered it to be a wrong passage. Was somewhat late for Eng. VII. Did not prepare Latin lesson and was required to write a synopsis of chapter. Unpacked my trunk and in it found a Christmas present from Jean – this diary. I was much pleased. Harriet came this afternoon. Am reading ‘Emma’ to-night. I wish I were glad to be back. Fire in city.
Saturday, January 4
Slept late this morning and did not go down for breakfast. After English I went over to library and learned poems: Milton’s on his blindness being one. Read ‘Emma’ this afternoon and did up Christmas gifts packed in my trunk. Later went down in laundry and washed with Lu. After tea Harriet and I went down to see about my trunk. Found order had not been written down. They refunded the money. Did errands for Jean. Took Harriet into Schrafft’s. Alice Rhodes called while we were away. Harriet sleeps with me.
Sunday, January 5
Harriet and I slept late and did not go down for breakfast. Read ‘Emma’ in Harriet’s room while Lu had gone to church. Sang in the parlor after dinner. Read this P.M. Went to Vespers at St. Paul’s with Lu, Harriet and Miss Seidler. Late for lunch. Read to-night and wrote home. Grace Gatchell and Clara B. came back. Ate shortcake cookies and apples in the girls’ room. Eyes have given much trouble all day. Jean was to have ‘Slam’ club in or rarebit to-night but headache prevented.
Monday, January 6
Last night I slept downstairs with Fuzzy. It was impossible to keep warm. Studied Latin with Fuzzy this A.M. Had a phone call from Sparks [? see photo] who just came back this morning. Was called on to recite in Latin to-day. Came home and read and went down with Edith and Miss Baker to meet Alma. Waited, seemingly, a long time before her train came. She goes back to-morrow. Went over to library with Lu and Miss Thomas. Too sleepy to study long. Harriet in to tell me about her initiation. Letter this A.M. from mother. Miss Wright here to tell me about Katherine’s illness.
Tuesday, January 7
Went to math without my lesson but luckily was not called upon. Called on in Eng. VII for first time. Saw one of K.K.G. girls who said they were much worried about Katherine. Studied geometry one period with Miss Beattie. After dinner studied Latin with Jessie Barnes; finished ‘Emma’, went in Jean and Ethel’s room, wrote to Tina and Mary Searles and rewrote Eng. theme on Philippine assembly. Harriet gone to initiation to-night. Fuzzy up to study math. Lu will sleep with me if I can persuade her. Snowing hard and blowing outside. Fuzzy says we had salmon for supper. This is important.
Wednesday, January 8
It snowed so hard during the night that the banks were heaped high this morning. Called on to recite in math. Letter from Herbert Jenkins. Quiz this A.M. in Eng. VIII. Forgot some of memory passages. At about 5 went over after Lu to go walking. Stopped to call on Miss Minch and then walked down to the corner bakery to buy cup cakes. Miss Beattie over to-night to study algebra and we joined Mr. Lindsay’s tutoring class with Fuzzie. Slept to-night with Isabel Rea who is ill. Katherine better.
Thursday, January 9
Paid tuition to-day. Had conference with Prof. Eaton. Went to see Prof. Pratt about math after twelve and so had a late dinner. Almost went to sleep on Lu’s cot because tired from last night. Isabel is up and dressed to-day. Went for short walk with Lu before supper. Miss Beattie over to study math and Fuzzie was up. Copied Roman History notes. Staid up late to study Latin with Jessie Barnes. Stormed this afternoon and grows colder. Father has changed [his newspaper’s] publication day to Wednesday.
Friday, January 10
Came home from math with Fuzzie and found letters from mother and Jessie Legg and a postal from Alma. Jessie wrote a dear note for the book of poems I sent her. After Latin met Miss Minch in chapel and we did math in room 53. Miss Arnold joined us later. Fuzzie and I after supper went to a tutoring class in algebra. Studied Shakespeare in Lu’s room when I returned. Received a belt which mother bought in New York and had sent to me here; postmarked October 16.
