Soon the direct path to the promenade will be complete.
A crosswalk and stop sign would make a wonderful addition so our neighbors could cross the street safely.
Coler Administration has had a contractor repairing many damaged and dangerous sidewalks and paths today. Apparently the word got out and the path was being prepared!! What a great result to a long-standing problem.
This wonderful walk will now be accessible to all!!
THE RIHS KID’S BOOK GIVE-AWAY AT EARTH LOVE DAY. LOOK FOR OUR TABLE.
DO YOU LIKE TO GARDEN?
THE RIHS KIOSK NEEDS VOLUNTEER(S) TO MAINTAIN OUR GARDEN. DO YOU HAVE AN HOUR OR TWO A WEEK? DO YOU NEED COMMUNITY SERVICE CREDITS? CONTACT US AND HELP US MAINTAIN OUR WONDERFUL GARDEN ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
MISHI, COLER’S THERAPY CAT
CAT FEEDER NEEDED FOR CATS ON THE EAST SIDE OF COLER
VOLUNTEER NEEDED TO FEED PLEASE CONTACT 1-646-246-2046 VIA TEXT THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE
NINA LUBLIN, GLORIA HERMAN AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE IDENTIFIED ONE OF THE LAST AND NOW LONG-GONE PARK BENCHES, LEFT OVER FROM OUR 1970’S DESIGN. THESE WERE EYESORES AND UNCOMFORTABLE FOR DECADES. (THE RIHS DID NOT PRESERVE ONE FOR HISTORY!)
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
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
ON MONDAY NO ROUTE, ON WEDNESDAY A ROUTE WAS UNDER CONSTRUCTION, SEE BELOW
When walking north past Coler Long Term Care on the West Promenade, notice that there is no access to the path from the area near Coler. This makes it virtually impossible for the Coler residents to enjoy the promenade and many have to use the roadway as the closest site to view the river and enjoy our fresh air. There is an area that could easily be configured into an accessible pathway.
Now, there is direct path to the building entrance.
There is even a curb cut. A crosswalk and stop sign would make a wonderful addition so our neighbors could cross the street safely.
Coler Administration has had a contractor repairing many damaged and dangerous sidewalks and paths today. Apparently the word got out and the path was being prepared!! What a great result to a long-standing problem.
This wonderful walk will now be accessible to all!!
CAT FEEDER NEEDED FOR CATS ON THE EAST SIDE OF COLER
VOLUNTEER NEEDED TO FEED PLEASE CONTACT 1-646-246-2016 VIA TEXT
EARLY OPENING OF THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE UPPER PEDESTRIAN LEVEL ON MARCH 30, 1909. OFFICIAL OPENING WAS IN JUNE.
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
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Designed by Philip Johnson for the 1964 World’s Fair, the NYS Pavilion is a concrete and steel structure, consisting of three observation towers, an open-air elliptical ring, and a theater.
The Tent of Tomorrow measures 350 feet by 250 feet with sixteen 100-foot columns suspending a 50,000-square-foot roof with multi-colored panels. The tent also held three towers, measuring 60 feet, 150 feet, and 226 feet, respectively.
The two shorter towers held cafeterias for the World’s Fair and the tallest held an observation deck. The Pavilion also included the “Theaterama,” a space that exhibited pop art by renowned artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, among others. The space was used as the Queens Playhouse from 1972 until 1985.
“Perhaps the most iconic landmark in our parks system, the NYS Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Corona Park is a reminder of our city’s historic past, and a beacon towards the future,” NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue said. “As we light the Towers and Tent of Tomorrow ‘Parks Green’ in celebration of the completion of this stabilization and lighting work, we look forward to further renovations on the Pavilion to help ensure this landmark continues to inspire and delight visitors for decades to come.”
In addition to the dynamic lighting, the Pavilion received several structural and electrical improvements. Deteriorating suspension cables on all levels of the towers and Pavilion were replaced and the tower stairs were repaired to allow access for maintenance.
