Ever wonder why Madison Square Garden is located atop Penn Station and not at Madison Square? The story is very New York and is not quite finished yet. Repeated calls over the years to relocate the current Madison Square Garden have been rooted in a desire to reimagine Penn Station, but all the recent improvements to the transit hub, including the opening of Moynihan Train Hall, gingerly sidestep the behemoth in the midst.
In total, New York City has been home to not one, not two, but four different Madison Square Gardens dating back to 1879. Sadly, none of the former MSG buildings stand today. Beginning with a humble open-air arena to the world-renowned sports and entertainment venue it is today, the four Madison Square Gardens have witnessed the evolving society of New York City with dramatic scandals and murders, evolving architectural styles, and events that reflected the social and political milieu of the time.
The first Madison Square Garden was already an existing venue known as P.T. Barnum’s “Great Roman Hippodrome,” or “Barnum’s Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome,” located at the northeast corner of Madison Square Park. In fact, before it was Barnum’s entertainment venue, the complex was actually the former depot of The New York and Harlem Railroad, which pulled trains using horse drawn carriages. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad magnate, relocated the railroad hub to 42nd Street (first as Grand Central Depot, then Station, then Terminal).
The open-air venue was used as a velodrome, for multi-day races, and even for a Roman Carnival. When Vanderbilt opened his new station, he leased the old one at Madison Square to P.T. Barnum. After a few more proprietors and lease changes, Vanderbilt’s grandson, William K. Vanderbilt, rechristened the venue Madison Square Garden in 1879.
The first Madison Square Garden was demolished in 1889. Vanderbilt, citing lack of profitability of the venue, sold the land to a consortium of esteemed buyers including J.P. Morgan, P. T. Barnum, and Andrew Carnegie. By 1890, a new Madison Square Garden opened with a Beaux-Arts Moorish design by the young celebrated society architect Stanford White. It cost over $3 million or nearly $88 million in 2020 dollars.
The most distinctive feature of the second Madison Square Garden was its tower, modeled on the Giralda in Spain, on top of which stood a statue of Diana by August Saint-Gaudens. Also notable was a rooftop garden, all the rage for entertainment in the Gilded Age, which became the site of Stanford White‘s murder at the hands of Harry K. Thaw, a jealous rival in a love triangle gone wrong.
The Second Madison Square Garden was also the site of the 1924 presidential convention, which was the first time a woman was nominated to be Vice-President of the United States. The second iteration of Madison Square Garden would be demolished just a year late
A 1941 postcard depicts Madison Square Garden, Public Domain via National Park Service
New York Life Insurance held the mortgage on the second Madison Square Garden, and in 1923, the company decided to demolish the arena and build their new headquarters at Madison Avenue and 26th Street. The Cass Gilbert-designed headquarters with the gold pyramidal roof still stands today, next to the MetLife buildings.
Madison Square Garden itself was then relocated to the west side, on 8th Avenue between 49th and 50th streets. The venue was designed by renowned theater architect Thomas W. Lamb, but the seats with obstructed views proved to be a problem. It would be here, however, that many political events would take place: a Nazi rally; an anti-Nazi rally; a fundraiser hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt and the Crown Princess of Norway (recently shown in the PBS Masterpiece series, Atlantic Crossing); and the famous rendition of “Happy Birthday” sung by Marilyn Monroe to John F. Kennedy in 1962.
The third Madison Square closed in 1968. The venue moved again to where it currently sits, atop the demolished site of Penn Station. The circular venue was designed by Charles Luckman. He is perhaps most famous for designing Boston’s Prudential Tower. This fourth version of Madison Square Garden has hosted everything from sports games and circuses to concerts and stand-up comedians, and everything in between.
PHOTOS OF THE DAY
TOMORROW WILL BE A SPECIAL ISSUE ON QUEENS BUS DESIGN NEW ROUTES
Michelle is the founder of Untapped New York and the author of The Art Spy (HarperOne, forthcoming) Secret Brooklyn, Secret New York Hidden Bars & Restaurants, and Broadway. michelleyoungwriter.com
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.
For Europeans planning or being forced to migrate, the concept of the United States as a virtually border-less society remained alive until the passing of the Immigration Act of 1917 (this was not the case for other groups). It offered an opportunity to governments to “shovel out” troublesome subjects.
The German term Übersiedelung (literally: relocation) was used by officials of the Kingdom of Hanover to describe the practice of exiling “unwanted” subjects to America. From the early 1830s to 1866 (when Hanover was conquered by Prussia), some three thousand individuals – most of them petty criminals or paupers – were expelled from the territory.
Their coerced removal served as an alternative to imprisonment and was, therefore, presented as a mutually beneficial course of action. Criminal law was applied to enforce emigration.
Many Americans resented accepting German speaking outlaws as immigrants. It was not their first conflict with the Kingdom. George III, the Hanoverian British monarch, had in the eyes of colonists overreached his power with a hard-line approach to the American Revolution.
The Declaration of Independence accused him explicitly of tyranny. Britain’s long history of exiling offenders to America had started a century before the ascendancy of the Hanoverians to the British throne in 1714.
In 1615, King James I (1566-1625) allowed English courts to send convicts to the colonies as a way of alleviating the nation’s criminal population. Deported convicts were set to work on plantations in Virginia and Maryland, provide cheap labor and populate remote areas.
By 1699, an estimated 2,300 felons were removed from jails and workhouses, but the system of penal transportation had to cope with rising opposition from within the colonies. The snake began to rattle its tail.
Bloody Code
Enacted in England from the seventeenth century onward, the “Bloody Code” was a set of penal laws that mandated the death penalty for such crimes as murder, arson, forgery, stealing cattle or sheep, pick-pocketing or stealing from a shipwreck. Dating back to 1688, the misdeeds punishable by death initially amounted to fifty; by 1815 the number had increased to over two hundred.
The Code reflected the harshness of a system that responded to social changes – urbanization, population growth, increased poverty and crime. It was used to maintain the status quo and suppress dissent.
As criminal justice relied upon fear of retribution, the public display of executions was crucial. If punishment was to set an example to onlookers, then the execution should be dramatic. The death penalty was both a ritual and performance.
Over time, “hanging days” deteriorated into drunken orgies of a rowdy and boisterous mob. The regularity of executions led to hanging-fatigue amongst the public and a hardening of its moral senses. Juries became increasingly reluctant to convict defendants for minor misdemeanors, leading to a decline in the effectiveness of the system. It was feared that law and order were at stake.
In 1615, King James I had authorized the process of transporting convicts to the American colonies where they could be profitably employed on the plantations. By the end of the century, the chaotic process had ceased to function as colonies were unwilling to accept convicts and ship owners reluctant to take felons on board.