Saturday, January 11
Did not go down for breakfast. After English went over to library and studied math. Came back at 11 and Edith came for me to go for a short walk. Came back and learned Shakespeare. After dinner went in Jean’s room and ate caramels, swept and dusted, ironed and at 3 walked downstreet with Lu and Harriet. Exchanged Edna’s brush and bought some handkerchiefs for her birthday. Bought some tan kid gloves and baked stuff at Park bakery. After supper went to math class with Miss McLight [?]. Later went down with Lu after cream at Jem store.
Sunday, January 12
Grace Gatchell slept with me last night because Cassie’s sister was here. Harriet, Lu and I had breakfast in my room. It all tasted so good to us. Went and called for Miss Minch. We attended the First M.E. Church. Walked home. Late for dinner. Lu not well and lay on the bed in my room. Wrote to the people [her parents] and Lillian. Dressed in my voile for lunch. Lillian came back unexpectedly. Her brother, who has had pneumonia, is better. Learned some Shakespeare and was going early to bed.
I am sailing out of our harbor tomorrow, so enjoy the joys of the City until I return.
KIOSK STAFF & FRIENDS CELEBRATE THE NEW YEAR AT GRANNY ANNIES MIRELLA, BARBARA, BOBBIE, JUDY, ARLENE, GLORIA, ELLEN AND DAVID (PAT WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND)
CREDIT NEW YORK ALMANACK 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.
New York has always been a city that loves a party. But perhaps no residents of Gotham celebrated quite like the New Year’s Day revelers in the 17th century trading outpost of New Amsterdam.
Forget lavish Christmas dinners and over-the-top gift giving. In the Dutch colonial era, New Year’s Day was the bacchanalia of the year—with the town’s population of roughly 5,000 people drinking, dancing, carousing with neighbors, and enjoying the festive feel of the first of January.
Of course, tables laden with rich foods and copious spirits were a prominent part of the day.
“The women of New Amsterdam on New Year’s Day decorated their houses with all the skill at their command, and in silk and taffeta welcomed the dignitaries of the town,” wrote Rufus Rockwell Wilson in his 1902 historical study, New York Old and New.
Meanwhile, the men went calling, walking or riding their carriages to visit these decorated homes. There they would be treated to “a mighty punch bowl well reinforced by haunches of cold venison and turkeys roasted whole, and ornamented with cakes, comfit, confectionery, silver tankers, and bekers filled with rare Madeira and foaming ale,” according to The Story of the City of New York, published in 1888.
Indulging was all part of the fun. Outdoors in the January chill, “much drunkenness and other insolence” occurred, including the celebratory firing of guns by citizens welcoming the new year. Unfortunately, the gunshots sometimes hit other residents.
With this in mind, Director General Peter Stuyvesant outlawed this “unnecessary waste of powder” in 1655, though the custom of firing a gun on New Year’s has remained in place.
After the British took over the colony in 1664, citywide New Year celebrations continued, perhaps with more restraint. On January 1, 1790, George Washington received callers at his mansion on Cherry Street between 12 and 3 p.m., as he noted in his diary, adding that “a great number of gentlemen and ladies visited Mrs. Washington on the same occasion.”
As the 19th century commenced and New York’s population diversified, Christmas eventually supplanted New Year’s as the city’s major December holiday.
Yet the tradition of calling continued. In his autobiography, sculptor James E. Kelly recalled going calling as a boy in the 1860s, when “the glow and tingle of the walk was heightened by the gust of warm spice-laden air that greeted us, and as our pretty little girl schoolmates received us at the doors in all their holiday finery.”
Another child, a 10-year-old whose diary chronicles her privileged girlhood in the Greenwich Village of 1849 and 1850, remembered that the family received 139 callers at their Ninth Street home on January 1, and guests were served “oysters and coffee and cake.”
“The gentlemen keep dropping in all day and until long after I have gone to bed; and the horses look tired, and the livery men make a lot of money,” wrote little Catherine Havens in her diary.
By the Gilded Age, calling was on its way out. On January 3, 1888, the New York Times wrote that “few carriages were observed bearing the gentlemen about on a pilgrimage of good wishes, and as a matter of fact the ladies themselves did not even deem it necessary to inform their friends that they should not receive.”
