GIVE MOM A 14″ TRAM PILLOW! SOFT AND COMFY WAY TO ENJOY OUR ISLAND TRAM LIMITED QUANTITIES AVAILABLE AT RIHS VISITOR CENTER KIOSK $48-
GREAT GIFT FOR DAD, NEXT MONTH FOR FATHER’S DAY!
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, MAY 13-14, 2023
ISSUE 989
SECOND STREET,
A GEM OF A BLOCK
WITH GREAT CHARM
JUDITH BERDY
For the last few days, I have been working at East Houston Street training election workers. On my lunch hour I have had time to check out the neighborhood. The Bowery is a conglomeration of a few restaurant supply stores, down and out folk, seniors and hipsters. There is a Whole Foods in the building we are working in, where my morning iced coffee is a mere $5.44!!!
Yesterday I wandered two blocks and discovered Second Street. This tree lined street has restored brownstones, charming shops, a cook book shop record (33 rpm) store along with a wonderful community garden.
IL BUCO VITA at 4 East Second Street specializes in Italian glassware, porcelain and giftware. Image a wonderful Tuscan lunch as you wander thru this small shop.
There are three John Derian shops adjoining each other. Each one is loaded with all kinds of decorative merchandise from a plate at $14- to an automated French Squirrel for $1500-.
One shop has much housewares including bed and table linens.
After BRIDGERTON you may need to purchase an ancestor
Trinkets from long ago safaris to countries beyond.
Midblock is Albert’s Garden, tucked in between buildings. A wonderful oasis.
What a wonderful spot.
The bird mural at Albert’s gate is by Belgian street artist, ROA, who is recognized for his use of wildlife imagery that is usually inspired by the local environment. To read all about the garden go to: https://albertsgarden.org
Still looking for the 1967 Harry Belafonte recording of “Matilda, try this shop.
The shop was closed but I can imagine looking for more recipes.
SUPERINTENDENT’S COTTAGE, METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL IMAGE IS PICTURED IN EDWAR HOPPER’S “BLACKWELL’S ISLAND”
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
GIVE MOM A 14″ TRAM PILLOW! SOFT AND COMFY WAY TO ENJOY OUR ISLAND TRAM LIMITED QUANTITIES AVAILABLE AT RIHS VISITOR CENTER KIOSK $48-
GREAT GIFT FOR DAD, NEXT MONTH FOR FATHER’S DAY!
FROM THE ARCHIVES
FRIDAY, MAY 12, 2023
ISSUE 988
TOP 10 SECRETS
OF
BELLEVUE HOSPITAL
PART 2
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
BELLEVUE IS THE MAIN PUBLIC HOSPITAL OF NYC HEALTH+HOSPITALS. THIS ALONG WITH ALL THE 11 PUBLIC HOSPITALS TREAT ALL THE NEED CARE WITHOUT REGARD FOR INSURANCE, ORIGINS, AND STATUS.
Bellevue Hospital in Kips Bay, officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue, is one of the largest hospitals in the United States. The hospital has achieved many breakthroughs throughout its history, from being one of the first to employ ambulance services to having the earliest maternity ward. Bellevue Hospital has contributed massively to the development of modern medicine but also has a dark history. At one point, the name “Bellevue” was often used to refer to psychiatric hospitals in the 1800s. The hospital made important developments in treating epidemics, from yellow fever to AIDS, and saved the lives of people from all walks of life, from the general public to presidents and celebrities. Here, we take a look back at the hospital’s long history and pull out the top 10 secrets of Bellevue Hospital!
6. A German spy feigned paralysis at the hospital for two years
Perhaps one of the hospital’s strangest encounters with a patient was with Fritz Joubert Duquesne. He was a German and South African Boer soldier and journalist, though he was perhaps best known for being a spy. Duquesne would frequently lie about his identity, reinventing his past and asserting he was related to royalty to get into (and out of) high-stakes situations. He gathered human intelligence for the Boers during the Second Boer War and led spy rings in Great Britain, Latin America, and the United States. He was captured by multiple governments. In 1917, federal agents in New York charged him with insurance fraud for insurance claims, after which the agents discovered evidence that he was involved with multiple ship bombings.
Knowing he would potentially be extradited to the U.K. on murder charges, Duquesne pretended to be paralyzed and was subsequently sent to Bellevue Hospital’s prison ward. Until May 1919, Duquesne faked paralysis in his right leg, carrying a cane to play the part. Just days before his extradition, Duquesne disguised himself as a woman, cut the bars of his cell, and climbed over the ward’s walls to escape. He successfully fled to Mexico and then Europe, and it wasn’t until 1926 that he was documented again, this time under yet another identity.
7. The hospital played a major role in combating the AIDS Crisis
Bellevue Hospital was one of the key players in the fight against the AIDS Crisis in the 1980s. In 1981, Bellevue reported one of the first three cases of HIV/AIDS, which at the time was an unexplained immunodeficiency. Over the next few years, the hospital worked to identify the disease and pioneer treatments. In 1985, Bellevue opened the country’s first hospital-based HIV nutrition program. That year, Coler Memorial Hospital led the country in allocating long-term care beds to people with AIDS, while Jacobi opened Kroc Day Care Center for Children with HIV.
The following year, HHC hospitals including Bellevue opened clinics for AZT, the first antiretroviral drug. By 1990, throughout HHC’s 11 hospitals, 1,100 new AIDS patients were admitted daily. In 1997, after years of treating HIV/AIDS patients, Bellevue participated in an NIH clinical trial examining the use of antiretroviral drugs in children and infants with HIV. The hospital further participated in trials for Nevirapine, given to HIV-positive pregnant women, and for combination drug therapies. Bellevue played a key role in developing HAART, or the “Triple Drug Cocktail,” to treat the disease.