In response, Parliament passed the Transportation Act of 1717 to create a systematic way of deporting convicts. It formalized the process, allowing courts to sentence felons to either seven or fourteen years of exile as an alternative to capital punishment.
The Act significantly increased the number of deported convicts and established a structured system for their transport to the colonies. Landing along the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, they were put to work in the tobacco fields or at shipbuilding yards. Completion of the imposed sentence had the effect of a pardon; the punishment for attempted escape was death.
Between the passing of the 1717 Transportation Act and the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, it is estimated that over 52,000 convicts were deported from overcrowded prisons and workhouses to be sold to the highest bidder. Convicts may have made up a quarter of British immigrants to colonial America during that period.
Many observers judged transportation a means of “draining the Nation of its offensive Rubbish.” Lawmakers considered exile an appropriate punishment; others regarded it an offer of rehabilitation, giving felons the opportunity of making a new life.
This applied to female convicts in particular. Upon arrival in the colonies, they were sold as indentured servants, facing harsh working conditions and mistreatment whilst suffering separation from their own families.
Daniel Defoe’s novel The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722) is the personal history of a bigamist, prostitute and thief. Born in London’s Newgate Prison to a convict mother and having lived a life of deprivation, she spent eight years as a transported felon in Virginia. Moll Flanders died a penitent.
The novel has been interpreted as a conversion narrative, a piece of propaganda supporting transportation’s “redemptive” powers. In his preface the (Puritan) author promised his reader a serious message, but the storyteller proved stronger than the moralist. It is not so much a story of salvation, but a gripping tale of survival in the urban jungle.
From Satire to Symbol
Exporting criminal miscreants to North America was a policy celebrated as a “way to help the colonies grow.” Settlers were dubious. Although costly, slaves were more attractive to potential buyers than deportees as they were considered stronger, healthier and less defiant. In addition, they were sold for life whereas most convicts served a seven-year term.
Once English ships arrived at their destination, deportees were lined up for inspection by interested parties. All “unsold” convicts were offered as a group to dealers (known as “soul-drivers”). Chained together they were marched into the country and sold at remote locations.
While plantation owners may have welcomed the availability of cheap labor, other Americans were anxious about the influx of convicts. Authorities in Virginia and Maryland tried repeatedly to prevent the “trade” in felons, but their legal measures were overturned by representatives of the Crown.
In The Scarlet Letter (1850), a novel set in the Puritan Bay Colony, Nathaniel Hawthorne observed that however lofty the ideals of early settlers might have been, the first practical step they took was to “allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.” Boston Gaol [Jail] was erected in 1635, the city’s first “house of detention” (rebuilt in 1704 on the same site).
Opponents of penal transportation would find support of an eloquent spokesman. On May 9, 1751, using the pen name “Americanus,” Benjamin Franklin published a satirical article in The Pennsylvania Gazette entitled “Rattlesnakes for Felons” in which he praised England for its generosity by which “all the Newgates and dungeons in Britain are emptied into the colonies.”
As a token of appreciation he suggested that the nation should present England with rattlesnakes in exchange. Behind the satire there was a message. Emptying jails into American settlements was an act of contempt. Benjamin Franklin introduced the rattlesnake into political debate.
As the species was unknown in the Old World, European authors and French academics in particular were fascinated by rattlesnakes. The study of snakes saw a mix of empirical observation and lingering traditional beliefs. The myth of the “joint snake” persisted, suggesting the ability of reptiles to regenerate their bodies after being severed. It was perpetuated in emblem books.
In 1685, Nicolas Verrien published a Recueil d’emblèmes (a new edition appeared in 1724), a collection of emblems that includes a sample of a snake cut in two parts with the motto: “Un Serpent coupé en deux. Se rejoindre ou mourir” (A serpent cut in two. Either join or die).
Franklin admired the genre for its use of imagery to communicate complex ideas. He was most likely familiar with Verrien’s emblem. A similar tale circulated in the English colonies: a cut serpent would come alive if the pieces were joined back together before sundown.
Academic interest advanced research. In 1705, Jamestown-born planter Robert Beverley published his History and Present State of Virginia (three French editions were published between 1707 and 1718) in which he called for a better understanding of the rattlesnake’s behavior.
Fears expressed by Europeans were unjustified. He insisted that the viper was not a threat; it would only attack if disturbed. The rattlesnake image produced by Suffolk-born Mark Catesby in The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1731/43) further excited the scientific world.
All these trends play in the background of a cartoon “Join, or Die” in The Pennsylvania Gazette of May 9, 1754, presenting a sliced up rattlesnake in the shape of a colonial map. Its engraver has not been identified, but Benjamin Franklin formulated the message behind what he called his “Emblem.”
Alluding to the old myth, the cartoon shows a snake in eight pieces, each representing part of colonial North America. Franklin made a call for the colonies, from New England at the snake’s head to South Carolina at its tail, to unite in battle during the French and Indian War or face defeat.
Metaphor & Banner
On the eve of the American Revolution, the snake image appeared again in print. Boston-born printer and journalist Isaiah Thomas used his newspaper The Massachusetts Spy (established in 1770) to rally support in the struggle for self-governance.
He published the first eyewitness accounts of the Battles of Lexington and Concord which turned out to be pivotal events in the Revolution. At the head of the newspaper’s first page, Thomas displayed the snake confronting the dragon symbolizing England with the phrase “Join or Die.”
The rattlesnake turned into a mascot. Once again, Franklin played a part. On December 27, 1775, he issued another anonymous article in the Gazette. Signed “An American Guesser,” it was entitled “The Rattlesnake as America’s Symbol.”
A scientist at heart and aware of recent research developments, the author stressed that the rattlesnake tends to avoid confrontation. If provoked or disturbed, however, it will respond in a lethal manner. Franklin’s reference to reptile behavior proved to be a perfect tool for political discourse, both as a metaphor and a prophecy.
The rattlesnake became emblematic of American pride and vigilance.
Almost simultaneously Christopher Gadsden, a native of South Carolina and a Colonel in the Continental Army, designed a flag that displayed a coiled timber rattlesnake with fangs exposed, ready to strike. It contained the words “Don’t Tread on Me” upon a bright-yellow background.
In 1775, George Washington officially established the Continental Navy to intercept English supply ships. Commodore Esek Hopkins was handed the banner for display on his flagship USS Alfred. Known ever since as the “Gadsden Flag,” it was a telling extension of Franklin’s metaphor.
During the uprising, the rattlesnake represented a desire for national unity and independence. It appeared in printed caricatures, newspapers and paper money as well as on flags and buttons.
