Perley’s Reminiscences / Courtesy of the White House Historical Association
This blogpost originally appeared on January 17, 2017
American presidents have long received gifts from citizens, states, and foreign nations alike. Certainly the cheesiest gift of them all was given to Thomas Jefferson on January 1, 1802, joining cheese and democracy in the most perfectly delicious union.
The “Mammoth Cheese” was created for President Jefferson by members of the Cheshire Baptist Church from Cheshire, Massachusetts. The cheese weighed 1,235 pounds and milk from every cow in Cheshire—approximately 900 cows—was used to create this colossal cheese. According to the National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser for December 30, 1801, the cheese arrived in Washington, D.C. “in a wagon drawn by six horses.” The Mammoth Cheese was so awe-inspiring, that it marks the first use of the word “mammoth” as an adjective spurred by a nationwide fascination with mammoths following the discovery of large prehistoric bones in the new world.
Church leader John Leland was an abolitionist and activist for religious freedom—specifically the separation of religion and politics. Leland and Darius Brown, the engineer who adapted for use the cider press in which the cheese was crafted, presented the cheese to President Jefferson, remarking with pride that it was made entirely from the labor of free-born dairy farmers and their wives and daughters—no slave labor included. As a well-known preacher and activist, Leland actively supported Thomas Jefferson and in July 1801 when cheese production began, not one Federalist curd was accepted as a contribution. Moreover, during the election of 1800, all of Cheshire voted for Jefferson, with the exception of one rogue oppositional vote that was thrown out due to the assumption that it must have been a mistake. Thomas Jefferson was overwhelmed with appreciation for the men and women who created the cheese and invited Leland and Brown to take a piece back to Cheshire for the creators to enjoy. The cheese became a national sensation, responses varying from news reports to poetry.
An ode to democracy, Andrew Jackson was later gifted a similarly large wheel of cheese. In 1835 Thomas S. Meacham presented President Jackson with an even larger 1,400 pound wheel of cheese made by dairymen from Oswego County, New York. Meacham’s mammoth cheese was one of multiple large cheeses he gifted, including an approximately 800 pound wheel of cheese for Martin Van Buren. Meacham’s cheeses are reported to have been ornately decorated with paintings and mottos customized for the recipients. It was created with the intention of pomp and circumstance—perhaps after hearing about the last cheese’s success—arriving at the White House in a cart drawn by 24 horses compared to Leland’s 6 horses. Jackson’s cheese lived in the White House foyer for about two years and in celebration of George Washington’s Birthday in 1837, Jackson invited the public to freely enjoy this aging giant. It is rumored that the event was so crowded, that people who could not fit through the doors were climbing in through the windows. It took only two hours for the cheese to be devoured however, its smell would linger for months.
The cheeses have had a lasting impression and during President Obama’s administration, the White House has held two Big Block of Cheese Days in an effort to channel the accessible democratic discussion stimulated by Jackson’s open house cheese celebration. The cheese has become a symbolic tool to welcome American citizens to communicate with the president. The Obama administration instead utilized social media to communicate with the public (no large cheeses were harmed in the making of this campaign). Whitehouse.gov posted a very punny celebrity-laden video about the initiative here
The move into the Second World War by the United States brought change for this country’s citizens. The most important was in the lives of the 16 million men and women who served during the war, and the over 400,000 who gave their lives.
Back at home communities coped with rationing of gasoline, sugar, tires, and other products to support the war effort. Other steps that both young and old were asked to take were buying war bonds and collecting scrap metal and rubber.
One of the more unusual items was the collection of milkweed pods, something desperately needed by the U.S. Navy for life preservers.
Only hours after Pearl Harbor, Japan attacked the Philippines and the American forces stationed there. This successful invasion and bombing campaign gave Japan control of the Dutch East Indies’ oil reserves and access to abundant raw materials in the region.
Access to oil was one of the primary causes of Japanese aggression, but another of these resources was kapok, a fiber obtained from the fruit of kapok tree that grows in the rainforests of that area. The fiber, light and very buoyant, was used in life preservers by both the military and civilians.
As a replacement for this critical component of life vests was needed, the American industry began searching for likely alternatives. The most effective substitute was milkweed floss, with tests showing that a pound of this fiber would keep an adult afloat for over 40 hours.