8. Mark David Chapman, Norman Mailer, Grover Cleveland, and James Garfield were treated at Bellevue
Bellevue Hospital has treated thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers, from celebrities to those who could barely afford treatment. Among these have been some famous and unfortunate cases involving major historical figures. One of the most famous literary references to Bellevue was in Allen Ginsberg‘s poem “Howl,” inspired by his time at the hospital. One of the most notable patients was Mark David Chapman, who received treatment after murdering John Lennon. Chapman had medical appointments at Bellevue in between his stays on Rikers Island. Another violent patient was Norman Mailer, the American novelist behind The Naked and the Dead who was treated at Bellevue after stabbing his wife. Mailer was convicted of assault for nearly fatally stabbing Adele Morales with a penknife, for which he received three years probation.
On the flip side, however, the hospital treated James Garfield after he was hit by two bullets in 1881. Garfield was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station by Charles Guiteau, who erroneously believed he should have been rewarded with a consulship for helping Garfield win the election. Bellevue’s Frank Hamilton and his team came down to Washington to treat Garfield’s wounds, though he would die two months later from infection. Garfield was not the only president Bellevue treated; Grover Cleveland came to Bellevue after discovering a cancerous mass in his mouth amid the Panic of 1893. To avoid suspicion, Cleveland was treated on a yacht in the East River by numerous Bellevue medical faculty, which was ultimately successful after nearly two hours.
9. Bellevue treated New York’s first Ebola patient
Bellevue made national headlines in 2014 when it treated the city’s first Ebola patient, which put the city on edge for a few months. The hospital treated Craig Spencer, who treated Ebola patients in Guinea through Doctors Without Borders and contracted the virus himself before heading back to the U.S. He was placed into isolation at Bellevue as investigators tried to piece together everyone he had contact with in the days prior; he had taken the A and L trains the day before, as well as took a taxi. The virus could not be spread until symptoms began to show, though, and it couldn’t be spread through the air, though the bowling alley he had frequented the night prior remained shut for a day.
In 2019, the hospital conducted an emergency exercise to transport a simulated Ebola patient from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey to Bellevue’s Regional Ebola and Other Special Pathogen Treatment Center. The experiment was performed in the wake of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, resulting in 1,100 cases and 700 deaths. The experiment, whose results could be shared with African nations, tested the feasibility of safe patient transport, including the use of biocontainment devices and personal protective equipment, as well as appropriate decontamination procedures.
10. The hospital houses its own sculpture garden which was vandalized in 2014
Amid the sound of ambulances is a surprisingly peaceful sculpture garden near the water called the Bellevue Sobriety Garden. The quarter-acre park between First Avenue and the FDR Drive includes sculptures, mosaics, plants, and other artistic features. The Sobriety Garden, as its name suggests, was begun by Bellevue psychiatrist Dr. Annatina Miescher in 1989 who got recovering addicts from its Chemical Recovery Program to help tend the plants. The park was almost destroyed in 2006 after proposals were put forward for additional parking, though patients and staff objected.
The fairly secret garden includes all sorts of sculptures of human figures and animals, though in 2014, dozens of animal sculptures were vandalized. According to a 2014 New York Times article, “The faces of rams were cracked and crumbling. The neck and beak of a bird sculpture were broken and hanging to the side.” The cement, sand, and chicken wire sculptures, many of which were created by patients, were left scattered across the garden. Since then, Miescher and other staff and patients have worked to restore the garden, which is now in full bloom.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
CITY HALL WITH WORLD BUILDING DOME HARA REISER AND ANDY SPARBERG GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK CITY MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
BELLEVUE IS THE MAIN PUBLIC HOSPITAL OF NYC HEALTH+HOSPITALS. THIS ALONG WITH ALL THE 11 PUBLIC HOSPITALS TREAT ALL THE NEED CARE WITHOUT REGARD FOR INSURANCE, ORIGINS, AND STATUS.
Bellevue Hospital in Kips Bay, officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue, is one of the largest hospitals in the United States. The hospital has achieved many breakthroughs throughout its history, from being one of the first to employ ambulance services to having the earliest maternity ward. Bellevue Hospital has contributed massively to the development of modern medicine but also has a dark history. At one point, the name “Bellevue” was often used to refer to psychiatric hospitals in the 1800s. The hospital made important developments in treating epidemics, from yellow fever to AIDS, and saved the lives of people from all walks of life, from the general public to presidents and celebrities. Here, we take a look back at the hospital’s long history and pull out the top 10 secrets of Bellevue Hospital!
1. Bellevue Hospital used to operate floating quarantine boats
Looking SW from East River at houseboat used by Bellevue as Tuberculosis care boats
During the tuberculosis crisis of the 19th century, Bellevue Hospital transformed ferry barges into floating wards. The floating “hospitals” were reserved for those in the early stages of tuberculosis, prioritizing indoor spaces for the many patients suffering from more severe symptoms. Poorer patients who were turned away from the barges would change their names and appearance to try for help at other facilities. It was believed that fresh air could help cure patients of tuberculosis, a disease that many believed at the time was genetic.
2. Bellevue, the nation’s first public hospital, traces its origins to NYC’s first almshouse
Image from the New York Public LibraryBellevue Hospital traces its origins to a two-story brick building that stood in what is now City Hall Park. The building housed the city’s first permanent almshouse, which provided charitable housing to poorer residents. The ailing poor would move to almshouses once it became clear they would wither away from their disease; wealthier New Yorkers could more easily get doctors to come directly to their homes. With the development of more sanitary and advanced medical practices, hospitals, where all patients could go and get treatment, became all the more common. Ultimately, Bellevue became the first public hospital in the nation.Bellevue began to employ faculty and medical students from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons around 1787. Columbia maintained its presence at the hospital until it was restructured in 1968. The present-day Bellevue Hospital was built on the previous Belle Vue Farm along the East River, which had been used to quarantine yellow fever patients as it was a few miles north of most homes. The hospital got its current name in 1824, around the time when it became better known on a national scale.