The Continental Congress incorporated the reptile into the seal for the Board of War & Ordnance in 1778. That same year, Georgia issued a $20 bill featuring a rattler accompanied by the motto “Nemo me impune lacesset” (No one will provoke me with impunity). Snakes slithered everywhere.
The American Revolution ended the deportation of English convicts to the United States. Colonial ports ceased accepting convict ships. The Transportation Act was suspended that same year with the introduction of the Criminal Law Act, otherwise known as Hard Labour Act. Australia became the new penal colonial location.
When in 1782 Britain was coming to grips with defeat by the rebels and forced to negotiate a peace treaty in Paris, English cartoonists portrayed the United States as a vengeful and menacing rattlesnake.
While the bald eagle was – against Benjamin Franklin’s wish – ultimately chosen as a national symbol, the rattlesnake continued to be used in various other contexts. To this day, either perverted or not, it remains in certain circles (in 2010, the Tea Party adopted the Gadsden flag as its banner) a symbol of American identity.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
ROOSEVELT ISLAND RACQUET CLUB’S SKIP HARTMAN WAS SALUTED WITH AN 85th BIRTHDAY PARTY AT THE SANCTUARY ON WEDNESDAY.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SKIP!
CREDIT TO
Illustrations, from above: Detail from “A Fleet of Transports under Convoy,” outside London’s Newgate prison (British Museum); a relatively easy punishment under the bloody code; Illustration from Moll Flanders, from an 18th-century chapbook; “Mother Brownrico Flogging Her Apprentice in the Cellar”; Mark Catesby, watercolor of a timber rattlesnake in The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, 1731/43 (Plate 41); Franklin’s rattlesnake in The Pennsylvania Gazette of May 9, 1754; The Gadsden flag depicting a coiled timber rattlesnake ready to strike; and the Seal of the Board of War & Ordnance, adopted by the Continental Congress in 1778.
New York Almanack
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Explore the artists who make Printemps New York a truly unique space! Whether emerging or established, working in paint or sculpture, permanent or temporary, each of these amazing artisans bring their own distinctly fresh perspective and unique flair to your experience.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
PRINTEMPS NEW YORK ONE WALL STREET Issue # 1491
Red Room Mosaic Art, 1931
Designated an official New York City interior landmark in 2024, the Red Room is the pièce de résistance: sculptural walls, soaring 33-foot ceilings, and nearly three million red and gold mosaic tiles. It’s the vision of Hildreth Meière, the trailblazing Art Deco artist whose work also graces Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center. Completed in 1931, originally designed as the banking hall for the Irving Trust Company, and later the Bank of New York, the space still feels bold, glamorous, and full of life …and shoes!
A newly crafted mosaic “river” by Pierre Mesguiche now winds its way from the Red Room’s entrance to the adjacent Red Room Bar. A celebrated mosaicist, and Printemps Paris collaborator, Mesguiche’s latest work creates a playful dialogue between Paris and New York and between the past and the future.
Riviera Botanica, 2025
South Korean artist Maria (Taehyoung) Jeon, brings a breezy charm to our store windows with Riviera Botanica, a layered digital work inspired by the carefree elegance of summer in the French Riviera. Merging vibrant flora with subtle human forms, she evokes a mood of playfulness and ease, bringing summer in botanical form to our windows.
Raised between New Zealand and the UK and now based in Seoul, Jeon draws on a multicultural perspective and a background in printmaking and animation. Eastern and Western influences blend in each digital brushstroke, bringing depth and harmony to her richly composed works
Fantasy Flower No.6, Frutti di Mare, and Chinese Restaurant No.8 Lamps
In collaboration with Todd Merrill Gallery Curated by Valentina Guidi Ottobri
Finnish artist Teemu Salonen brings a touch of the fantastical with his botanical, sculptural lamps that burst with color and movement. Known for blending natural forms with surrealist flair, Salonen’s pieces feel at once organic and otherworldly. Each sculpture invites a closer look, adding moments of surprise and delight throughout the space where blooms that appear caught in mid-movement underscore our endless spring
Currently in the Salon and Red RoomMAARTEN VROLIJK
The Blooming Glass & Ceramic Collection
In collaboration with Todd Merrill Gallery Curated by Valentina Guidi Ottobri
Amsterdam-based artist Maarten Vrolijk brings a sense of softness and joy to the space with his Sakura vases, each a playful, oversized form rendered in soft curves and luminous, layered hues. With a spirit that nods to Romanticism and Art Nouveau, the vases blur the line between function and sculpture. Their fragile transparency, set against the strong lines and saturated palette of the Red Room, creates a beautifully poetic contras
Origami Birds, 2025
Belgian artist Charles Kaisin brings his signature vision to New York with a shimmering flock of golden origami-like birds suspended across our Salon windows overlooking Broadway. Known for sculptural works that explore light, geometry, and organic form, Kaisin previously created a celebrated installation beneath the historic dome at Printemps Haussmann – making his presence at Printemps New York a fitting new bridge between Paris and New York
Champagne Bar, 2025
Brooklyn-based artist William Coggin created the Champagne Bar’s ceramic-clad façade, an organic sculptural form that evokes the look and feel of sea coral. Large slabs replete with craggy textures and hand-formed curves create a multi-sensory experience that invites guests to pause, touch, and take it all in. Tucked at the end of our marble Salle de Bain, the Champagne Bar offers an intimate escape – the perfect spot to enjoy a perfectly chilled, small-batch cuvée, surrounded by beauty.
Odyssey of Nature’s Rebirth, 2025
In collaboration with Nilufar Gallery Curated by Valentina Guidi Ottobri
Multi-media artist and fashion designer Christian Pellizzari brings a burst of whimsy and wonder to our Grand Foyer with Odyssey of Nature’s Rebirth, a vibrant, dreamlike garden where Murano glass flowers and intricate 3D prints bloom in full color. Having grown up near Venice, Pellizzari often draws on the centuries-old traditions of Murano glassmaking, blending them with contemporary techniques to create works that feel both timeless and new. Lining the entry with dazzling flowers, he welcomes every guest into a world of beauty, imagination, and renewal. Artwork is available for purchase.
Stained glass panels and windows, 2025
Pierre Marie, the renowned French glass artist, brings his exceptional mastery to Printemps New York with a series of hand-crafted, stained-glass windows and panels featured in both the Red Room Bar and Maison Passerelle. Bold, botanical, and with a nod to the Baroque, these pieces capture the interplay of light and color, drawing inspiration from the intricate patterns and grandeur of the iconic Printemps Paris dome. Each piece blends contemporary techniques with timeless design, making these works of art a stunning tribute to Parisian craftsmanship and the art of glassmaking – a first for Pierre Marie in the U.S.