“Neither the Astors nor the Vanderbilts were at home yesterday, and none of New York’s prominent ladies can be properly said to have received calls.”
With these old New Year’s traditions dwindling, nostalgia for the celebrations of colonial days took over.
Periodicals published illustrations that imagined the merriment and good cheer of New Year’s Day in the 17th century. One example is in the image at the top of this post—a color-printed wood engraving of the New York of 1675, made from a late 19th century illustration by British artist George Henry Boughton.
Boughton also created the third image of Dutch colonists celebrating the holiday in New Amsterdam in 1636, with Dutch-style gabled roofs in the background.
And the middle black and white image comes from an 1868 illustration by painter John Whetten Ehninger, who imagined a New Year’s Day of dancing, flirting, and pipe smoking among what he called the “Ancient Knickerbockers.”
COLER THERAPEUTIC RECREATION STAFF GETTING READY TO DISTRIBUTE HOLIDAY GIFTS TO RESIDENTS.HEALTH AND BEAUTY GOODIES ARE DONATED BY GOOD SHEPHERD PARISH TO THE COLER AUXILIARY ANNUALLY
CREDIT 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.
111 BROADWAY, I HAD THE UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE AN AERIAL VIEW OF THE TRINITY CHURCHYARD NEXT DOOR
THE ENTRANCE TO 111 BROADWAY IS A MASTERPIECE
111 and 115 BROADWAY HAVE A LONG HISTORY
PHOTO OF THE DAY
WHAT IS THIS OBJECT BEING HELD BY JUDY AND SOFIA? TAKEN AT THE “JEWELS WITH JUDY” CLASS AT CBN ADULT CENTER SEND YOUR IDEAS TO:ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
CREDITS
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.
(L) Credit: RAMSA; (R) 15 Central Park West. Image via WikiCommons
Acclaimed architect Robert A.M. Stern, who over his career built one of the world’s most influential architecture firms and left an enduring mark on the New York City skyline, died last Thursday at the age of 86. The Brooklyn-born architect founded Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) in 1969 and went on to build a portfolio that ranged from luxury residential buildings like 15 Central Park West to major institutional projects such as the expansion of the New York Historical. Stern served as dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1998 to 2016. His son Nicholas told the New York Times that the cause of death was a brief pulmonary illness.
“Bob’s impact reverberates not just through RAMSA, but across the entire field of architecture,” Daniel Lobitz, partner and management committee chair at RAMSA, said. “His legacy will live on through the books he wrote, the students he mentored, and the people who inhabit his remarkable buildings.”
He added: “His vision, passion, and notoriously sharp wit became the foundation for a career that will not soon be forgotten, and a firm that is honored to continue the work he began.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1939, Stern began his architectural studies at Yale, graduating in 1965. He spent the next two years working in the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor John Lindsay, and in 1969, he founded Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA). Around the same time, he also began teaching at Columbia University, according to Architectural Digest.
In 1984, Stern was appointed the first director of Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. He later became director of the M.Arch. Advanced Studio in 1990 and, a year after that, director of the university’s Historic Preservation Program.
From 1998 to 2016, Stern served as dean of the Yale School of Architecture, where he shaped and mentored generations of emerging architects. He also maintained a lifelong fascination with NYC’s architecture and urbanism, authoring numerous books between 1983 and 2025: “New York 1880;” “New York 1900;” “New York 1930;” “New York 1960;” “New York 2000;” and the most recent “New York 2020,” according to RAMSA.
To continue reading this article go to: https://www.6sqft.com/famed-architect-robert-a-m-stern-dies-at-86/
Frank Gehry, the visionary architect whose sculptural, undulating designs created some of the world’s most striking buildings, died last Friday at the age of 96. While maybe best remembered for his crowning achievement, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, Gehry also left a lasting mark on New York City, designing the eye-catching 8 Spruce Street in the Financial District, which opened as the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere when it debuted in 2011, and Chelsea’s IAC Building. Gehry reportedly died at his home in Santa Monica, California, following a brief respiratory illness, according to the New York Post.