3. Bellevue Hospital operated the country’s second hospital-based ambulance service
Bellevue Hospital played a significant role in the history of the emergency ambulance, as it operated the nation’s second hospital-based ambulance service. Prior to the system’s creation, those suffering from all sorts of medical emergencies had to get to hospitals however they could manage. Because getting to the hospital was a top priority, there was little emphasis placed on trying to temporarily mitigate symptoms like bleeding. A U.S. Army surgeon named Edward Dalton proposed to the New York Hospital Board that the city should adopt some form of ambulance system similar to military ambulances.The board adopted five horse-drawn ambulances in June 1869, and according to the commissioner’s report, “Each ambulance shall have a box beneath the driver’s seat, containing a quart flask of brandy, two tourniquets, a half-dozen bandages, a half-dozen small sponges, some splint material, pieces of old blankets for padding, strips of various lengths with buckles, and a two-ounce vial of persulphate of iron.” This paved the way for emergency ambulance services at Long Island College Hospital and Eastern District Hospital in 1873.By 1891, the Bellevue Hospital received 4,392 ambulance calls per year. The sheer quantity of calls led the hospital to have “the record for the largest number of telephone calls to any public institution in the country.” Though, the hospital needed a more efficient system that would ensure faster arrival times and less confusion. Calls would first go to Madison Square Central Office, which would then be dispatched to the local police headquarters, which then would have to contact the particular hospital. Nothing changed until 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson recommended that a single number be created for emergencies, thus sparking the birth of 9-1-1.
4. Bellevue Hospital opened NYC’s first morgue, among many other firsts
In addition to being the first public hospital in the U.S., Bellevue Hospital achieved a significant number of medical firsts that have paved the way for major developments in medicine and other treatments.Bellevue opened the nation’s first maternity ward in 1799.In 1808, the hospital conducted the world’s first ligation of the femoral artery, located in the thigh, for an aneurysm. Ten years later, the hospital also performed the world’s first ligation of the brachiocephalic artery supplying blood to the right arm, neck, and head.New York’s first medical college with connections to a hospital was Bellevue Hospital Medical College, which opened in 1861.In 1862, Bellevue cardiologist Austin Flint gave his name to a low-pitched heart murmur he identified, which is associated with a condition called aortic regurgitation.The hospital played a major role in helping draft what is likely the nation’s first sanitary code for New York City in 1867. Later that year, the hospital established one of the country’s first outpatient departments.In 1873, Bellevue opened the country’s first nursing school using Florence Nightingale’s teachings. The nation’s first men’s nursing school opened 15 years later at Bellevue.The hospital opened the nation’s first children’s clinic in 1874.The nation’s first emergency pavilion was opened at Bellevue in 1876.The hospital’s Carnegie Laboratory, which opened in 1884, was the country’s first pathology and bacteriology laboratory.Physicians at Bellevue were the first to identify tuberculosis as a preventable disease in 1889.The nation’s first ambulatory cardiac clinic opened in 1911 at Bellevue, which paved the way for the world’s first cardiopulmonary laboratory that opened in 1942 and the nation’s first heart failure clinic.Physician William Tillett discovered streptokinase at Bellevue in 1933, which was used to treat heart attacks.The nation’s first mitral valve replacement took place at Bellevue in 1960.In 1962, the hospital established the first intensive care unit at a municipal hospital.In 1971, Bellevue physicians developed the first active immunization for hepatitis B.
5. Barnum and Bailey’s Circus would pay annual visits to patients
In 2013, Barnum and Bailey’s Circus revived a decades-old tradition at Brooklyn Hospital Center: performing for patients and staff. The tradition was started at Bellevue Hospital, and some performances would feature everything from acrobatic stunts to elephants. These performances would often attract thousands of people, many of whom were children and members of the community. The tradition began in 1901 and would continue each year for decades, with patients often watching from the hospital’s iron balconies.“Dr. Ringling’s medicine is of the finest quality, easy to take, good for almost any ailment; children love it and adults enjoy it,” Dr. William F. Jacobs, Bellevue’s medical superintendent, told The New York Times in 1946. “I’ll prescribe it any time in same dosage for young and old alike.” More than 4,000 patients at Bellevue, some on stretchers and in wheelchairs, applauded clowns, six adult elephants, a baby elephant, a zebra, and a llama, according to a 1964 Times article. The tradition ended in the 1960s when the iron balconies were removed.
WEDNESDAY PHOTO CHANNEL GARDENS ROCKEFELLER CENTER
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK CITY MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
GIANT TIMBER BRIDGE OF THE MOYNIHAN CONNECTOR IS INSTALLED AT THE HIGH LINE
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
NICOLE SARANIERO A massive timber bridge measuring nearly 300 feet long, the length of a city block, was installed at the High Lineover the weekend. Called the Moynihan Connector, this new connection to the elevated park will link the High Line’s current terminus at West 30th Street and 10th Avenue to a public plaza within the Manhattan West development, creating a seamless pedestrian path from the transit hubs of Penn Station and Moynihan Train Hall in Midtown to the West Village.
Andrew Frasz, courtesy of the High LineAfter the bridge was assembled on the ground, construction crews used two cranes to lift it into place 25 feet above Dyer Avenue. The wooden truss bridge, which weighs 128 tons, is made up of 163 Alaskan Yellow Cedar beams. After the sections of the bridge were hoisted into the air, they were lowered down onto steel columns.The Moynihan Connector runs along West 30th toward West 31st Street, and takes a 90-degree turn at Dyer Avenue, at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. This is where the bridge can be found, running north into the public plaza at Manhattan West.