Milkweed was quickly given the status of a wartime strategic material and the government allocated funds for its collection and processing. Soon the call went out to pick milkweed pods, with open mesh bags being distributed to schools in regions where milkweed was prevalent.
In Waterford, Saratoga County, a drive to pick the pods was organized by the local Lions Club, with members of area Scout Troops, 4-H Clubs, and students from the Waterford Schools pitching in. As an incentive to participate the Waterford Lions Club offered prizes of three dollars, two dollars, and one dollar to boys and girls who collected the greatest number of filled bags.
With an estimated half-million pounds needed to make life vests for the military in 1944, every bag picked was considered vitally important. In the spring of 1945, milkweed pods collected around the Saratoga County region were brought to the county fair grounds in Ballston Spa for shipment to the processing plant in Michigan.
The 8,000 bags that had been collected from Saratoga, Warren, and Washington Counties would provide enough floss to fill four thousand life vests. Overall, New York State collected enough pods to exceed its goal of gathering enough milkweed to fill over a quarter-million life jackets.
The milkweed needed to be picked before they broke open and scattered the floss, leaving only a small window of opportunity to collect the pods. Once filled, the mesh collection bags were hung outside to dry, with two bags needed to fill one life vest.
In many counties, it was the 4-H Club agents who oversaw the work of distributing the collection bags. One example was Samuel B. Dorrance, the agent for Rensselaer County, who passed out two thousand of these open mesh bags.
In a newspaper account of his efforts, published in the September 15, 1944, Troy Record, he gave these instructions for collecting the pods:
“When the seeds are brown, the pods are ready for picking but definitely not before, as they will mold,” he said. “Those in the northern part of the county are not yet ready. It isn’t necessary to examine each pod if a test shows that the majority of the seeds are ripe.”
He continued with the necessity of leaving the bags out to dry for at least two weeks, preferably hanging them from a fence at least a foot off the ground, after which they could be brought indoors.
With the slogan of “Don’t Let Our Sailor’s Sink” 4-H boys and girls roamed the countryside collecting milkweed from fence rows and open fields. Lifelong Saratoga County resident Marion Crandall shared this memory of that time while growing up in Bacon Hill, a farming community near Schuylerville:
“In the orchard there were a lot of milkweeds… they needed kapok for the war… for life preservers… it was a 4-H project, so we went to the orchard, picked milkweed pods, and put them in big onion bags, mesh bags.”
The efforts of the young people in Bacon Hill were a success, as by September of 1944 they had collected eleven bags of milkweed pods.
With the close of the war in September of 1945, collection of milkweed floss was no longer necessary, and the program was ended.
While it is impossible to count the number of lives that were saved through this work by the children of America, what they accomplished was vitally important to the war effort and even now we can look back with pride at what they achieved.
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE NORTH WING OF METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL WHICH HAS BEEN DEMOLISHED IN 1970. SEEEMS THE FIRE ESCAPE WAS A FAVORITE PLACE FOR A SMOKE.
Illustrations, from above: Milkweed pods collected in Massachusetts in 1944; Canadian World War Two milkweed collection propaganda; milkweed pod and floss illustration by Adelaide Murphy Tyrol; and U.S. sailors who survived 17 hours after the sinking of their vessel during World War Two with the aid of life vests (Coast Guard photo).
In 1869, alarming news about the dangers of drinking absinthe swept north from the city of New York, through Albany, all the way to Malone, near the Canadian border. A “brilliant writer” from the New York press and a “talented lady” had ruined themselves physically and mentally by drinking absinthe.
Comparing the drink to opium and morphine, the article warned readers that absinthe “obtains an all-powerful control over its votaries, deadens the sensibilities, and is, indeed the guillotine of the soul.”
Results of experiments on animals by Dr. Valentin Magnan, a respected French physician and an authority on what was called “alcoholic insanity,” gave weight to warnings that absinthe caused vertigo, convulsions, hallucinations, insanity and criminality. According to Dr. Magnan, the effects were permanent and hereditary — children of an absinthe drinker stood a good chance of developing a serious mental illness.
Dr. Magnan’s 1869 experiments on guinea pigs, rabbits and cats were well-publicized in New York State. He compared the effects of pure alcohol and absinthe on the animals by putting one in a glass case with a saucer full of pure alcohol, and another in a case with a saucer of the essence of wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), one of the plants used to make absinthe and from which it takes its name.