All of the original 1960s conduits were replaced along with the installation of new electrical equipment for a planned NYPD Mobile Command Center. The concrete towers and historic piers were replaced as well, and the tower’s blue globe lighting was restored to its original form.
In December 2018, the Pavilion received a $16.5 million FEMA grant for repairs after Hurricane Sandy. The funding would be used to replace electrical units at the Pavilion’s World’s Fair Park and to create new flood protection systems to prevent damage from future storms.
After years of plans to restore the Pavilion, work broke ground on the project in November 2019. The work was expected to be completed in March 2021, as 6sqft previously reported.
Work on the next phase of the restoration is still in its planning stages, but is expected to further bolster the structure’s stability and eventually allow for guided tours of the towers in the future, according to Untapped New York.
“This is a major milestone in the effort to once again make the NYS Flushing Meadows Corona Park Pavilion a popular public space,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr., said.
“Along with brightening our skies, the lighting of the Pavilion will brighten the hearts of Queens residents both young and old, especially those who have fond memories of attending the 1964 World’s Fair. Thanks to this important restoration work, new generations of residents and visitors will be able to make memories when they visit this iconic and brilliantly illuminated structure.”
EDITORIAL
I lived blocks from the 1964-5 World’s Fair and could never understand why the NYS Pavilion was preserved in a state of deterioration for years. It is now having more funding poured into it and never seems to be complete and even be a least bit attractive. There were many more worthy pavillions to preserve and we will watch this one become an example of incomplete and expensive “restorations.” Perhaps the green lights signify the funds being spent.
Judith Berdy
CORRECTION
THIS IS COLER RESIDENT VICTOR. HE WAS IMPROPERLY IDENTIFIED AS VINCENT YESTERDAY. OUR APOLOGIES.
MEMBERS OF THE EFFLER FAMILY SWIMMING IN THE EAST RIVER DURING 1914-1919 RESIDENCY ON THE 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
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
6SQFT
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
When walking north past Coler Long Term Care on the West Promenade, notice that there is no access to the path from the area near Coler. This makes it virtually impossible for the Coler residents to enjoy the promenade and many have to use the roadway as the closest site to view the river and enjoy our fresh air. There is an area that could easily be configured into an accessible pathway.
This area is directly across from the Coler driveway.
There is direct path to the building entrance.
There is even a curb cut. A crosswalk and stop sign would make a wonderful addition so our neighbors could cross the street safely.
Vincent, a Coler resident, expressed frustration at not being able to access the promenade.
Coler Administration has contacted RIOC to no avail for over a year. Recently Borough President Mark Levine and State Senator Liz Kreuger inspected the site. We need community and political support to motivate RIOC to do a small construction project to make the promenade truly wheelchair accessible.
This wonderful walk has been denied to mobility challenged for years.
UPPER LEVEL OF HUDSON YARDS WITH VIEW OF MOYNIHAN STATION AND EMPIRE STATE BUILDING ALEXIS VILLAFANE 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
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Seth Wheeler was born in Chatham, Columbia County, NY on May 18th, 1838 to a successful and affluent family. His father, Alonzo Wheeler, owned Wheeler, Melick & Co. one of the foremost manufacturers of agricultural equipment; his mother was Harriet Hatch Wheeler. At the time, agriculture was the foremost industry supporting the Upstate New York economy and demand for agricultural equipment was strong. Begun in 1830, Wheeler, Melick & Co. moved to Albany in 1849.
Seth attended Albany Academy before going to work for his father’s company. Once at Wheeler, Melick & Co., Seth showed an aptitude for designing new agricultural equipment and improving on designs for equipment the company already produced.
On April 3rd, 1860, Seth married Elizabeth Alexander, daughter of William Alexander and his wife, Sarah Maria Boyd. The Wheelers had three sons and two daughters, all born in Albany.