Andrew Frasz, courtesy of the High LineRunning along 30th Street is the Woodland Bridge, another part of the Moynihan Connector. This bridge will contain 5-foot deep soil containers for lush plantings to grow from along the path. The two bridges will be visually connected by Corten steel decking and bronze handrails. The connector design is a collaboration between James Corner Field Operations, who was a part of the High Line’s original design team, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
TUESDAY PHOTO RIHS OFFICE ON THE 4TH FLOOR OF THE OCTAGON JANET SPENCER KING GOT IT RIGHT PARDON OUR TYPO… WE HAVE CORRECTED IT.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
WEEKEND PHOTO SOHMER PIANO FACTORY ON VERNON BLVD. ED LITCHER GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The 1920s was a decade of change and upheaval. While Europe was recovering from the First World War, the United States saw a period of economic growth and prosperity in which the country’s focus shifted from rural areas to the cities. It was also a time of great creativity in art and entertainment. New York City set the pace.
The focus of excitement was the theater with an unprecedented public demand for plays and performances. The era saw a burst of theatrical construction with more than thirty new venues appearing in the city. These were Broadway’s prime years. During the 1927/8 season, over 260 productions debuted there.
Times Square’s accessibility began to flourish during the 1920s when all forms of public transportation stopped at 42nd Street. Compared to other major crosstown thoroughfares, the street was developed relatively late. The first theater opened its doors in 1899 and was followed by a range of other entertainment venues alongside the development of top-end office space around Grand Central Terminal.
With the building boom taking place, the call for advertising space around Times Square increased sharply. During the night the district became covered in a sea of light, producing a huge splash of color. The dazzling illuminations were a public attraction in their own right. Leisure became a booming business. Broadway offered its audiences a rich choice of plays, musical comedies, revues, operettas and other forms of fun and entertainment. A key player in these developments was a Jewish immigrant from Hungary.
The Woods Factor
Albert Herman Woods was born Aladore Herman in January 1870 in Budapest, but his family moved to the city of New York when he was a child. Growing up in the immigrant district of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he would roam the streets and skip school. Away from the gloomy tenements of his youth, he was lured by the gleaming lights of the theater.
Woods would become one of New York’s most prolific theatrical producers, staging over 140 plays on Broadway including a number of blockbusters. Having been involved in managing tour companies of popular melodrama at the start of his career, he soon turned his attention to Time Square.
In August 1903 he opened his first show with Theodore Kremer’s melodrama The Evil Men Do at the American Theatre in West 42nd Street (built in 1893; closed in 1930 and demolished two years later). Sensing that melodrama was losing its appeal, Woods was attracted towards an alternative genre that had previously taken Paris by storm.
Georges Feydeau was a wildly popular French playwright of the so-called “Belle Époque.” He is remembered for plays that delighted audiences from the 1890s to the pre-World War I era. His farces were marked by closely observed characters with whom his (urban) audiences could identify.
The dramatist created a new type of comedy consisting of slamming doors, mistaken identity, hidden onlookers, ridiculous dialogue, sexual innuendo, adultery and improbable plots that, once it had reached London and New York City, became known as the “bedroom farce.” Woods introduced the genre to Broadway.
Loved by the public at large, the emerging American passion for farce was closely scrutinized by anxious local authorities and angry morality crusaders. One of the attractions of the plays produced by Woods and his collaborators was pushing the boundaries of propriety and correctness beyond accepted norms. He encountered and almost encouraged legal intervention – it all added to publicity and promoted a scramble for tickets.
Let the Good Times Roll
Paul Meredith Potter, a playwright and journalist for the New York Herald, established a reputation for having turned George du Maurier’s best-selling novel Trilby – set in bohemian Paris – into a stage play in 1895. Woods took note of his success.
Having read the original version of the play Loute (1902) by the prolific Parisian farceur Pierre Vebler, he was quick to purchase its production rights. Woods commissioned Potter to adapt the play, the plot of which portrays several couples in a tangle of adulterous affairs.
Prior to opening at Weber’s Theatre on Broadway in February 1909, preview performances of The Girl from Rector’s were scheduled in Trenton, New Jersey. The opening matinee left some of the audience in shock. A group of local clergymen issued an official complaint about the play’s immoral contents upon which the police banned any further staging. The fall-out over the farce almost guaranteed its success. Once at Broadway, the show ran for 184 performances until July 1909.
Encouraged by public interest in the genre, Woods started preparation for the next salacious bedroom farce. In April 1910, he produced The Girl with the Whooping Cough, an adaptation by Stanislaus Stange of a French play. The story follows the misbehaviors of Regina as she passes whooping cough to numerous lovers. The leading role was played by Valeska Suratt, a young vaudeville actress who was billed as “The Biggest Drawing Card in New York.”
The City’s 94th Mayor William Jay Gaynor was not amused. He attacked the play as obscene and demanded its immediate closure because of sexually suggestive themes. The Police Commissioner threatened the management of the house that if the play was not taken off the repertoire, he would refuse to renew the theater’s operating license.
Woods got an injunction from the New York Supreme Court that prevented the authorities from interfering with the show, but it did not compel them to renew his license. Left without a home for his show, Woods admitted defeat and was forced to shut it down. In response he built his own venue on 42nd Street. The Eltinge Theatre was named after one of his star performers.
Julian Eltinge (real name: William Julian Dalton) had started his acting career at a young age in Boston. Vaudeville authors at the time introduced cross dressing in their acts to create exaggerated sexual stereotypes. In doing so, they broke the (theatrical) norms of the time.
Julian would become the most celebrated of female impersonators. Simply known as “Eltinge,” his skillful performances turned him into a star. In 1906 he made his London debut at the Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue to such acclaim that he was invited to give a performance at Windsor Castle in front of King Edward VII (who presented the actor with a white bulldog).
In 1911 Eltinge featured in The Fascinating Widow at the Liberty Theatre, West 42nd Street. A year to the day that the play was first staged, Woods opened his Eltinge Theatre. At the time of the occasion, Julian was America’s highest paid actor and he went on to appear in a string of musical comedies on Broadway (including The Crinoline Girl and Cousin Lucy) written to showcase his skills, although he never performed in the playhouse that carried his name.