The animal exposed to absinthe soon “fell on its side, agitating its limbs convulsively, foaming at the mouth and presenting all the signs of epilepsy.” The animal forced to get intoxicated by pure alcohol “behaved like an ordinary drunkard. He became lively, then reeled about, and at last lay down and fell into a heavy sleep.”
The warnings about the danger of using absinthe came primarily from opponents of alcohol abuse and public drunkenness. Interestingly, as the nineteenth century wore on, French wine makers encouraged their efforts.
They had seen most of their vineyards destroyed during the Great French Wine Blight and the shortage of wine led to higher wine prices. To curb their growing expenses, absinthe manufacturers stopped using wine alcohol and began using cheaper industrial alcohol made from beets and grain. The result was an inexpensive absinthe, cheaper than wine, which greatly appealed to working class drinkers.
A distilled spirit made from the essences of a number of plants including anise, fennel, hyssop, and wormwood, absinthe has high alcohol content, typically 110 to 144 proof (55 to 72 per cent alcohol). Because of its traditionally bright yellowish-green color, absinthe has been known by a number of nicknames including the green muse, the green torment, the green oblivion, and its most popular nickname, the green fairy.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, absinthe enjoyed a surge of popularity in France where more absinthe was consumed than in the rest of the world. Artists, writers and poets such as Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Arthur Rimbaud, and Oscar Wilde were said to have been inspired by the green fairy.
Absinthe also made its way into the U.S. The Absinthe Room opened in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1874 and attracted prominent literary figures including Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. In the city of New York, the Absinthe House opened its doors for business and soon absinthe drinking became all the rage with bohemians and their wannabees.
As absinthe became more popular in New York State, alarm bells about its usage rang louder. In 1879, a doctor reviewed the use of absinthe, “an unusually deadly poison,” in an article for the British magazine Contemporary Review.
Reprinted in The New York Times, the story concluded that heavy use of absinthe can cause “epileptiform convulsions” and unconsciousness which can last for six or seven hours. The doctor warned that in the worst cases, the absinthe user can become a “confirmed epileptic.”
The anti-absinthe drumbeat continued into the last years of the nineteenth century. For example, an 1893 article in the New York literary magazine Current Literature entitled “Confessions of an Absintheur” and written by “A Slave to the Green Fairy,” began with the author saying, “I know what absinthe means! Madness and death!”
The movement to ban absinthe was given a huge boost in 1905 when a Swiss laborer murdered his two children and pregnant wife after a day long drinking bout with wine, brandy — and two glasses of absinthe. The crime and its connection with absinthe were highly publicized and support for a ban on absinthe skyrocketed.
In 1912, following the lead of the Congo Free State, Brazil, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland, the U.S. banned the importation of absinthe. A doctor speaking for the government said absinthe was being banned because it was “dangerous to health,” “one of the worst enemies of man,” and because users risked becoming “slaves to this demon.”
The ban on absinthe in the U.S. lasted almost 100 years. In 2007, the federal government lifted its ban and the green fairy returned to New York State. At first, sales soared and in 2010, New York State absinthe was distilled in Walton, a town in the foothills of the Catskills in Delaware County, and in Gardiner, a town in neighboring Ulster County.
Since then, sales of absinthe have leveled off. Some analysts have suggested that the drop may have occurred because consumers were disappointed by the “green fairy effect” or they did not like absinthe’s licorice-like taste.
Another explanation for the drop may be found in commentary about absinthe widely attributed to Oscar Wilde. He said, “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”
CANINE STYLES IS A DOG GROOMING SHOP AND CLOTHING STORE FOR UPPER EAST SIDE DOGS. THIS STORE HAS THE MOST CREATIVE WINDOW DISPLAYS FOR OVER THE MANY YEARS AT 63RD AND LEXINGTON AVENUE.
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NEW YORK ALMANACK
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
The East Side of Manhattan is about to get a glow-up. Internationally acclaimed artist Bruce Munro will unveil a new Field of Light installation at Freedom Plaza, between 38th to 41st Street east of First Avenue in Manhattan, on December 15th. The installation, which spans more than six acres, will feature “17,000 lowlight, fiber-optic stemmed spheres that will illuminate with a slow subtle change of hue.” Guests are invited to fully immerse themselves in the lights as they walk a winding path along the East River waterfront. Made possible by The Soloviev Foundation, this installation is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. The show is currently sold out through February, but March tickets will be released on February 1st, here.