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.
Wondering why the beachgoers in this Rockaway Beach postcard don’t look like they’re having much fun—with their heavy hats, head-to-toe bathing outfits, and stiff posture as they sit in wood chairs or stand near the water?
It might have something to do with some new beach rules instituted a few years earlier.
According to a 2017 article in the longtime Rockaway news site The Wave, an NYPD Captain named Louis Kreuscher was concerned that a surge in visitors to this popular summer destination in the early years of the 20th century might have a negative effect on morals and manners.
So he composed a list of etiquette violations, which The Wave published in an August 1904 edition. The rules included the following:
“No person or persons shall be allowed to sit on the sand under the boardwalk after dark; As the beach is a public place, kissing is strictly forbidden; No hand-holding allowed; Hugging is strictly forbidden and the beach is for the use of bathers and is not to be used as a trysting place…”
A Wikipedia page on the history of Rockaway Beach also referenced Kreuscher’s rules, adding that they allowed for the “censoring the bathing suits to be worn, where photographs could be taken, and specifying that women in bathing suits were not allowed to leave the beachfront.”
Not using the beach as a “trysting place” seems reasonable. But no hugging, handholding, or heading to the boardwalk in a bathing suit? At some point in the 20th century, these rules were ignored, the
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.
Stitching Meaning: Reflecting on the Themes of Real Clothes, Real Lives
We recently said goodbye to Real Clothes, Real Lives: Two Hundred Years of What Women Wore, an exhibition of historic clothing from the Smith College Collection, on display from September 2024 to June 2025 in our Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery. The closing of this popular exhibition gives us the opportunity to reflect on some of the larger themes that it explored—in this case, the centrality of sewing to 19th-century American women’s lives, and the difference that race, class, and legal status made in the ways that women experienced this ubiquitous work.
Anna-Marie Kellen, photographer. Homemade bustle-style day dress, 1875–80. Printed cotton. The Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, SCHCC 2012.4.38ab
Women’s sewing encompassed a vast and varied culture in the early to mid-19th-century United States. While every woman was expected to sew, the function of women’s sewing could vary enormously. Some women worked hard piecing together plain clothes, while others spent their leisure time stitching ornamental and fancy embroidery. Sometimes highly skilled women were paid for their sewing work. Most often, however, they were not.
Sewing box owned by Mary Elizabeth Babcock Morris (1808–1851), ca. 1830–40. Wood, tortoise shell, metal, cardboard, paper, textile, ivory, wax, gilding. The New York Historical, Gift of John B. Morris Jr., 1941.746a-cc
Prior to emancipation, many enslaved women were forced to sew for the women and families that enslaved them, for their fellow enslaved men, women, and children, and for their own families. Enslavers invested in, valued, and often advertised the sewing and seamstress skills possessed by the women they enslaved. For example, Ellen Thomas was taught the work of “fine sewing” while enslaved by Cornelia Kimball. Thomas commanded some of the most challenging sewing techniques, including how to add tucks and “back-stitch them in the front of men’s shirts.” This labor—the work of sewing—was integral to the foundation of American slavery, writes historian Alexandra J. Finley. Enslaved women “performed the day-to-day labor necessary to the functioning of the slave trade,” Finley argues, for it was “the ‘product’ of women’s labor–clean, healthy, and well-dressed bodies,” that “were put up for sale in horrifying ways.”
Hannah Jones, the granddaughter of an enslaved woman, recalled that her grandmother’s enslaver had forced her grandmother to sew 12 shirts just three days after she had given birth, demonstrating that free and enslaved women had vastly different relationships to sewing and to motherhood. Historian V. Lynn Kennedy notes that experiences like that of Hannah Jones’s grandmother reveal that “racial differences seemed to trump similarities in physical experiences” between women, “reaffirming rather than challenging social boundaries.”
Some enslaved African American women became highly skilled and sought-after seamstresses, such as the famous Elizabeth Keckley—who started working as a seamstress for the wealthy white families of St. Louis to spare her mother from being “rented out.” Still enslaved by Ann Garland (her half-sister), Elizabeth Keckley was at first prevented from keeping her earnings. But with determination and donations from some satisfied customers, she was able to buy her and her son’s freedom in 1855. She went on to become one of the most successful seamstresses in Washington, D.C. (and likely the nation), making dresses for both Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina Davis (whose husband, Jefferson Davis, was president of the Confederacy during the Civil War).
Unidentified photographer. Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907), 1861. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
Due to sewing’s ubiquitous and tedious nature, free women often socialized and even organized around the task, especially before the introduction of the sewing machine in the mid-century. Delia Locke, a recent migrant to California, and her husband had 13 children, which meant a lot of sewing. But it did not stop Delia from attempting to “improve” society around her through the introduction of a sewing circle. In 1857, she hosted “the ladies of the neighborhood” to organize the Mokelumne River Ladies’ Sewing Circle. Delia, who had written up a Constitution and Bylaws ahead of the meeting, was appointed chairman, and later Treasurer.
Sometimes these sewing circles plied their needles for benevolent causes, selling the articles they stitched to raise money for “charitable purposes.” These religious sewing societies offered opportunities to women who sought socially approved access to more intellectual, or even political, pursuits.
Unidentified photographer. Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907), 1861. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
This abolitionist flag was created in Andover, Ohio, an abolitionist center. The flag has only 20 stars and nine stripes because the creator left out every state and original colony that continued to uphold the practice of slavery.
For example, antislavery and abolitionist women activists famously organized around sewing. The women in these groups sewed goods for sale at antislavery fairs, educated themselves by reading antislavery literature and tracts aloud as they sewed, and sometimes stitched garments for people attempting to self-emancipate. Anna Murray Douglass, wife of Frederick Douglass, appears to have contributed to the Lynn Anti-Slavery Sewing Circle. Frederick Douglass urged them on, saying, “I can only say, work on; your cause is good; work on; duty is yours—consequences are the Almighty’s.” During the Civil War, women made and donated objects to Sanitary Fairs across the nation, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the US Sanitary Commission, which was tasked with providing hospitals, nurses, and medical supplies to wounded soldiers.
Towards the end of the 19th century, as more and more women acquired sewing machines and could quickly and conveniently complete their sewing at home, women’s relationship to sewing changed again. By the turn of the 20th century, many working-class households had machines, and the social, benevolent, and organizational elements of handsewing fell by the wayside. Nonetheless, women continued to find ways to center clothing and fashion in their everyday lives and in their organizing and activism.
Stay tuned for the next exhibition to be installed in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery: The New York Sari, opening this fall!