In 1860, most Albany houses were built with an outdoor outhouse, usually located toward the back of the lot. On most city blocks a row of houses, stores or commercial buildings were lined up at the sidewalk; a row of outhouses was lined up at the rear of each property line.
The flush toilet had been invented in 1596 but did not come in to popular use until around 1900. In 1860, the word “toilet paper” would also have been unknown in most of the world, although it had been produced in two-foot by three-foot sheets for the Chinese Emperor for over 500 years.
In 1857, Joseph Gayetty produced the first commercially available toilet paper in the United States. His firm created packages of 500 individual sheets moistened with aloe. Each sheet had a watermark imprinted bearing Gayetty’s name. Gayetty’s package of 500 sheets sold for 50 cents. The product was sold as a medical product as Gayetty’s Medicated Paper, but did not sell well and Gayetty ceased production.
Brothers Edward, Clarence and Thomas Scott, (who are believed to have originally been from Saratoga County, NY), began selling some kind of toilet paper in sheets from a pushcart in Philadelphia in 1867. Again, as with Gayetty, this paper was not a big seller as most consumers felt that yesterday’s newspaper served the purpose just as well. The biggest obstacle to selling toilet paper in the early years was consumer resistance to paying for something they were used to getting for free.
In 1871, Seth Wheeler received the first U.S. patent for a machine able to manufacture perforated, rolled, wrapping paper. His machine could also imprint an insignia or wording on each sheet. Seth’s patent also mentioned that this wrapping paper machine could process manufactured rolled, perforated toilet paper.
In 1874, he organized the Rolled Wrapping Paper Company at 318 Broadway in Albany, for the manufacture of rolled paper under the patents that had been issued to him. In the days before paper bags, meat, fish, vegetables and groceries were frequently wrapped in large sheets of paper. APW Paper Company (Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company) made a stand upon which a large roll of brown paper could be held, together with a cast iron blade that suspended from the stand and could be used to tear off the paper.
In 1877, the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company was organized with Seth Wheeler as president. An early ad for a medicated version of Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper said: “this paper will be found invaluable as a preventative and cure for hemorrhoids and is the only really medicated toilet paper ever produced. Manufactured only by the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Co., Albany, N.Y., USA. Price per roll of 1000 sheets, Fifty Cents. Patented July 20, 1871; Feb. 13, 1883, July 15, 1884, Medicated.”
As acceptance of toilet paper grew, Wheeler shortened and renamed the company: the APW Paper Company. Wheeler named his brand of toilet paper “The Standard.”
In 1879, Edward and Clarence Scott founded the Scott Paper Company to sell toilet paper. The Scott toilet paper was sold in rolls that were not perforated. Due to the continuing reluctance to discuss toilet paper in public, the Scott brothers did not use their family name on the paper. For a while, the Scotts used the name “Waldorf” on their toilet paper.
In 1880, the British Perforated Paper Company sold toilet paper, but their toilet paper was not sold in rolls. It was marketed to barbers to use to wipe shaving cream off razors as they shaved customers.
The quality of early toilet paper could not have been very good as it was not until 1935 that Northern Tissue Company advertised its toilet paper as “splinter free.” The first two-ply toilet paper was marketed by St. Andrew’s Paper Mill in England in 1942.
The APW Paper Company became one of Albany’s largest and most successful manufacturing businesses. They licensed other manufacturing plants to operate under their patents. At one time over 100 manufacturing plants were operating under licenses with Seth Wheeler and the APW Paper Company.
One of Seth’s patents was for a cast iron toilet paper holder, designed for round rolls of perforated paper. This toilet paper holder was about four inches wide and about one inch high and consisted of a cast iron plate with the name “APW Paper Co.“ cast into it, with a hand cast on each side to hold a wire and wooden roller to go through the center tube of a roll of toilet paper. Another APW Paper Co. patent was for the “Wheeler Pocket Companion,” a roll of toilet paper to be carried in a container in a purse or pocket.