The Demi-Virgin
The theatrical empire Woods built was at its peak in the 1920s, producing a series of hit plays that drew large audiences to Time Square.
Dramatist Avery Hopwood made his debut in 1906 when his play Clothes (1906) was produced on Broadway. Specializing in risqué comedies, he became known as “The Playboy Playwright.” His 1921 three-act bedroom farce The Demi-Virgin was inspired by an earlier and popular theatrical adaptation of Marcel Prévost’s 1894 novel Les Demi-Vierges. Woods brought Hopwood’s play to Broadway.
Prior to its debut, several preview performances were staged outside New York City, beginning a one-week run in Pittsburgh in September 1921. The play was closed by the city’s Director of Public Safety who objected to its “vulgar” dialogue. Woods gained valuable free publicity from coverage of the closure. The play eventually opened at Time Square Theatre on October 18, 1921, before being transferred to the Eltinge Theatre three weeks later.
Contemporary reviews were negative. Critics condemned the play as immoral due to its sexual situations, revealing clothes and suggestive dialogue. The farce featured a strip poker scene (a game of cards called “Stripping Cupid”). The script also alluded to a sensational rape and murder case that was unraveling in court at the time and involved the silent movie star Roscoe Conkling “Fatty” Arbuckle.
On November 3, 1921, Woods and Hopwood were summoned to the chambers of William McAdoo, New York City’s Chief Magistrate, who had received a number of complaints about the play. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and the Committee of Fourteen (fighting prostitution in the city) were prominent voices amongst those who opposed the show.
As Woods flatly refused to address any of the objections, McAdoo ruled that the play was obscene, describing it as “coarsely indecent, flagrantly and suggestively immoral.” The producer was accused of violating section 1140a of the New York State Penal Law which prohibited involvement in “any obscene, indecent, immoral or impure drama, play, exhibition, show or entertainment.” Having gathered on December 23, 1921, the Grand Jury dismissed the case that same day. An attempt to revoke the theater’s license also failed.
News coverage of legal actions provided ample publicity. It was reported that lengthy queues for tickets stretched outside the Eltinge Theatre after the case had opened in the magistrates’ court. Once triumphant, the production team milked the controversy to boost ticket sales (so much so, that irritated editors of TheNew York Times barred Woods name from any notices placed in its pages).
After the Broadway production ended on June 3, 1922, it had been one of the most successful plays of the season, having sold over 200,000 tickets across 268 performances. Woods then launched four road companies to present the play in other cities. The tour continued through 1923 with productions in cities such as Albany, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington.
Bust
Woods lost most of his fortune in the early 1930s and never recovered from the blow. Julian Eltinge’s career came to an end as a crackdown on homosexuality and cross-dressing prevented him from performing in costume.
The legal battle over The Demi-Virgin had reopened the discussion about strengthening the role of the censor. The call for new anti-obscenity legislation could be heard loud and clear. The economic slump of the 1930s encouraged those who were concerned about loose or lost moral values to tighten their grip and preach (and enforce) a return to more rigid standards.
Broadway’s building boom that took place in the 1920s was reversed during the Great Depression. Restaurants and theaters in Time Square were replaced by cheap eats and coarse entertainment venues. The turn-down was epitomized by the tumbling reputation of the Eltinge Theatre. It was degraded to an infamous burlesque house that, in the end, was shut down during a “public morality” campaign in 1943.
During the dark days of depression, the lights dimmed and the music died in the entertainment district. Theaters closed in rapid succession, some were demolished and others converted to cinemas. Residents who were accustomed to the “good times” of the 1920s were forced to move from the area and find more affordable properties. It would take some seven decades for Times Square to restore its reputation.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: The Girl with the Whooping Cough; colored postcard of Julian Eltinge, ca. 1907 (Wellcome Collection); sheet music cover for a song from The Fascinating Widow, 1911 (Public domain); and inside page from the December 12, 1921, program for The Demi-Virgin.
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Auxiliary cruiser USS Prairie at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in 1898 (NH 44056).jpgThe U.S. Navy auxiliary cruiser USS Prairie at the New York Naval Shipyard (USA) soon after commissioning in April 1898. Several of her 6-inch guns are visible. Note also the excellent view of the large Navy Yard crane. From 1917-1922, Prairie served as destroyer tender “AD-7”.
USS New York (BB-34) launching on October 30, 1912, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (25586501151).jpgLot 3000-S-10: USS New York (BB 34) going down the ways on October 30, 1912, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York City, New York. The ship’s sponsor was Elsie Calder, the daughter of New York politician William M. Calder. Detroit Photographic Company. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. (2016/03/10).
USS Essex (CVS-9) in drydock at Brooklyn Navy Yard 1960.jpgThe U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Essex (CVS-9) in dry dock at the New York Naval Shipyard, in 1960. Essex had returned from her last deployment as an attack carrier (CVA) to Mayport, Florida (USA), on 26 February 1960 and was redesignated as an anti-submarine carrier on 3 March.
New York Naval Shipyard aerial photo 01 in December 1944.jpg The U.S. Navy New York Naval Shipyard, Brooklyn, New York (USA), photographed on 2 December 1944. The aircraft carriers under construction in dry docks (right center) are USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) and probably USS Reprisal (CV-35). USS Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) is fitting out (üpper right).
USS Fechteler (DE-157) with sister ships at the New York Naval Shipyard (USA), on 31 March 1944 (BS 65722).jpgThe U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Fechteler (DE-157), center, lies nested with two sister ships, New York Naval Shipyard (USA), on 31 March 1944. Looking aft from the foc’sle one sees the forward 3-inch/50 caliber dual-purpose guns (Mt. 31 and Mt. 32), with the Mk. 10 depth projector sited out of sight on the main deck aft of Mt. 31. Note the guard rails to prevent gunners from firing into the ship forward of both main battery mounts, and the floater net baskets. Twenty-millimeter Oerlikon machine guns are visible on the same level as Mt. 32 and the next deck above. Fechteler had just completed a convoy escort deployment from Londonberry, North Ireland. After initially arriving in Londonberry on 6 March 1944, she joined the escort of a New York-bound convoy, reaching the United States 22 March 1944.