Courtesy of the Art Production Fund. Image by Daniel Greer
Artist Debbie Lawson makes her mark on New York City as the first UK-based artist to be featured at Rockefeller Center with her Art in Focus exhibit. Located at the Rink Level of 45 Rockefeller Plaza, Lawson has filled the concourse with a mural mosaic of carpet imagery combined with wild animals like boars, deer, and tigers. Viewers will see wild animal imagery camouflaged in carpet patterns while wandering through the space. Lawson was heavily inspired by the architecture of the Art Deco complex, especially the gilded lions at the 50th Street entrance. She created three royal lions that creep around carpets, featured in the vitrine spaces. Her installation blurs the lines between two and three dimensions, as well as between the natural and built world. Lawson’s work will be on view through January 9th, 2024.
The New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show is a beloved annual tradition for the holiday season in NYC! On view through January 15th, the show features recreations of famous New York City sights, from the Statue of Liberty to Yankee Stadium. There are more than 200 buildings in all! Each is meticulously crafted by Laura Busse Dolan and the creative team at Applied Imagination, the family-run company that has been creating the train show scenes since 1992. This year, the show will feature a brand-new outdoor train display. T
Photo by Rachel Fawn Alban
NYC Health + Hospital’s art collection has grown by one more mural this month with the unveiling of Rachel Fawn Alban’s Healing in Community photo mural inside NYC Health + Hospitals/Coler on Roosevelt Island. The mural came together over a series of photography workshops with community members, staff, and patients and visits Alban made to the facility. The final piece, which contains portraits of 34 members of the Coler community, is a tribute to each subject’s contributions to that community. A total of nine new murals have been created this year as part of NYCHH’s Community Mural Project. Those murals, along with the existing 26 murals that were part of the project, can all be seen in a new book, Healing Walls: New York City Health + Hospitals Community Mural Project 2019-2021.
Photo Credit: Sebastian Bach
A new art installation comes to Brooklyn at the Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park. Conceptual photographer Kevin Claiborne created a mural featuring phrases like “Where can Blackness reach” and “Where is Black enough,” superimposed upon the repeating face of an unidentified Black youth from Harlem in the early 1900s. The mural offers viewers critical self-reflection and an examination of the Black experience. Guests are encouraged to dive deeper into the origins and embodiment of Blackness with this mural, on view through April 24th, 2023.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
September 3, 1942. “New York, New York. Newsroom of the New York Times newspaper. Reporters and rewrite men writing stories, and waiting to be sent out. Rewrite man in background gets the story on the phone from reporter outside.” Medium format acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information
September 3, 1942. “New York, New York. Newsroom of the New York Times newspaper. Right foreground, city editor. Two assistants, left foreground. City copy desk in middle ground, with foreign desk, to right; telegraph desk to left. Makeup desk in center back with spiral staircase leading to composing room. Copy readers go up there to check proofs.” Medium format acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information
September 1942. “New York, New York. Photographic department of the New York Times newspaper. One of eight staff photographers returns to staff room after assignment. Over door is eulogy of news camera. At left are maps of the city and region for photographers’ reference.” Acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information.
September 3, 1942. “New York, New York. Radio room of the New York Times newspaper. The Times listening post, between 10 pm and midnight, between first and second editions. The operator is listening to Axis news (propaganda) broadcast. Paper in foreground has been examined to see what has already been covered in last edition of paper. Operator reports and gives new angles to city editor. Messages are recorded on paper tape in international Morse code.” Acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information
September 3, 1942. “New York, New York. Wire room of the New York Times newspaper. Copy boy about to tear off dispatch from the Associated Press wire.” Medium format acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information.
September 1942. New York. “Photo engraving department of the New York Times newspaper. This camera photographs a photographic print through a screen and produces a strip negative.” Acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information.