PHOTOS OF THE DAY
POSTAGE STAMP WITH FDR AND THE FOUR FREEDOMS
CREDIT TO
New – York Historical Society Written by Hope McCaffrey, Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellow in Women’s History
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New York City is an archipelago of islands. Of the five Boroughs, only the Bronx is connected by land to the continental United States. When temperatures rise many New Yorkers naturally gravitate to the 520 miles of shoreline along the rivers, bays and ocean that surround the city. Or would, if they could.
In recent years, sections of the waterfront have been reclaimed for housing and recreation; Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson River Park are two notable examples. But from the days of the first Dutch colonial settlement in the 1600s, until the 1960s, most of the waterfront had been virtually inaccessible except to those involved in the commercial maritime activities that had been the basis of the city’s economy. And if not consumed by docks, piers, factories and other structures, transportation arteries – railways, parkways, and highways – girded many more miles of the waterfront, further impeding access.
The Municipal Archives collections includes extensive documentation of the City’s investment in its waterfront. The records date from the earliest years of the Department of Docks (1870– 1897); Docks and Ferries (1898 -1918); Department of Docks (1919-1942); Marine and Aviation (1942-1977); Ports and Terminals (1978-1985), through its final iteration, the Department of Ports and Trade (1986-1991). These series offer hundreds of cubic feet of maps, surveys, official correspondence and photographs.
Here are some of the more evocative images of New York’s working waterfront in its glory days.
The Department of Docks photograph collection includes numerous large-format glass-plate negatives that depict the intense commercial activity along both the East and North (Hudson) River waterfronts. West Street, ca. 1922. Department of Docks Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Teams waiting at East 35th Street for the ferry to Brooklyn, November 1910. Department of Docks Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Dozens of steamship lines brought hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States via New York City. Italian Line, West 34th Street, 1903. Department of Docks Collection. NYC Municipal Archives
Not every inch of the waterfront was devoted to commercial activities. In 1897, the Department of Docks built the first Recreation Pier at Corlear’s Hook in Manhattan; others were added on the East River at 112th Street, and the Hudson River at Christopher Street and 50th Street. Designed in the French Renaissance style they featured seating for 500 on the second floor and typically offered musical entertainments and food concessions. Recreation Pier Rendering, undated. Department of Docks Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Recreation Pier. The sign over the entry doors reads: “Dancing on this Pier for Children from 3 to 5 p.m. Daily Except Sunday.” Recreation Pier, undated. Department of Docks Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
The City began building the East River Drive in 1929 and the West Side Highway in 1931. By the time master builder Robert Moses finished construction in the 1950s, multi-lane arterial highways would line the waterfronts of four of the five Boroughs. Elevated Public Highway, looking south from Duane Street, June 23, 1937. Borough President Manhattan Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Completed in 1910, the Chelsea Piers along the Hudson River between Little West 12th Street and West 23rd Street were built to accommodate the new Titanic-class of ocean liners coming from Europe. Warren & Wetmore, architects of Grand Central Terminal, designed the pier sheds. Pier 56, Chelsea Piers Elevation, Department of Ports and Trade Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
In the 1930s, W.P.A. Federal Writers’ Project staff photographed dockworkers loading and unloading cargo on piers throughout the city. By the 1960s, containerization would eliminate thousands of these jobs. Unloading coffee from Brazil at the Gowanus Bay Pier, Brooklyn, ca. 1937. WPA-Federal Writers’ Project Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
The fishing industry persevered in lower Manhattan until 2005 when it relocated to the Hunts Point Market in The Bronx. Fulton Fish Market, April 14, 1952. Department of Marine and Aviation Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
By the mid-20th century, New York was one of the worlds’ greatest port cities. At its peak this vast infrastructure extended well beyond lower Manhattan and included miles of Brooklyn’s waterfront. Aerial view of the Brooklyn waterfront near Atlantic Avenue, September 19, 1956. Department of Marine and Aviation Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
The Department of Marine and Aviation collection includes large format color transparencies. Aerial view, East River, Manhattan, November 5, 1953. Department of Marine and Aviation Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Until the advent of jet air service in the 1960s, luxury ocean liners dominated the trans-Atlantic market. The S.S. United States and the S.S. America, New York harbor, April 7, 1963. Department of Marine and Aviation Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
In the 1960s the commercial cargo industry defected to the Port of Newark in New Jersey which had space to accommodate the mechanized equipment needed to load and unload the containerized shipments. Many of the City’s plans to improve its waterfront infrastructure during that time period went no further than the drawing board. East River, Manhattan, Pier Improvements, Rendering. Department of Marine and Aviation Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Perhaps Department of Marine and Aviation Commissioner Edward F. Cavanagh was mourning the end of an era as he watched the arrival of the Queen Mary in New York harbor on February 6, 1953. (Negative damaged.) Department of Marine and Aviation Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
PHOTOS OF THE DAY THURSDAY
Little League game in front of Central Nurses Residence 1978 (?)
CREDIT TO
New York Municipal Archives 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.
The Establishment of the Postal Service in New York
Thursday, July 17, 2025 New York Almanack Issue # 1487
The Establishment of Postal Service in New York
July 16, 2025
What follows is excerpted from “The New York Post Office in Olden Times, by W.B.,Taylor, a paper read before the New York Historical Society on October 7, 1851.
The first regulation providing for the transmission of letters by post in the Province of New York, bears [the] date 10 December, 1672, when Governor [Francis] Lovelace [ca. 1621-1675] established “a post to go monthly” from New York to Boston and back again.
This regulation purported to be in obedience to his Majesty’s [King Charles II] commands, “who enjoynes all his subjects, in their distinct colonies, to enter into a strict allyance and correspondency with each other, as likewise for the Advancement of Negotiation, Trade, and Civil Commerce, and for the speedy intelligence and Dispatch of affayres.”
It gave notice that a messenger should start on 1st January, 1672-3:
“If any, therefore, have any small letters or portable goods, to be conveyed to Hartford, Connecticut, Boston, or other parts on the road, they shall be carefully delivered according to the directions by a sworne Messenger and Post, who is purposely employed in that affayre.
“In the interim, those that bee disposed to send letters, lett them bring them to the Secretary’s office, where, in a lockt Box, they shall be preserv’d till the Messenger calls for them. All persons paying the Post before the bag bee sealed up.”
In various patents granted subsequently for lands along this route, a condition was inserted, obliging the patentees to ferry the postman over gratis. Matters continued in this position until [Royal Governor Thomas] Dongan‘s arrival [in 1683], when he recommended setting up post houses along the coast, from Carolina to Nova Scotia.
He was authorized to farm the privilege to any undertaker for three or five years, the profits from all the post offices within his Majesties dominions, whether foreign plantations or in Europe, being claimed by the Duke of York.