New York Naval Shipyard aerial photo 01 in April 1945.jpg The U.S. Navy New York Naval Shipyard, Brooklyn, New York (USA), photographed from 300 m altitude, looking west, 15 April 1945. The ships in the large dry docks in center are (left to right): USS Houston (CL-81) and the aircraft carriers USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) and USS Reprisal (CV-35).
View of crane at Brooklyn Navy Yard in May 1952.jpg The bow of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-12) ist transprted from the New York Naval Shipyard to be fitted to USS Wasp (CV-18) in drydock at Bayonne, New Jersey (USA), in May 1952. Wasp collided with USS Hobson (DMS-26) on 26 April 1952 while conducting night flying operations in the Atlantic, en route to Gibraltar. Hobson was cut in two and sank, 61 men of her crew could be rescued, but 176 were lost. Wasp sustained no personnel casualties but her bow was severely damaged. As the carrier was urgently needed for duty in the Mediterranean, Wasp entered drydock at Bayonne, New Jersey (USA), on 8 May. Her damaged bow was immediately cleared out with blow torches and the following day she received the bow of USS Hornet (CV-12) which was undergoing conversion at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York. Her repair was completed in only 10 days, enabling the carrier to get underway on 21 May and resume her deployment just three days later.Note the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) in the right background which began her SCB-27C modernization at the New York Navy Yard on 1 April 1952.
USS Fiske (DD-842) at the New York Naval Shipyard c1965.jpgThe U.S. Navy destroyer USS Fiske (DD-842) at the New York Naval Shipyard (USA), following her FRAM I modernization, in late 1964 or early 1965. Thje destroyer escort USS Albert T. Harris (DE-447) is visble in the background.
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE IN RIHS KIOSK PLACED BY SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Posted Wed, May 3, 2023 at 2:41 pm ET|Updated Wed, May 3, 2023 at 3:52 pm ET Replies (3)
The East Midtown Greenway, as viewed from Andrew Haswell Green Park in February, 2023. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — To the untrained eye, the new East Midtown Greenway, an expansion of the East River Esplanade alongside the Upper East Side and Sutton Place, seems like it could be ready for summer fun.
But all that seems is not so.
Despite the extensive landscaping and near completion of a totally new pedestrian footbridge in Sutton Place near Clara Coffey Park at East 54th Street, the project won’t be ready for bikes, strolls and sitting until the best time of year for waterfront fun: December 2023.
The same view as above, from April. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
As recently as a year ago, the New York City Economic Development Corporation claimed a Fall 2023 completion date.
Find out what’s happening in Upper East Sidewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Subscribe
The work around Andrew Haswell Green Park and the Alice Aycock Pavilion. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
But according to the two most recent EDC presentations to Community Boards 6 and 8, this past October and Febuary, that while the rest of the greenway esplanade might be completed, continued work at Andrew Haswell Green Park and the Alice Aycock Pavilion will prevent them from opening the much anticipated — and needed — green space.
A worker washes down the greenway, as viewed from Sutton Place Park. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
“We won’t be able to open just this part of the part because then it will create dead end public space, which could cause safety concerns,” said NYC EDC project director Ankita Nalavade at the February Community Board 6 meeting. “This is one of the reason why the completion of the entire project will be extend until December 2023.”
The new footbridge at East 54th Street, viewed from Clara Coffey Park in early April. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
When asked for any additional details or updates about the construction, NYC EDC only told Patch that the work would be completed by the end of the year.
The southern terminus of the park, viewed from the 51st Street Esplanade section, which will not connect at all to the Greenway for the time being. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
While neighbors find the new completion date “a little disappointing,” as one CB6 board member put it, residents are still thrilled to have another way to engage with the neighborhood’s waterfront.
Jennifer Ratner, founder of the group Friends of the East River Esplanade, called the project “a great leap forward” when it comes to creating a greenway around Manhattan.
Work as viewed from Andrew Haswell Green Park in mid-April. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
“We are very excited about the opening of the East Midtown Greenway. We can’t wait to have even more mileage on a contiguous waterfront for runners, walkers, bikers, and people just strolling with kids and their families,” she said.
Looking north from Sutton Place Park in early April. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
Even when the current construction finishes, more work will be on the way — once the project can find about $38 million.
That’s how much it’s gonna cost to enact any of the ideas Community Board 8 had for the space under Andrew Haswell Green Park, a former heliport and Sanitation waste transfer station, according to Michael Bradley, a Parks Department project administrator.
The southern terminus of the park, viewed from the 51st Street footbridge, which will not connect at all to the Greenway for the time being. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
Those ideas pitched in 2018 included a bathroom or a cafe as well as a new ADA compliant ramp.
While the concrete curtain walls are mostly demolished at the structure, until the funds are secured, half of the space will be fenced off and will act as temporary Parks Department maintenance space.
One day the work will end — and then it will start up again. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
The next stage of the East River Greenway — the United Nations headquarters gap — is currently in the design stage and should be ready for strolls, bikes and sits in about four years, according to NYC EDC.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY IONIC TOP FROM ORIGINAL OCTAGON COLUMN
JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED THESE PHOTOS
LOUNGE IN NEW YORK TRAINING SCHOOL FOR NURSES NOW THE ABANDONED SMALLPOX HOSPITAL.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
PATCH UPPER EAST SIDE
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
What That Quilt Knows About Me explores the deeply personal and emotional power associated with the experience of making and living with quilts. The exhibition’s title conveys the idea that quilts have the capacity for “knowing” or containing information about the human experience. Reflecting on this sentiment, the exhibition presents quilts as collections of intimate stories.