NEW DATE FOR THIS PROGRAM, TUESDAY, FEB.13TH
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TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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SHORPY HISTORIC AMERICAN PHOTO ARCHIVE
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THE RIHS WILL BE AT THE EVENT INSIDE 546 MAIN STREET THIS SATURDAY, STOP NY FOR GREAT BUYS
STOP BY THE KIOSK FOR GREAT GIFTS AND OUR EXCLUSIVE ROOSEVELT ISLAND TAPESTRY THROW
THE SHOP HAS RETURNED FOR A SECOND YEAR AT THE RIVAA GALLERY THRU SUNDAY. STOP BY FOR WONDERFUL INDIAN MERCHANDISE
TWO EXCITING UPCOMING EVENTS AT OUR NYPL BRANCH
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TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
COLER CELEBRATES STAFF AND RESIDENTS
“HEALING IN COMMUNITY” A NEW PHOTO MURAL WAS UNVEILED TODAY WITH PORTRAITSOF 35 RESIDENTS AND STAFF IN THE UNIQUE COMMUNITY. CEO STEPHEN CUTOLLO AND JUDITH BERDY, COLER AUXILIARY PRESIDENT ARE PHOTOGRAPHEDNEXT TO THEIR IMAGES ON THE MURAL. THE MURAL IS THE WORK OF ARTIST RACHAL ALBAN. THE SPONSOR IS NYC HEALTH+HOSPITALS /ARTS IN MEDICINE. THE COMMUNITY MURAL PROGRAM IS MADE BY GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM THE LAURIE M. TISCH ILLUMINATION FUND.
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JUDITH BERDY NYC HEALTH+HOSPITALS
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
The New York Herald was founded by James Gordon Bennett, Sr. in 1835. Under his leadership it was the dominant newspaper in the city for most of the century. Shortly after his death in 1866 James Gordon Bennet, Jr., who was raised in Paris, returned to New York to take the reins.
The junior Bennett brought with him the carefree lifestyle he had enjoyed in France, and his unorthodox behavior sometimes offended well-bred Victorian New Yorkers. Such was the case in 1877 when he attended the New Year’s Day party hosted by his fiancée’s parents. His engagement came to an abrupt end when he urinated in the fireplace.
In 1893 Bennett engaged the services of McKim, Mead & White to design a new printing plant and headquarters for The Herald far north of Printing House Square on the trapezoid-shaped plot of land facing West 35th Street, bounded by 6th Avenue and Broadway. Completed in 1895 it was nothing short of a masterwork.
Sanford White based the design on the 1476 Palazzo del Consiglio in Verona, Italy. But there was obvious influence from the publisher. James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was obsessed with owls, which he made the symbol of The Herald. Now 26 four-foot high bronze owls now perched along the cornice of the building. Those at the corners, with spread wings, had illuminated green glass eyes which glowed eerily on and off with the striking of the two clocks embedded into the facade–one symbolic of Wisdom, the other of Industry.
The massive grouping dominated the roof line. The two clock faces flank the central second story windows and bronze owls stand guard all along the cornice. from the collection of the New York Public Library
The striking of that clock seemed to be accomplished by two massive figures in printers’ aprons under the watchful eye of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, whose traditional attendant was an owl. The massive bronze grouping was executed by French sculptor Antonin Jean Carlès, personally chosen by Bennett. On the hour and the half-hour, the mechanized typesetters were set into action, swinging mallets against a large bronze bell atop which perched yet another owl.
At noon on March 21, 1895 the clock was first set into action. The Editor & Publisher wrote that “thousands of persons cluttered up the neighborhood and gazed at the two figures.”
The mechanical typesetters–given the names Guff and Stuff by New Yorkers–clanged out the hours for nearly nearly three decades–during rain, snow and summer heat–as busy pedestrians scurried by below. The colorful James Gordon Bennett, Jr. died in 1918 and three years later, on May 12, 1921 the New-York Tribune ran the headline: Old Herald Building Soon to Come Down. It added “The heroic bronze smiths, known as Guff and Stuff, who had been striking out the hours night and day on the big bell on top of the southern façade of the building for the last twenty-eight years, and the goggling owls that had watched from their lofty perch on top of the building during those years were removed last month, for they were the property of the late Mr. Bennett.”
One calculation put the total number of mallet thumps by Guff and Stuff at 3,188,680.
Thankfully for posterity, Bennett’s unnatural love for owls had prompted him to retain personal ownership of the bronzes as well as the sculptural clock grouping. All of the statuary was carefully crated and stored.
Nearly two decades later a committee of businessmen in the Herald Square area was formed to erect a memorial to Bennett. The men raised $10,000 (just under $180,000 today) and the well-known architect Aymar Embury II received the commission to design the structure.