Born on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Canada, Gehry first gravitated toward architecture “on a hunch,” enrolling in introductory courses at Los Angeles City College while driving a delivery truck to support himself. Encouraged by his teachers and inspired by a chance encounter with modernist architect Raphael Soriano, he soon became captivated by the possibilities of the field, according to the Academy of Achievement.
Winning scholarships to the University of Southern California, Gehry graduated in 1954 and began his architecture career at Victor Gruen Associates, where he had been apprenticing part-time while still in school, according to the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Following a year in the military, Gehry was admitted to the Harvard Graduate School of Design to study urban planning, but returned to Los Angeles without completing his graduate degree. After a brief stint with the architectural firm Pereira and Luckman, he returned to Gruen before moving his family to Paris, where he spent a year working with French architect Andre Remondet and studying the works of modernist pioneer Le Corbusier.
Returning to Los Angeles in 1962, Gehry established his own firm, Gehry Associates—now Gehry Partners, LLP. Though he continued to work in the established International Style for several years, he was increasingly drawn to the avant-garde arts scene blossoming in the beach communities of Venice and Santa Monica.
World-renowned architect Rafael Viñoly, known in New York City for his work on many commercial and landmark buildings, passed away last week in his Manhattan home at the age of 78. The modernist designer, best known to many New Yorkers for his work on the controversial 432 Park Avenue condo tower, succumbed to a brain aneurysm, according to the New York Times.
Born in Uruguay in 1944, Viñoly studied architecture in Argentina at the University of Buenos Aires. Before graduating, he had already started Estudio de Arquitectura Manteola-Petchersky-Sánchez Gómez-Santos-Solsona-Viñoly, a firm that eventually designed buildings throughout South America.
In 1978, Viñoly acquired a teaching position at Harvard University in order to escape persecution at the hands of Argentina’s militant government that had taken power in 1976. Viñoly and his family moved to New York in 1979 and established his design firm, Rafael Viñoly Architects, in 1983.
Over the course of his lengthy career, Viñoly became one of the only architects to have designed a building in all five city boroughs. His first project in NYC was reshaping an old, dilapidated high school into the new John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a design noteworthy for its use of cascading glass. The use of glass became a defining feature of Viñoly’s work.
In New York City, Viñoly may be best known for designing 432 Park Avenue, the 1,400-foot-tall condo tower along Central Park South once ranked as the tallest residential building in the world. Many of the tower’s residents ended up complaining about engineering and construction problems, including leaky plumbing and defective elevators, documented extensively in a 2021 New York Times article.
Some of his other NYC projects include the conversion of an old library into the City College of New York’s Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, a new design for the Queens Museum of Art, and his design of the home for Jazz at Lincoln Center.
The esteemed architect worked on many projects throughout the United States, including a stadium at Princeton University, a new building for Chicago’s Booth School of Business that featured a striking glass atrium, and convention centers in Pittsburgh and Boston.
“On behalf of my family, my co-workers and our many partners throughout the world, I am saddened to report that my father, the founder and namesake of our firm Rafael Viñoly Architects, passed away unexpectedly yesterday, 2nd of March, at the age of 78,” Román Viñoly, the late architect’s son and a director at the family’s firm, said in a statement. “He was a visionary who will be missed by all those whose lives he touched through his work.”
Román Viñoly added: “He leaves a rich legacy of distinctive and timeless designs that manifested in some of the world’s most recognizable and iconic structures, among them the Tokyo International Forum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Carrasco Airport in Montevideo, and 20 Fenchurch Street in London. The firm’s partners and directors, many of whom have collaborated with him for decades, will extend his architectural legacy in the work we will continue to perform every day.”
Viñoly was said to be working on a renovation of the San Rafael Hotel in Punta del Este, Uruguay at the time of his death, according to Archinect. He also designed the recently opened The Ritz-Carlton New York, Nomad and the under-construction tower at 125 Greenwich Street.
Viñoly is survived by his son Roman, his wife Diana, his stepsons Nicolas and Lucas, a granddaughter, and three step-grandchildren.