In 1885, the Morgan Envelope Company patented a roll of toilet paper and a toilet paper holder very similar to APW’s. The only significant difference in the new patent by Morgan was that the toilet paper roll was oval and not round. Morgan said that this made it easier to tear off the sheet. A lawsuit developed and Morgan’s patent was thrown out; the modification not being substantial enough to warrant a separate patent.
APW Paper Co. had plants in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Canada, London, Berlin, Paris, Cologne and Switzerland. Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company purchased the Sheet Harbour Lumber Company and over 100,000 acres in Nova Scotia to harvest trees for paper pulp in 1922. They later sold it to the Scott Paper Company, which had finally begun offering perforated roll toliet paper in the 1890s.
Back in the 1850s after succeeding his father as president of Wheeler, Melick & Co., Seth also formed the Wheeler Heat and Power Company of which he served as president. He was vice-president of the Cheney Piano Action Company of Castleton, Rensselaer County, NY, president of Albany County Savings Bank, and director of the State Bank of Albany. He was a member of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Free and Accepted Masons and the Fort Orange Club.
One of his sons, Edgar, was described as “an enthusiastic wheelman, charter member of the Old Albany Bicycle and Comuck [possibly comic?] clubs and, with General Robert Shaw Oliver, owned and rode the first high style wheels ridden in the city.” Seth Wheeler died in 1925 and he was cremated, but he and his family members are memorialized at Lot 6, Section 11, of Albany Rural Cemetery.
ORIGINAL RED BUS THAT WAS HERE FOR ONLY A SHORT TIME.SINCE IT DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH POWER TO OPERATE FOR MORE THAN A FEW HOURS. IT ONLY HELD ABOUT 20 PASSENGERS. NINA LUBLIN AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE 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
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Illustrations, from above: Seth Wheeler’s “Wrapping or Toilet Paper Roll” Patent filed September 15, 1891; Wheeler, Mellick and Co. advertisement in The Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste (1861); portrait of Seth Wheeler; and the Liberty Paper Mills of the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company, Erie Blvd, Albany, later the location of the Huck Finn’s Warehouse.
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The house at No. 510 Broadway which had been home to Thomas F. Cornell in the 1830s, was being used as a medical office by 1841. Dr. John H. Whittaker shared the building with Dr. Granville Sharp Pattison. In 1842 Dr. Whittaker agreed to testify to the good character of a friend who was looking for employment. An advertisement in the New-York Daily Tribune read “A married man wants a situation as Salesman or Clerk in a Wholesale Grocery, Wine or Spirit Store—has been at the business for fourteen years, and understands his business perfectly. For character and capability I refer to John H. Whittaker, Esq., M. D., 510 Broadway.”
Dr. Whittaker remained in the former house at least through 1845. That year Dr. Pattison was no longer here, but Dr. Arnold F. Wainewright listed his practice at the address. Another physician, John M. Swift, had his office in the building by 1869.
By now this stretch of Broadway—once a fashionable residential district—was being overtaken by commerce. In January 1866 Samuel and Abraham Wood paid about $115,000 for No. 510 and contracted architect “Mr. Alexander” to design a new business building.
But problems soon arose. Court papers from 1873 revealed that, first, “There was an objection by Abraham Wood to fronting the store with colored marble.” Alexander’s plans were rejected.
But before new designs by Isaac P. Duckworth could be made, neighbors stopped the process. “Four suits were commenced against Abraham and Samuel Wood, in regard to injuries arising out of the construction of this building.”
And in the meantime, Alexander sued the Wood brothers for breaking his contract. No. 510 Broadway had become a major headache for the real estate developers. As the snarl of law suits continued, the “House and Lot” and plot were valued at $108,309. The assessment, more than $2 million in 2016 dollars, reflected the changing character of Broadway which now saw the rise of modern loft and store buildings.