Spanning from the 19th through 21st centuries, the works on view will reveal a range of poignant and sometimes unexpected biographies. From a pair of enslaved sisters in antebellum Kentucky to a convalescent British soldier during the Crimean War, the exhibition explores stories associated with both the makers and recipients of the works. On a quilt top from the 1890s, we find a surface bursting with narratives; in an example by Hystercine Rankin, a grid of small vignettes depicts scenes of family life defined by faith and toil.
The exhibition also explores how artists have continually drawn inspiration from and pushed the boundaries of quilt-making to incorporate surprising materials and ideas, inviting audiences to consider these objects as archives of personal human experiences. Dindga McCannon’s Mary Lou Williams, a quilt-like work, is created with paint, photographs, and fibers, as a tribute to the jazz musician and cultural environment of Harlem. Jessie Dunahoo uses plastic bags and yarn to evoke quilt-like coverings that swath the interior surfaces of his home.
KALEIDOSCOPE XVI MORE IS MORE PAULA NADELSON
UNTITLED FAMILY HISTORY QUILT HYSTERCINE RANKIN
SOLDIERS QUITLT SQUARE WITHIN A SQUARE ARTIST UNIDENTIFIED
LOUNGE IN NEW YORK TRAINING SCHOOL FOR NURSES NOW THE ABANDONED SMALLPOX HOSPITAL
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In conjunction with the exhibition, listen to recordings from the Museum’s Oral History project featuring:
Dr. Diana Baird N’Diaye, artist and Senior Folklife Curator, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
The exhibition is curated by Emelie Gevalt, Curatorial Chair for Collections and Curator of Folk Art at the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) and Sadé Ayorinde, Warren Family Assistant Curator.
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Born on April 18, 1889, in Remagen am Rhein into a Catholic family, Karl Nierendorf was educated in Cologne. He worked as a banker before World War I, but his career was disrupted in 1913 by the social upheaval in the Weimar Republic. One of his acquaintances, an art collector, introduced him to the Swiss-born German painter Paul Klee who persuaded him to attempt a career as an art dealer. The two would remain close. When Klee died in June 1940, Nierendorf published Paul Klee Paintings Watercolors 1913 to 1939 (New York: Oxford UP, 1941) as a tribute and an act of friendship.
In 1920 Karl and his younger brother Josef began a career in the art trade and they established a pre-war reputation for championing work of the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider). The brothers organized modernist exhibitions, lectures, concerts and film screenings.
Described as both a faithful patron of artists and an astute businessman, Karl Nierendorf remained indefatigable in promoting the avant-garde throughout his nearly thirty-year career as a dealer, first in Berlin and later in Manhattan. He played a significant role in the migration of European modern art to New York.
From Cologne to Berlin
Karl and Josef Nierendorf opened their first gallery in Cologne in 1920. The brothers specialized in Expressionist watercolors and drawings. In 1923 they moved their exhibition space briefly to Düsseldorf, before settling in Berlin.
Having taken over J.B. Neumann’s Graphisches Kabinett following the latter’s departure for New York, the brothers renamed the establishment Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf. Located at 32 Lützowstrasse in the vicinity of prominent dealers such as Alfred Flechtheim and Paul Cassirer, their firm presented itself as the main promoter of modernist art.
In 1933 Neumann and Nierendorf dissolved their association and the gallery was renamed Galerie Nierendorf. The onset of the Great Depression combined with the rise of fascism badly affected all those promoting contemporary art in Germany. Nazi hatred of Modernism made it increasingly difficult to organize exhibitions or even display paintings.
The tense atmosphere took its toll on Karl Nierendorf who, in 1934, was struck by a heart attack. In the spring of 1936 he took a long break in the United States, making stops in New York and Los Angeles. His doctors had advised him that the sea voyage might improve his health, but the journey also offered him a chance to explore the American art market. Josef remained in Germany to maintain the operations of the Berlin gallery until it was forced to close in 1939.
Banned Art
Karl sailed from Hamburg to New York on the “Blue Riband” liner SS Europa of the Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL). On board he met Elfriede Fischinger, wife of avant-garde filmmaker and painter Oskar Fischinger who had won fame for creating the extra-terrestrial special effects in Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon), one of the first science fiction films to hit the screen in 1929.
As the Nazis condemned his work, Oskar had accepted a contract from Paramount Studios and preceded his family to Hollywood. Forty-two paintings by artists deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis also arrived in the United States ahead of Nierendorf, hidden in Fischinger’s household effects that Paramount had shipped from Germany. Modern art was exiled to the United States.
Sensing new opportunities in a politically open environment, Karl did not return to Berlin and decided to settle in Manhattan. In January 1937 he opened the Nierendorf Gallery at 20 West 53rd Street. Later that year, he found new premises amid the bustling gallery scene on East 57th Street. His ambition was to introduce German experimental art to an American audience.
In Manhattan, Nierendorf joined a growing community of émigré artists and art dealers, including J.B. Neumann and Curt Valentin. He was reunited with several artists he had promoted in Germany who had moved to New York following the Nazi attack on modernist artists. Josef Scharl exhibited regularly at his gallery as did Lyonel Feininger, one of the pioneers of Bauhaus.
Nierendorf felt strongly that the migration of artists and dealers from Europe provided a unique opportunity for the re-creation of modernist art under new conditions. We can develop a very special atmosphere here, he suggested in the autumn of 1937 to Katherine Sophie Dreier, co-founder of the Société Anonyme (America’s first “museum of modern art” at 19 East 47th Street), the “future of culture and intellectual development lies in America.”
Group exhibitions like “Unity in Diversity” (November 1942) and “Gestation-Formation” (March 1944), emphasized that Nierendorf was keen to blend works of the European and American avant-garde. He applied artistic standards only. Considerations of nationality, gender or creed never played a part in his promotion of artists. Karl was one of those exiled dealers who put New York at the center of the art world away from Paris and Berlin. Manhattan’s 57th Street replaced Montmartre.