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JUDITH BERDY
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PHOTO OF THE DAY
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Municipal Archives’ Conservation staff recently completed a major project to conserve the Brooklyn Bridge drawings collection, which consists of more than 11,000 drawing plans. With the support of a three-year Save America’s Treasures grant from IMLS and a one-year grant from the New York State Library, conservators worked diligently over a nearly five-year period to stabilize and photograph the collection. As part of the project, the Archives’ Conservation Unit collaborated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Scientific Research Department to conduct scientific analysis of selected drawings to determine the composition of media and paper, causes of degradation, and to use infrared imaging techniques to enhance faded writing and drawing in graphite.
East River Bridge, “The Brooklyn Bridge Up Close.” Photograph by Elena Carrara, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The successful collaboration also prompted the Met to mount an exhibition of seven important drawings from the collection in a joint special installation with their Education Department, which opened on December 8th. On view until February 22nd, the installation displays, for the first time since 1983, several of the large-scale presentation drawings created by John and Washington Roebling and Wilhelm Hildenbrand. The longest drawing in the collection, which depicts the full span of the bridge and measures more than 25 feet long, has never been exhibited before. Thus, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see these exquisite drawings in an equally exquisite setting.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Met invited me to participate in an “Expert Talk” on December 9th along with Marco Leona, the David Koch Scientist in Charge at the Met, and Met Curator, Elena Carrara. Open to the public, the panel spoke about the history and preservation of the collection, the scientific work performed by the Met, and the exhibition process.
Given the size of the collection, not to mention the colossal size of many individual drawings, preserving and exhibiting the collection presented numerous challenges. The Met may in fact be one of few institutions in the world that could successfully mount an exhibition on such a scale. In addition to size, the condition issues the drawings presented posed challenges for conservation, framing, and transport.
Lindsey Hobbs speaking at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 9, 2025.
Prior to their accession by the Municipal Archives, the drawings spent the better part of a century in a dusty carpenter’s workshop beneath the Williamsburg Bridge under the purview of the Department of Transportation and its various historical iterations, where they were often consulted by City engineers for bridge repairs and renovations. Subjected to water leaks, mold, exhaust fumes from surrounding traffic, and rough handling, the drawings took a great deal of abuse. The primary condition issues we encountered included deteriorated paper supports, discoloration, tears and abrasions, local staining, faded media, and damage from mold and degraded adhesives.
To help us better understand how the drawings were created and what specific materials and media we were dealing with, I reached out to the Met’s Scientific Research Department in July 2023 and proposed a collaboration. The Met’s scientists often collaborate with smaller institutions via their Scientific Research Partnerships program to share their extensive analytical capabilities. Their enthusiastic yes to the proposal led to several visits between our institutions and a very productive partnership.
New York Approach, East River Bridge. “The Brooklyn Bridge Up Close.” Photograph by Elena Carrara, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Met’s findings confirmed the presence of certain pigments, such as vermillion, Prussian blue, earth pigments, and smalt, which helped to direct the methods used in our treatment of the drawings. Awareness of the presence of specific pigments also supports guidelines for light exposure given their known light sensitivity. Other findings revealed potential agents of deterioration in the paper substrates of some of the drawings, including rosin and kaolin. Infrared imaging allowed us to read for the first time some of the many notations written by Washington Roebling on the drawings and give a clearer view of intricate details. The imaging and analysis conducted by the Met not only supported our recent treatment efforts and understanding of drawings but will continue to support preservation of the collection in the future.
The work of Archives’ conservators along with the generous support of the Met’s Scientific Research and Education Departments have yielded insights into the Brooklyn Bridge plans that would not have otherwise been possible. The collaboration has been a wonderful opportunity to support a more nuanced approach to the drawings’ treatment and to expand the Archives’ audience for this remarkable collection.
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Novelist Hedwig “Vicki” Baum was born in January 1888 in Vienna into a Jewish family. She attracted international attention in 1929 with her novel Menschen im Hotel which started off a vogue for the “hotel novel.” It was staged as a play in Berlin by the great director Max Reinhardt that same year.