Accordingly, an order in Council was passed on the 2d March, 1684-5, establishing a post office “for the better correspondence between the Colonies of America.”
The rates for riding post were fixed at 3d. per mile; the postage on every single letter not above 100 miles was to be 3d., if more proportionally.
In 1686, 14 September, an order was made for the delivery of ship letter[s] in these words:
“That no letters he delivered in any place whatsoever except the Custom House of this City; paying for every packett or double letter nine pence, for every single letter four pence half-penny; the one moyety [one half] of which moneys shall be given to such poor as shall be nominated by the Capt. General and Council, the other half to the officer of the Custom House, which is to continue until further order.”
In January, 1691-2, letters patent were issued under the great seal, granting unto ‘Thomas Neal, his executors and assigns, authority to erect post offices in America for the period of twenty-one years. He appointed Colonel Andrew Hamilton, of New Jersey, Postmaster General for the colonies.
Andrew Hamilton was the colonial governor of East and West New Jersey from 1692 to 1697 and again from 1699 to 1703. He also served as Deputy Governor of the neighboring Province of Pennsylvania. He died in 1703.]
In 1692 the latter brought the subject before the Council at New York, and the consequence was an act establishing a post office in that city. The rates established were: For every single letter to New York, 9d.; from Virginia to New York, 12d.; and for eighty miles and under, four pence halfpenny.
The charge was found, in the following year, to exceed the profits fourfold, and an aid of 50 pounds was voted, which was renewed in 1695.
The above act was renewed by the Legislature from time to time, yet for ten years after this the post from New York went eastward no further than Boston, and westward only to Philadelphia.
“There is no other post upon all this continent,” writes Lord Cornbury, in 1704.
“If I have any letters to send to Virginia or to Maryland, I must either send an express, who is often retarded for want of boats to cross those great rivers they must go over, or else for want of horses; or else I must send them by some passengers who are going thither.
“The least I have known any express take from hence to Virginia, has been three weeks. Coll. Nicholson and Coll. Seymour have wrote me word they will be here in September, and I do then intend to propose to them the settling of a Post to go through to Virginia.”
In 1710, Hamilton having sold his privilege to the Crown, the post office of Great Britain, Ireland, and America were placed under one direction, by the 9th [year] of Queen Anne [‘s rule].
The department of America was put under a Deputy Post Master General, to which office Benjamin Franklin was appointed in 1753 [alongside William Hunter].
The books of the Department were then kept by Benjamin Franklin himself, and are still preserved among the archives of the department [of the U.S. Post Office], in his own hand writing, when the whole force of the department was the Postmaster General, at a salary of $1,000 per annum.
[On July 26, 1775 the Second Continental Congress created the United States Post Office in Philadelphia under Benjamin Franklin.]
The present [in 1851] Postmaster General is assisted by nearly two hundred subordinates in the department, and nearly thirty thousand scattered throughout the country.
From all this it is plain that New York was the first colony in America that made legal provision for the transmission of letters by post.
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.
Bank of New York & Trust Company Building 48 Wall Street
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 New York Municipal Archives Ken Cobb, Director Brian Ferree, Archivist Issue # 1486
I took this photo last week and could not find out what building this artwork was atop it’s roof. I turned to the Municipal Archives, who identified the building as 48 Wall Street.
Landmarks Preservation Commission October 13, 1998; Designation List 298 LP-2025 (FORMER) BANK OF NEW YORK & TRUST COMPANY BUILDING, 48 Wall Street (aka 48-50 Wall Street and 46-48 William Street), Manhattan. Built 1927-29, Benjamin Wistar Morris, architect.
Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 40, Lot 14.
On August 4, 1998, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the (Former) Bank of New York & Trust Company Building and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 1). The hearing had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Three witnesses spoke in favor of designation including a representative of the Historic Districts Council who also read a statement in support of the designation from the Municipal Art Society. A representative of the owner indicated the owner’s willingness to work with the Commission in adapting the building to new uses.
Summary This thirty-two-story neo-Georgian skyscraper,with its distinctive setback tower, was erected by the Bank of New York & Trust Company in 1927-29 to the plans of Benjamin Wistar Morris, a prominent designer of business and institutional buildings. Established in 1784, the Bank of New York was the second bank in the nation and is New York’s oldest financial institution. In 1796, it became the first bank to erect a building on Wall Street, setting a precedent for the future development of the street as New York’s financial center. The present building, the bank’s third on the site, was erected when the banking industry was taking a leadership role in the redevelopment of downtown with large new skyscrapers. An elegant steel-framed, limestone-clad structure, with a series of graceful setbacks, the building is decorated with large scale neo-Georgian details that reinforce the building’s picturesque qualities. The impressive three-story rusticated base, which housed the main banking floors, incorporates a raised basement, pedimented doorways, and large arched second-story windows. The building is a notable presence on Wall Street, while its setback tower, culminating in a Federal-style cupola crowned by an American eagle, contributes a striking and highly recognizable element to the skyline of Lower Manhattan.
The building was occupied by The Museum of Finance for a few years. The lower public spaces are now used as entertainment venues. About the Eagle from Wikipedia: The section above the 30th story forms a lantern-like cupola with four layers. The lowest layer is composed of the 31st and 32nd stories: the former has rectangular windows and the latter has square windows. Both stories measure three by three bays wide, with round-arched, gabled wings to the south and north. The second layer is a windowless octagonal section with niches cut into each corner.The third layer is cruciform-shaped, with rectangular openings on each of four sides flanked by a pair of columns, forming a colonnade. The top layer is a windowless square mass, topped by a pyramidal roof.[ The lantern is designed in the Federal style.
The pyramidal roof is capped by a 11-foot-tall (3.4 m) representation of an eagle on a globe, which represented New York state.] The eagle is located 513 feet (156 m) above the ground, and is gilded. The eagle was restored in 2008.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
How many structures can you identify from this 1930 photo? Click reply to Mailchimp
CREDIT TO
New York Landmarks Preservation Commission New York Municipal Archives Wikipedia 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.
Social Realism as a movement in art and fiction emerged between the World Wars in response to the political and socio-economic turmoil of the period. To create in the 1930s, both in Europe and the United States, meant making an ideological choice.
The direction might be reactionary or revolutionary, it could be religious or materialist – the routes had in common a shift away from the experimentation of previous decades towards tradition, from individualism towards shared views.
Painters and authors turned to realism in order to make their work accessible to a wider public, portraying their subjects as victims of developments beyond their control. By calling attention to the miserable condition of working classes, they challenged the powers that were held responsible for the slump in conditions and standards.
Social consciousness in the arts originated in the dire consequences of the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent “rationalization” of the workplace. Artistic and economic history run parallel in this context and in some cases seem to overlap.