As ground was broken on July 3, 1940 The New York Times reported “The proposed new forty-foot granite monument of modified Italian Renaissance design, with its double-faced clock and the two bronze owls, will serve as a background and base for the bronze group…The statue and bell will face south in front of a niche flanked by Corinthian pilasters, the upper part of which contains the clock and two of the owls of which the younger Bennett was so fond.”
photo by the author
Although the monument included a lengthy inscription about Bennett and his contributions, The Times essentially ignored him when it reported on the unveiling on November 19 that year. The newspaper referred to it as “Minerva and the Bell-ringers.” The article ended saying “The ceremonies will end at 6 P. M. with the striking of the clock, the ringing of the bells by ‘Stuff’ and ‘Guff,’ and the eyes of the owls blinking again for the first time in twenty years.”
The spread-winged owls with their blinking green eyes were salvaged from the Herald Building’s corners. Both clock faces from the Herald facade survived, now back-to-back atop the monument. photo by the author
The clock and its figures got a make-over in 1989 when Stuff began moving forward and actually making contact with the bell with his mallet, causing damage. The clock, the granite and the figures were cleaned and conserved and, $200,000 later, emerged looking as they did in 1940. Others of the reclaimed bronze owls perch on posts around the triangular park.
photo by the author
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
THURSDAYPHOTO OF THE DAY
In the lobby of 75 Rockefeller Plaza is a commemorative wall saluting employees who have served in our armed forces, a great show of support
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
COOK AND FAMILY CHILDREN ON BACK PORCH OF BLACKWELL HOUSE 1915 (?) GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT
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DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THE LOBBY OF 787 SEVENTH AVENUE HAS THE #3 LARGEST TREE IN MANHATTAN.
WHILE WALKING THRU THE BUILDING I COULD NOT BELIEVE THE SIZE OF THIS TREE!
Mural with Blue Brushstroke is a 1986 mural painting by Roy Lichtenstein that is located in the atrium of the Equitable Tower (now known as the AXA Center) in New York City. The mural was the subject of the book Roy Lichtenstein: Mural With Blue Brushstroke. The mural includes highlights of Lichtenstein’s earlier works.
Gillie and Marc’s Paparazzi Dogs are the world’s most notorious photographers. The four bronze Dogmen have sniffed out the rich and famous in Melbourne’s Federation Square, the Jing’an Sculpture Park in Shanghai, and New York’s Greenwich Village and the Rockefeller Center. The sculptures have gone from being an art experiment about photographing celebrities to sought-after celebrities in their own right. When Gillie and Marc first launched the series, within days the life-sized dogs went viral with millions of visitors coming to see them. People from all over the world, along with celebrities such as Snoop Dog, were eager to pose with the Pap Dogs, quickly giving them a celebrity status. Trey Ratcliff, considered to be one of the world’s best contemporary photographers, also came and was followed by 500 professional photographers to take a photo of him. Gillie and Marc had intentionally created the interactive piece to expose the pack mentality of the media and how we hunt celebrities to get their photo.
I visited the park today on a beautiful sunny morning. Many visitors stopped The dogs are facing the elevators and waiting to snap a celebrity!
How appropriate that the dogs are in Rockefeller Center, ready to snap a VIP arriving to SNL.
Just one more photo please!
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TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Back in September, RIOC announced that the “Girl Puzzle” would be closed for concrete repairs for a month. To make a long story short concrete “repairs” were done and immediately discovered that the work was not up to standards.
The area has been cordoned off since September yellow railings and red safety nettting.
I visited the park today on a beautiful sunny morning. Many visitors stopped by, ignoring the downed netting and useless railings.
According to Amanda Matthews, the artist, the situation is in discussions and no work can be done in winter……Let’s have RIOC remove the barriers and clean up the area so visitors can enjoy the park.
The other day I reported on the trespassers that were in the Smallpox Hospital recording their adventures in the middle of the night.
Today, our contemporary landmark is being blocked by contemporary barriers.
One Southpoint Park needs protection from intruders.
Our Lighthouse Park needs to be barrier free when no work is being performed.
Judith Berdy
SHAME One of our Island bloggers posted videos of trespassers in the Smallpox Hospital after climbing the fences into Southpoint Park and the Smallpox Hospital. The management of the FDR Four Freedoms State Park. FFP Conservancy, Cat Sanctuary and RIHS are infuriated that this criminal act is being publicized. Shame on our “press” that exploits these activities.