Translated into English as Grand Hotel, the story was turned into an Academy Award winning film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1932, starring Greta Garbo. The author had moved to Los Angeles whilst writing the screenplay, but the rise of fascism stopped her from returning to Europe. By 1935 the Nazis had banned her work. She became an American citizen three years later and began writing in English rather than in German.
In 1941 Baum published The Christmas Carp, a story set in Vienna that evokes a nostalgic image of past family festivities with memories of home baked cookies and a Christmas dinner that had carp as its highlight. Austrian painter Ernst Novak had captured a similar theme early in the century in a picture entitled “Cooking the Christmas Carp.”
Fish Migration
The wild ancestor of the common carp (Cyprinus carpio) originated in the Black, Caspian, and Aral Sea drainages. From there the species dispersed east into China and Japan and swam west as far as the Danube and Rhine Rivers.
The Romans were among the first to farm it in specially built ponds. The skill of building and maintaining piscinae (pools or ponds) was preserved in monasteries. Religious restrictions on eating meat made fish an important food source.
Salmon, trout, lampreys, shad, sturgeon, and other species characteristic of unpolluted running water featured in medieval meals. In parts of Eastern Europe carp became a staple food.
Czech cleric and humanist scholar Janus Dubravius, Bishop of Olomouc, penned Libellus de piscinis et piscium (Booklet about fishponds and fish) in 1547. Its publication coincided with a rise in aquaculture in South Bohemia, the country’s “lake district.”
Carp became part of the national cuisine and still is the key ingredient of a traditional Christmas meal today (as it is in Slovakia, Poland, and in parts of Hungary and Croatia).
Carp figured strongly in Jewish cuisine. Gefilte fish was traditionally prepared on Rosh Hashanah, the religion’s New Year holiday. Balls made of minced carp were blended with seasoning and matzah (an unleavened flatbread).
In Galicia, Southern Poland, they were sweetly flavored; in the north the balls had a spicy seasoning. This dividing line of sweet versus spicy regions was known as the “gefilte fish border.”
The geographical sources of the Danube and Rhine Rivers are close to each other. The Rhine once consisted of extensive flood plains and plant-rich channels that were suitable for the recruitment and reproduction of carp. At some time in the tenth or eleventh century carp migrated from the Danube to the Rhine basin, making its way from there into the Low Countries.
The first written evidence of carp in the Rhine dates from 1158 when the Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen (the “Sybil of the Rhine”) composed her Physica in which she discussed the “therapeutic” virtues of plants, animals, and metals. She found stocks of carp in the Rhine-Meuse delta.
The enjoyment of carp meals was at first restricted to the gentry and clergy. During the Middle Ages and early modern period, carp à la broche (spit roasted carp) was served in Europe at aristocratic banquets. Cooking fish on a skewer over an open fire was a common technique at the time.
By the fourteenth century carp had become part of the culinary trade in the Low Countries. During the early seventeenth century carp appear in Flemish and Dutch still life painting.
Antwerp-born Clara Peeters was prominent among the painters who shaped the traditions of ontbijtjes (breakfast pieces) with plain food and simple vessels, and banketjes (banquet pieces) with stylish cups and crockery. Her 1611 still life of a carp and cat is a fine example.
Ponds & Fishmongers
Carp appeared on London tables towards the end of the fourteenth century. Refugees from the Low Countries were running the fish farms. In 1381, locals attacked a Flemish lessee of fishponds in Southwark and wrecked his property. These merchants had become a target as they were associated with privilege.
Throughout the 1370s, Flemish settlers were accused of seeking unfair economic advantage over English-born workers and they became victims of xenophobic rioting at the time. It did not hamper the industry’s growth. By the mid-fourteenth century there were various plots known as “The Stews” on the southern bank of the River Thames created for the cultivation and fattening of carp. Operated by professionals, it heralded the start of commercial fish keeping.
East Anglia has a long history of connections with the Low Countries. Not surprisingly, the first mention of an English carp pond goes back to 1462 on the Duke of Norfolk’s estate. By the late sixteenth century, carp had become the nation’s most popular freshwater fish. Dubravius’s book was translated in 1599 as A New Booke of Good Husbandry and sparked interest (mentioned by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy).