Migrant Family
Painter and printmaker Raphael Soyer (1899-1987) was born Raphael Zalman Schoar in Borisoglebsk, a Russian town on the left bank of the Vorona River.
His father was a Hebrew scholar; his mother worked as an embroiderer. In a family of six children (Raphael’s identical twin Moses was a painter as well) much emphasis was placed on intellectual and artistic pursuits.
Under pressure of relentless Tsarist pogroms, the exodus of Jews from the Russian Empire started in the 1880s and continued into the first decades of the twentieth century. In 1912, Raphael’s parents packed their bags and took their kids to America, changing their name in the process. They would eventually settle in Brooklyn.
Raphael had the good fortune of attending the free school of the Cooper Union. Between 1914 and 1917 he and his brother were educated at that great Manhattan institution.
His mentor at the League was French-born Guy Pène du Bois who encouraged him to explore his own style rather than adhere to “external” demands. His contacts with painters of New York’s Ashcan School proved inspirational. He shared their preference for gritty urban themes.
Du Bois advised him to show his work to Charles Daniel, owner of the Daniel Gallery at 2 West 47th Street. His first exhibition took place in 1929 and was well-received.
Selling a number of works emboldened him to dump his day job, rent a studio on the Lower East Side, and pursue painting as a career. In October that same year Wall Street’s Stock Market crashed.
Poverty & Depression
During the tumultuous years following Black Thursday, a great need emerged to provide millions of jobless people with meaningful employment. In esthetics, the theme of social engagement re-entered the debate. Many artists conceived creativity as an act of political participation.
Raphael became associated with painters of the Fourteenth Street grouping who worked from studios near Union Square. They depicted “rough” scenes from this district that was known as a hotbed of radicalism.
As economic decline began to impact people’s lives, Soyer portrayed local down-and-outs. Many of his works came to embody the Great Depression, but his approach differed from more politically motivated left-wing artists.
Soyer painted men and women in contemporary settings of subways and bars of the city’s East Side, parts of which had become dens of deprivation. His images of drifters and derelicts reveal a timeless vision of the human condition rather than the immediacy of social protest.
There was no attempt to propaganda or commentary in his work. He conveyed the plight of poverty without falling into the traps of melodrama. He remained what he set out to be as an artist: both a realist and a humanist.
Manhattan’s working-class girls were amongst his favorite subjects. The seamstress stands out as an iconic figure of whom he produced various images throughout his career (his mother being an embroiderer, he was used to pins and needles in his childhood home).
He depicted her as a slave of the trade, living in squalor and working against the clock. No finished products leave her hands; there is no pride in her labor. She is a piece worker; her life reduced to bits.
Soyer’s intuitive understanding of suffering may strike the viewer as highly personal and distinctive artistic quality. Yet, the painter’s seamstress is far from unique.
In art, tradition always intervenes – whatever the condition or locality of creation. The needlewoman has a long history, both in literature and in painting.
Division of Labor
Pins have always been around. Prehistoric people used thorns; in ancient Egypt, pins were crafted of bronze with decorative heads; in the Roman era, they were used to hold pieces of clothing together. Medieval Europeans produced pins from bone, ivory or gold. By then pin-making had become a bustling trade.
The textile industry and the associated production of pins and needles were important economic activities during the eighteenth century, both in England and France.
In 1755, an article on “Épingles” by Alexandre Deleyre included in Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie (vol. 5) sparked interest in the manufacturing process of pins. In 1761, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau published a study on L’art de l’épinglier in which he broke down the production process into a sequence of seventeen separate stages.
In The Wealth of Nations (1776: first chapter) Adam Smith promoted the concept of division of labor by pointing at the work of pin-makers. He distinguished eighteen distinct steps in the manufacturing cycle.
Production numbers were bound to be low if the complete process was handled by a single person. Divide these operations between ten separate workers and the output would increase dramatically.
As Smith burned his papers before he died, it is difficult to trace his research sources. He followed French intellectual developments and would have been familiar with relevant texts on the subject.
Duhamel’s study on pin-making was acquired by the library of Glasgow University where Adam Smith held a professorship. The library also subscribed to the Journal des Sçavans which, in November 1761, published an extensive review of the book. These sources were within his immediate reach.
The phrase “division of labor” however, had not been employed previously. Smith suggested the term in order to communicate his ideas concerning specialization in manufacture.
He predicted that the process would raise standards of living and increase the wealth of the nation, provided that the monotony of work be compensated by educational diversification. This proviso was soon forgotten as the concept of “productivity” became the sole criterion of economic success.
Birmingham in UK & USA
Pin-making went through the various steps of wire redrawing, straightening, cutting, sharpening the point, attaching the head and polishing. As a consequence, automation also happened in stages. Mass production started in 1828 once the first pin-making machine had been patented.
In a parallel process, the introduction of power-driven mechanical frames had sparked off protests amongst skilled workers. Taking their name from the legendary rebel Ned Ludd in 1811/2, “Luddites” began wrecking machines until the British Army intervened at the behest of factory owners. Dozens of protesters were executed or exiled to Australia.
Until the 1830s, the American market was supplied with mass produced pins from Birmingham in the West Midlands, England. A century later that situation was reversed.
Born at Jamestown in March 1792, Samuel Slocum had been engaged in construction work in various parts of Rhode Island. Around 1830 he took his family to London, later moving to Newport on the Isle of Wight where he became involved in the manufacture of pins.
In 1835, Slocum patented a machine for making pins with solid flat heads. Unable to find financial backing for his project, he returned to the United States.
Having settled in Poughkeepsie, he founded the manufacturing company Slocum & Jillson. Business flourished. In September 1841, he also designed a “machine for sticking pins into paper” which is often described as the first stapler.
Physician John Ireland Howe was working as a medic at the New York Almshouse where inmates produced pins by a laborious manual process. In June 1832 he exhibited a prize-winning machine at the American Institute Fair in the City of New York.
Soon after he established the Howe Manufacturing Company. Having moved the firm to the Birmingham, Connecticut, it became America’s largest pin manufacturer, incorporating Slocum & Jilllson in the meantime.
Birmingham in Connecticut out-produced British Birmingham. The American success story resulted in the demise of the English pin industry. By 1939 there were only a handful manufacturers left in the United Kingdom.
Art & Fiction
In Britain and France, cheap production methods led to the collapse of the cottage industry. It harmed dressmakers and milliners in particular. For these workers, mainly young women with little income or family support, there were few alternatives.
Lack of opportunities left them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. They were reduced to “slopwork,” producing parts of garments that would subsequently be turned into dresses that were sold at considerable profit in fashion shops.