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TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
New York has been a hotbed of innovation since its founding. Made in New York: 25 Innovators Who Shaped Our World (SUNY Press, 2023) by Frank Vizard tells the stories behind the innovators and their inventions.
Like many New Yorkers, some came from elsewhere to find success in their new homes. Others were homegrown. Some became famous; others struggled for recognition. All were visionaries and risk-takers who were willing to put their lives on the line if necessary.
From the first brassiere to the first modern submarine, and from Batman to the first mass-produced cameras, New York has been a seabed of life-changing innovations that have altered how we live.
Made in New York celebrates the compelling stories of these innovative men and women. Find out why invention of the teddy bear in Brooklyn is a civil rights story as is dry cleaning. The invention of voting machines in New York is still relevant to elections today. And baseball wouldn’t be what it is now without New York rules.
Luminaries like Nikola Tesla, Raymond Loewy and DJ Kool Herc shine alongside lesser known figures like George Speck, Katherine Blodgett, and Marie Van Britten Brown. What they did in New York impacted the world.
Frank Vizard is a former editor with Popular Science magazine and has written for a wide variety of publications ranging from Luxury Magazine to USA Today. Vizard’s other books include Why A Curveball Curves: The Incredible Science of Sports (2009) and the novel Screamer (2018). He lives in Westchester County, NY.
Radicals and Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern
This is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the rise of New York as the twentieth-century capital of modern culture.
Across the 1910s and 1920s, through provocative creative acts, shocking fashion, political activism, and dynamic social networks, these women re-imagined modern life and fought for the chance to realize their visions.
Taking the reader on a journey through the city’s salons and bohemian hangouts, Radicals and Rogues celebrates the tastemakers, collectors, curators, artists, and poets at the forefront of the early avant-garde scene.
Focusing on these trailblazers at the center of artistic innovation — including Beatrice Wood, Mina Loy, the Stettheimer sisters, Clara Tice, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Marguerite Zorach, and Louise Arensberg — Lottie Whalen offers a lively new history of remarkable women in early twentieth-century New York City.
Lottie Whalen is a writer, researcher, and curator working in the fields of feminist history, avant-garde art, and textiles. She is the co-founder of Decorating Dissidence, an interdisciplinary arts project that considers radical histories of craft and its potential as a force for change in the modern day. She lives in Glasgow.
The Trials of Madame Restell: A Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime
“Madame Restell,” the nom de guerre of the most successful female physician in America, sold birth control, delivered children, and performed abortions for decades in a series of clinics run out of her home in New York City. “Restellism” becoming a term detractors used to indict her.
Abortion was then largely unregulated in most of the United States, including New York. But during the Industrial Revolution a sense of disquiet arose about single women flocking to the city for work and greater sexual freedom, amid changing views of motherhood, with fewer children born to white, married, middle-class women.
Restell came to stand for everything threatening the status quo. From 1829 onward, restrictions on abortion began to put her in legal jeopardy. For much of this period she prevailed — until she didn’t.
The Life of Madame Restell
Ann Trow was born in the wool processing community of Painswick, in in Gloucestershire, England, on May 6, 1812. Her parents were poorly paid mill workers, and it’s unlikely Ann received much education. When 15 years old, she became a live-in maid and the next year she married a tailor seven years her elder, Henry Summers.
Ann and Henry were struggling financially when she gave birth to a daughter in 1830. The following year they migrated as a family to the city of New York, settling a few block from the infamous Five Points. A few months after their arrival, Henry died, leaving Anna widow with a young child.
Ann worked as a seamstress and in 1836 met and married Charles Lohman, was a Russian immigrant working as a printer at the New York Herald. The family moved to Chatham Street, where Ann met Dr. William Evans.
Evans had no formal medical training, but made pills, tonics, and powders based on old herbal remedies which he sold as cures for everything from baldness to consumption.With Evans’ help Ann made and sold her own pills to cure liver, lung, and stomach ailments, establishing a small business until a customer asked for a medicine to end an unwanted pregnancy.
In the first half of the 1800s, family planning was considered the private business of women. Before “quickening,” or the moment when a woman first felt a fetus move, a woman could fairly easily obtain abortifacients, and if that didn’t work, midwives and doctors performed surgical abortions.