John Taverner in his capacity as surveyor of the King’s woods was the first author to extol the virtues of rearing carp in a book on Certaine Experiments with Fishe and Fruite (1600). Carp was associated with the Crown. If any fish escaped from the Royal rearing ponds into local waterways, Henry VIII offered rewards to those who returned the “carpes to the King.”
The presence of carp was reported in Ireland soon after its arrival in England as monastic orders or members of the gentry introduced the non-native species to the country. It was food meant for the landowning nobility as distinct from the common Irish staple diet of grains, milk, and potatoes. Ponds stocked with carp signified wealth. At elaborate dinners, guests enjoyed carp alongside game and meats.
Although detailed records of consumption are scarce, they do point at intervention from the Low Countries. Peter de Latfewr was an Amsterdam-based merchant who, in 1626, supplied eight carp to Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, for his fishponds at the Doneraile Estate on the banks of the Awbeg River, County Cork. Several years after its introduction, carp had bred sufficiently to allow Boyle to supply family and friends across Ireland with samples for their respective ponds, principally for food but also for ornamental purposes.
Gradually the fish reached middle class plates and palates. In 1653, Izaak Walton lauded carp as the “Queen of Rivers” in chapter nine (“Observations of the Carp”) of his famous treatise The Compleat Angler.
Cultivating carp became a commercial success. Professional fish farmers praised its hardiness and rate of fattening as compared to other freshwater species.
We Do Not Want You Here
Carp reached England and Ireland from Europe through human intervention as was its introduction to the United States during the mid-1800s. Newly arrived immigrants could scarcely believe that there was no carp in this vast continent.
Whilst in many European countries the fish was on the menu at weddings, birthdays, Christmas and New Year, in their new home settlers were deprived of a delicacy that tasted of a past they had left behind them.
Some settlers made attempts to start its culture. In 1831, imported carp was raised in New York City ponds or stocked in the Hudson River throughout the 1840s. Local entrepreneurs lacked the experience of fish culture and public demand completely outstripped supply.
There was some success elsewhere. Berlin-born fish farmer Julius Poppe succeeded in expanding a stock of five common carp imported in 1872 from Reinfield, Germany, into a thriving farm at Sonoma, California, within a period of five years.
The availability of carp remained limited and excluded to the rich. Celebrated as a delicacy, expensive hotels and restaurants in New York City served carp as a festive offering. The luncheon menu of April 16, 1902, at Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel offered “Carp in Rhine Wine Sauce.”
When in 1876 Pennsylvanian naturalist Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823-1887) took on the post of director of the newly formed Commission of Fish and Fisheries, he received countless requests for the importation of carp.
At the same time, he struggled with the challenge that enormous quantities of native species netted from the Illinois, Mississippi or Ohio rivers were shipped to markets of cities along the East Coast. Baird agreed to the introduction of carp into the nation’s lakes and rivers as a replacement of flagging stocks.
Carp would supplement traditional supplies and serve as an inexpensive source of protein for the benefit of the whole nation. The market was extensive and receptive; soon there was carp in abundance. Natives and newcomers snatched up carp from fish stalls in New York, Boston, Chicago, and elsewhere.
For urban fishing enthusiasts, there were plenty of common carp thriving in local outlets. New York City’s Reservoirs and Manhattan’s Central Park lakes (The Lake, Harlem Meer, or The Pond) made angling both a pastime and a means of (illegal) family food supply. The experiment seemed a success, but the love affair with carp would not last.
Carp tends to destroy vegetation in shallow wetlands and dominate distressed aquatic environments, crowding out other fish. In America, the species became a pest. Running a pond was no longer a workable enterprise as commercial anglers were hauling carp in from public waters that had been stocked intentionally or accidentally. Prices plunged. Fish farmers gave up the trade in carp.
The Asian carp added to the problem. Introduced in North American waterways to control algae blooms in aquaculture facilities, many of them escaped either through human mismanagement or natural events (flooding). Their numbers exploded, disrupting ecosystems especially in the Mississippi and Great Lakes region, endangering native species such as yellow perch, bluegill, or black and white crappie.