The overworked seamstress became the focus of considerable philanthropic attention. In London, the “Association for the Aid and Benefit of Dressmakers and Milliners” was the first charitable institution founded in March 1843, followed by “The Distressed Needlewomen’s Society” in 1847. She also entered art and literature.
Thomas Hood’s “The Song of the Shirt” was published in 1843 in the Christmas issue of the magazine Punch.
The poet highlighted the inhumane conditions under which needlewomen struggled to get by: “With fingers weary and worn, / With eyelids heavy and red. / A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, / Plying her needle and thread – / Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!”
The poem struck a chord amongst its readers.
Less than six months later – using a motto taken from Hood’s song – Richard Redgrave exhibited “The Sempstress” at the Royal Academy’s annual summer show.
In a review in The Times of London on May 8, 1844, its art critic argued that by exposing the miserable life of the needlewoman, the painting’s subject was “peculiarly of our time.”
By the time that George W. M. Reynold published his novel The Seamstress, or The White Slave of England (1853), the fate of the exploited dressmaker had entered the collective consciousness of the Victorian populace (with spoonfuls of sugary sentimentality).
In French academic art, needlework and femininity were fused. Time and again, the seamstress was portrayed as a young woman working from home, her hands occupied with needlework, her head bowed in silent concentration.
Paintings by Millet, Renoir or Pissarro evoke similar images of modesty and domesticity. The seamstress was a paragon of virtue. Needlework as a profession was appreciated as a respectable career.
Mechanization deprived skilled artisans of their jobs and pride. In textile centers such as Rouen, the gentle seamstress of old was turned into a low class “slopworker,” often with questionable morals.
As (rampant) prostitution was a far more profitable trade, it took moral strength to resist the temptation. In painting and fiction, the figure of the prostitute hovered behind the poverty-stricken seamstress. In stories by Guy de Maupassant and others, she represented two halves of the same whole.
Specialization and division of labor became central topics of social criticism. Pin-making functioned as a metaphor for the dehumanizing effect of modern manufacture.
Pins no longer implied progress as imagined by Adam Smith, but represented the worker’s degradation. “He who passes his life in making pin’s heads will never have a head worth anything more,” Francis Palgrave wrote in 1840.
Authors and artists focused their creative attention on the young woman who professionally handled pins and needles. With the emergence of social realism, the needlewoman appeared as the archetypal victim who had been robbed of her livelihood in process of mass production.
Raphael Soyer’s seamstress-images were hard-hitting portrayals of New York City’s Great Crash. At the same time, these depictions were a continuation of and a variation on Franco-British themes that had emerged in painting during earlier periods of economic upheaval.
DYLAN BROWN THE CREATOR OF THESE MAPS NOW ON DISPLAY IN THE RIVERCROSS DISPLAY WINDOW. HIS WORK HAS ADDED MORE PERSPECTIVES INTO THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR ISLAND.
JUDITH BERDY
CREDIT TO
New York Almanack Jaap Harskamp Illustrations, from above: Richard Redgrave’s “The Sempstress,” 1846 (Tate Gallery, London); Raphael Soyer’s “Seamstress,” 1972; G.F. Watts’ “Song of the Shirt,” ca. 1847 (Watts Gallery Trust, Surrey); Roman pins made of metal; Anna Elizabeth Blunden’s “The Seamstress,” 1854 (Yale Center for British Art); illustration from 1893 edition of Thomas Hood’s “Song of the Shirt” published on behalf of the New Home Sewing Company, Massachusetts; and Frank Holl’s “Seamstresses,” 1875 (Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter).
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.
This afternoon I visited the Frick Collection, recently reopened,after being enlarged and restored for 5 years. The restoration and new areas are tasteful and give you a more spacious area to see the artwork.
There is a new gift shop, a restaurant overlooking the garden and contemporatry staircase leading to new areas.
Here are a few of our old friends who are now on exhibit at the Frick. The images of the artwork are from the internet.
Mother and Children (also known as La Promenade) is an Impressionist painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir that is housed in the Frick Collection.[1] Although the painting is most commonly known as Mother and Children, Renoir presented it with the title La Promenade in 1876.[2] The painting is displayed in an alcove under a set of stairs at the Frick.[3] For years, this painting was barely visible in an alcove. Now it is on full view on the balcony of the second floor.
Frances Dawson (1834–1910) married in 1855 Frederick R. Leyland, a major Liverpool shipowner, telephone magnate, and art collector, who was one of Whistler’s chief patrons before the two quarreled bitterly over the decoration of the famous Peacock Room, once the dining room of the Leylands’ London townhouse and now in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.
Commissioned in the fall of 1871, this portrait was exhibited at Whistler’s first one-man exhibition in 1874 (an event sponsored by Leyland), but was never considered by the artist to be totally finished. Within its predominantly pink color scheme, intended to set off Mrs. Leyland’s red hair, the subject is depicted wearing a multi-layered gown designed by the artist. The abstract, basketweave patterns of the matting at the base are repeated on the frame, also designed by the artist; they offset the naturalistic flowering almond branches at the left, which suggest Whistler’s deep interest in Japanese art at this time. Like the portrait of Montesquiou, that of Mrs. Leyland is signed at mid-right with Whistler’s emblematic butterfly, a pattern based on his initials JMW and imbued with the formalistic preoccupations of the nineteenth-century aesthetic movement. The portrait is in fact so totally a work of exquisite design that Whistler’s contemporary Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote of it, with some reason: “I cannot see that it is at all a likeness.”
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
When Marie-Jeanne Buzeau (1716–after 1786) posed so pertly for this informal portrait ten years after her marriage to Boucher, she was twenty-seven and the mother of three children. She frequently served as model for her husband, and in later life she painted miniature reproductions of his more popular pictures and made engravings after his drawings. Besides offering such a candid image of the artist’s wife, the portrait provides a fascinating glimpse of a room in the apartment to which Boucher had moved the year before he signed this canvas on the rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honoré. The porcelain figurine and tea service on the hanging étagère reflect Boucher’s taste for the Oriental bric-a-brac so fashionable throughout the eighteenth century. In its composition the portrait is a witty parody of the classical Renaissance depictions of Venus by Giorgione and Titian, and as such the picture has acquired the sobriquet “Boucher’s Untidy Venus.”
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The only area where photography is permitted at the Frick.
DYLAN BROWN THE CREATOR OF THESE MAPS NOW ON DISPLAY IN THE RIVERCROSS DISPLAY WINDOW. HIS WORK HAS ADDED MORE PERSPECTIVES INTO THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR ISLAND.
JUDITH BERDY
The fenced in garden is restored and faces 70th Street.
CREDIT TO
THE FRICK COLLECTION 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.