In the autumn of 1945 his gallery launched the landmark exhibition “Forbidden Art in the Third Reich.” It featured the work of artists who had been persecuted in Nazi Germany leading to the closure of avant-garde art galleries in Berlin, Munich and elsewhere. The show created shock and excitement. Many art critics shared the observation that “what Germany has lost, the United States and the world have gained.”
Rebay & Guggenheim
Hilla Rebay (von Ehrenwiesen) was born into a minor aristocratic family in Strasbourg, Alsace, then part of Imperial Germany. In 1908 she began formal art studies in Cologne and a year later enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris, a private and female friendly school for art students. The institution was also open to foreign (mainly American) students.
In 1910 she traveled to Munich to study at the progressive Debschitz-Schule which maintained links with the city’s emerging modernist movement (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a former pupil; Paul Klee had been a member of staff, although briefly).
Back in Cologne in 1912, she visited a traveling exhibition of Futurist artists which made a deep impact. The experience would influence her own creative work and her acquisition policies in a later capacity as a collector and curator. In 1915, with World War I raging, she traveled to Zurich, a hub of cosmopolitan creative activity. Due to Switzerland’s neutrality many artists and intellectuals had sought refuge in the city.
In Zurich she met fellow Alsatian artist Jean (Hans) Arp, the dynamic co-founder of the Dada movement. Arp gave her a copy of Vassily Kandinsky’s Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art), published in 1911. Three decades later, she would translate and publish Kandinsky’s essay on behalf of the Guggenheim Foundation.
Her relationship with Arp ended in the spring of 1917, but not before he had introduced her to Rudolf Bauer, a Prussian-born abstract painter who was deeply involved with Berlin’s avant-garde. Sharing similar ideas about the future direction of art, the two embarked upon a long but difficult relationship and collaboration. In the end his jealousy and misogyny became too much to bear for this talented woman.
In 1927 Hilla moved to New York, settled in an apartment of the Studio Towers atop Carnegie Hall on Seventh Avenue, and began exhibiting her work. She had brought a number of Rudolf Bauer’s paintings with her. When in 1928 she was commissioned to paint a portrait of the businessman and art collector Solomon Guggenheim, the Bauer paintings on her studio wall sparked his interest. This encounter led to a meaningful discussion on contemporary art and initiated a lifelong personal and professional relationship.
Solomon Robert Guggenheim, a mining magnate of Swiss Ashkenazi descent, began amassing a collection of non-objective art. In his obsessional pursuit of paintings, Hilla Rebay became his advisor and driving force. Using her range of contacts in Europe, Guggenheim purchased works by artists such as Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Guggenheim and Rebay were driven by a single shared ambition: to create a “temple of non-objectivity.”
In 1930, Hilla accompanied Guggenheim and his wife Irene on a visit to Germany. The trio used the opportunity to arrange a meeting with Vassily Kandinsky who, at the time, was teaching at the Dessau Bauhaus. On that occasion Guggenheim purchased “Komposition 8” from him, the first of more than 150 works by the artist that would enter the Guggenheim Museum holdings over the years.
By 1930/1 the entire collection was housed at Solomon’s suite in New York’s Plaza Hotel and open to the public by appointment.
Guggenheim Foundation
Karl Nierendorf’s prominence as an art dealer led to collaboration with a number of museum directors who were eager to add modernist works of art to their collections. It was inevitable that he and Hilla would cross paths in Manhattan. Nierendorf was to become a vital source for Guggenheim’s acquisitions.
The Guggenheim Foundation was created in 1937 for the “promotion and encouragement of art and education in art and the enlightenment of the public.” Its main aim was the establishment of a museum, the nucleus of which would be Guggenheim’s collection of modernist art.
For the next two decades, Hilla zealously promoted non-objective painting, organizing exhibitions, loans and lectures on the subject. The Museum of Non-Objective Painting was opened in 1939 in temporary quarters on East 54th Street with Hilla Rebay as its first director.
In 1943, Hilla began to make plans for a permanent home for the collection and asked Frank Lloyd Wright to design a monument celebrating the spirit of modernist art. Although the site at the corner of 89th Street & Fifth Avenue was chosen as early as 1944, it took another fifteen years before the museum was finally completed.
The end of war allowed for the reopening of foreign art markets. With the freedom to travel again, Nierendorf returned to Europe in the spring of 1946. He visited family and friends and made a courtesy visit to Hilla Rebay’s relatives. He returned to New York in September 1947 in possession of more than one hundred works from the Klee estate and a large purchase from the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner holdings, partly acquired on behalf of the Guggenheim Foundation.
Shortly after his return from Europe, Karl suffered a fatal heart attack. As he had not executed a will and his recent acquisitions for the Foundation had not yet been delivered, it was decided in early 1948 that Guggenheim would purchase his entire estate from the State of New York. At a stroke, the Museum became a prominent center of European Expressionism and Surrealism.
Karl Nierendorf was a pioneering gallerist. He brought to Manhattan an unwavering dedication to modern art and succeeded in building a bridge between European artists and emerging American talent. He enabled the gradual transfer of the avant-garde from Paris and Berlin to Manhattan.
ICE-T AT RIHS KIOSK DURING SHOOT OF LAW AND ORDER SVU, IN 2014
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: SS Europa prior to her maiden voyage in March 1930 (Norddeutscher Lloyd); portrait of Karl Nierendorf, 1923 by Otto Dix (Unknown location; Artists Rights Society, New York); catalogue of Nierendorf’s Forbidden Art exhibition (Guggenheim Archives, New York); Hilla Rebay at work in her studio; Guggenheim’s suite in New York’s Plaza Hotel; and Komposition 8, 1923 by Vassily Kandinsky (Guggenheim Museum, New York).
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Andrew Frasz, courtesy of the High Line