In the South hunger had been major issue since the collapse of the plantation cotton economy. As protein-rich carp was plentiful, many African American and other struggling families consumed it.
In the cities of the northeast, it became a staple for immigrants and poor minorities. Public perception connected hardship and low social status with carp which became a metaphor for poverty.
Many consumers rejected “poor man’s fish” as a cheap replacement of proper food driven forward by the federal government’s support for fish farming (much like the European introduction of the potato had once been an alternative for bread).
Dislike of carp coincided with growing unease about both the rate of mass immigration and the resistance against Black integration. The four-letter “carp” word expressed social and cultural disharmony.
In America at least, its association with Christmas was fading from memory.
NOTHING IS BETTER THAN WATCHING THE ART ON THE NEW JP MORGAN CHASE BUILDING
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NEW YORK ALMANACK
JUDITH BERDY
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NYC’s Forgotten
‘War on Christmas Trees’
WEEKEND, DEC. 20-22, 2025
ISSUE #1597
One of the best parts of Christmastime in New York City is being enveloped in the festive scent of pine as you walk past Christmas tree vendors on the sidewalk. These stands of fluffy evergreens signal that the holiday season has arrived…but they were almost outlawed!
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia notoriously disliked street vendors clogging up New York City’s roadways. During the early years of his mayoral term, which coincided with the Great Depression, there was a proliferation of unlicensed pushcart vendors as out-of-work New Yorkers tried to make ends meet by selling vegetables, fruits, meats, and other goods on the streets (and skirting pushcart permit fees). Declaring pushcarts “a menace to traffic, health, and sanitation,” LaGuardia made it his mission to get those vendors off the streets.
LaGuardia used WPA funds to construct indoor retail markets, such as the Essex Street Market and Arthur Avenue Market, where vendors could sell their wares in a new, clean environment, and leave the streets open for traffic. Along with the opening of those municipal markets came an ordinance that banned all unlicensed pushcarts from operating on the streets…including vendors selling Christmas trees!
The public (and the tree vendors) did not like this. How would New Yorkers get their trees for the holiday season?! In response to the ill-advised ban, the City Council passed an exemption to LaGuardia’s pushcart ordinance, overriding the mayor’s veto.
Dubbed the “coniferous tree exception,” the law specifically allowed Christmas tree vendors to operate their stalls on the street without a license, but only in December. That law is still on the books today! It’s NYC Admin Code Sec. 19-136 (a)(4).
The law states that “storekeepers and peddlers may sell and display coniferous trees during the month of December and palm branches, myrtle branches, willow branches, and citron during the months of September and October on a sidewalk.” The caveats are that the seller must have “permission of the owner of the premises fronting on such sidewalk,” and must keep a clear passageway for “the free movement of pedestrians.”
So it’s thanks to an obscure Depression-era law that we get to enjoy the refreshing aroma of Christmas trees as we stroll the city streets every holiday season!
NOTHING IS BETTER
THAN GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL DECORATED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
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PROBABLY THE LARGEST MENORAH IN THE CITY AT THE JP MORGAN CHASE BUILDING
FROM THE ARCHIVES
THE LOWER LEVEL ROADWAY OF THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE SHOWING ROOM ACCESS ON STOREHOUSE BUILDING WITH TROLLEY IN BACKGROUND.
THE LOWER LEVEL ROADWAY OF THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE SHOWING ROOM ACCESS ON STOREHOUSE BUILDING FROM LOWER LEVEL ROADWAY.
ROOFTOP OF ELEVATOR STOREHOUE BUILDING
NEWLY CONSTRUCTED GOLDWATER HOSPITAL WITH CITY HOSPITAL IN BACKGROUND
THE “MAIN STREET” WITH THE CITY HOME BUILDINGS.
DEMOLITION OF FORMER NURSES QUARTERS IN EARLY 1970’S
PHOTO OF THE DAY OSCAR AND HIS NEW COAT
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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.