In New York State, doctors hoping to take control of the work of midwifes and female medical practitioners succeeded in lobbying for a law in 1827 that made providing an abortion a crime punishable by a year in jail and a $100 fine. Since most people cared little about what was considered a private matter, few abortions were reported to authorities, and the law was seldom used.
Historians believe Ann’s first abortion medication was simply a copy of an old recipe, part of a long tradition of female-led family planning. Ann’s abortifacient was popular however, and see gave up working as a seamstress to practice her brand of medicine.
After visiting her family in England in 1838 she returned and rented a respectable-looking office on a fashionable street. Ann spread the story that she had learned effective and safe medical abortions from a famous abortionist in Paris and adopted the name Madame Restell.
Her first advertisement ran in the New York Sun in March 1839 and she soon launched a mail-order business, establishing offices in Philadelphia and Boston.
Madame Restell’s medicines were not very effective however. Her birth control powder was ineffective and women who found themselves pregnant, spent more money for her abortion medicine. If that failed, Madame Restell offered a secret surgical abortion which cost $100 for wealthy women, and $20 for those who were poor (still an extraordinarily high price for the time).
After Madame Restell performed these surgical abortions in the back room of her office, the women could go to a doctor and claim they had suffered a miscarriage.
Ann’s popularity drew the attention. of a loose alliance of doctors, religious leaders, and social reformers who hoped to end her practice. Her first arrest occurred only five months after her first advertisement was published, but the charges were dropped.
This was only the beginning of decades of legal troubles. Called “the wickedest woman in New York,” and accused of hurting and killing her patients, in 1846 there was a riot outside her office.
The following year Ann’s detractors succeeded in securing a conviction for performing an illegal abortion. She served a year in prison and then stopped offering surgical abortions, focusing on her pills instead.
She made a fortune and her stature was great enough that Mayor Jacob Westervelt officiated her daughter’s wedding in 1854. In 1862, Ann and Charles built a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood where she opened an office in 1867.
At the end of the Civil War, the anti-abortion movement grew however, under the leadership of Anthony Comstock, U.S. Postal Inspector and head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Comstock sponsored the 1873 Comstock Acts that made it illegal to send obscene material by mail. In 1878, the year after her beloved husband had died, Comstock pretended to be a man seeking abortion services for a woman out of state, and had Ann arrested when she responded to the need.
Rather than face another trial and certain conviction, Ann Loham died by suicide on April 1, 1878, the day her trial was set to begin.
Syrett’s The Trials of Madame Restell paints an unforgettable picture of the mid-nineteenth-century New York and brings Restell to the attention of a whole new generation of women in the current fight over reproductive choices.
The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for Freedom (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2023) tells the story of Lemmon v. New York — or, as it’s more popularly known, the Lemmon Slave Case. All but forgotten today, it was one of the most momentous civil rights cases in American history.There had been cases in which the enslaved had won their freedom after having resided in free states, but the Lemmon case was unique, posing the question of whether an enslaved person can win freedom by merely setting foot on New York soil — when brought there in the keep of an “owner.”
The case concerned the fates of eight enslaved people from Virginia, brought through New York in 1852 by their owners, Juliet and Jonathan Lemmon. The eight were in court seeking, legally, to become people — to change their status under law from objects into human beings.
The Eight encountered Louis Napoleon, the son of a slave, an abolitionist activist, and a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, who took enormous risks to help others. He was part of an anti-slavery movement in which African-Americans played an integral role in the fight for freedom.
The court ruled that the eight were free upon arriving on New York’s free soil, and the case became a battle cry for secession when appeals defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford.
The case was part of the broader judicial landscape at the time: If a law was morally repugnant but enshrined in the Constitution, what was the duty of the judge?
Should there be, as some people advocated, a “higher law” that transcends the written law?
These questions were at the heart of the Lemmon case. They were difficult and important ones in the 1850s — and, more than a century and a half later, we must still grapple with them today.Albert M. Rosenblatt teaches at the New York University School of Law and is a retired Judge of New York State Court of Appeals. His previous books include Opening Statements: Law, Jurisprudence, and the Legacy of Dutch New York (co-edited with Julia C. Rosenblatt) and Judith S. Kaye in Her Own Words: Reflections on Life and the Law, with Selected Judicial Opinions and Articles (co-edited with Judith S. Kaye and Henry M. Greenberg), both published by SUNY Press.
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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