The Woods leased the property to Heymann & Sons who succeeded where the brothers had failed. The developers commissioned architect William Bloodgood in 1878 to design a commercial building on the plot. In the 12 years that had passed since the Woods had bought the property, the last of the residential neighbors had moved on. There would be no lawsuits against Heymann & Sons.
Construction began on July 3, 1878 by builder Freeman Bloodgood (sometimes erroneously listed as “Freeman & Bloodgood”) and was completed on September 12 the following year. It is unclear whether Freeman and William Bloodgood had a family connection; but the men had worked together two years earlier in building the Academy of Medicine.
The commercial facade was similar to the many cast iron buildings going up at the time. But William Bloodgood clad No. 510 Broadway in stone above the cast iron storefront. The iron piers of the ground floor were duplicated in stone on the upper floors. Engaged columns separated the openings and an attractive balcony provided dimension at the third floor. A robust cast cornice sat above a carved corbel table and decorative panels.
The building filled with apparel and textile businesses, such as George R. Kennedy, silk merchant. On January 30, 1886 the estate of Samuel Wood sold the building to David Greenberger for $110,000. He would not keep it long, selling it in 1889 for $120,000. It was resold in June the following year to Charles A. Bandouine for $125,000. (A millionaire, Bandouine’s mansion was at No. 718 Fifth Avenue, at 56th Street.)
Among the tenants in the building in 1893 was Ketchum & Jonas, cloakmakers. In the fall of that year Saul Ketchum and Julius Jonas realized that the financial condition of the company was irreparable. But before they declared bankruptcy, they attempted to skim funds for their own use.
In November 1893, a few days before announcing their bankruptcy, “they prepared a false set of books, in which a considerable part of their assets was made to disappear,” reported The Sun. “The false books, it is alleged, are in the handwriting of Ketchum.”
Unfortunately for the devious pair, their bookkeeper, Charles J. Halfer, was more honest. He alerted authorities of the hidden $10,000. Julius Jonas was arrested in July 1894. He pleaded not guilty of “removing and secreting account books.” His partner, Saul Ketcham, was in even bigger trouble. He was charged with three counts: “alteration of books with intent to defraud, disposing of property with the same purpose in view, and grand larceny in the second degree.”
Others were arrested as well, including their attorney Abraham Josephs and clerk Harry Jacobs for “aiding and abetting the commission of crime.” When their scheme was uncovered and police on their tails, Ketchum and Jonas were first hidden for several days in the attorney’s house. They were then moved to Jacobs’s house in Brooklyn.
While Jonas sat in jail, investigators were still looking for his partner. On July 23, 1894 The Evening World reported “Mr. Ketchum avoided the detectives on Saturday night, and has since kept out of sight.” Later that same day Ketchum gave himself up.
Bloodgood considered the pedestrians passing below when he dressed the underside of the balcony with a carved panel.
One tenant not involved in the apparel trade was Hunninghaus & Lindemann, makers of window shades. In 1897 two Lower East Side retailers, Herman Rappaport, whose shop was at No. 124 Attorney Street, and Max Fishman at No. 430 Grand Street, concocted a plan to acquire window shades at a sizable discount.
Stephen Hart worked for Hunninghaus & Lindemann as a shipping clerk and Charles Wuest was the firm’s errand boy. They were approached by Fishman and Rappaport with a business proposition. The men offered to buy stolen window shades from the boys. To deflect suspicion, they had rented a basement on Attorney Street to receive the goods.
By the time Hnninghaus & Lindemann discovered the thefts, the firm had lost more than $2,000 in goods. Stephen Hart, 18 years old, and Charles Wuest, 19, were arrested on July 16, 1897 and charged with grand larceny. They were quick to blow the whistle on Rappaport and Fishman, saying they “induced them to steal and bought all of the goods from them.”
The retailers claimed innocence and said they had no idea that the goods were stolen.
Also in the building were Becker & Co., makers of women’s waists—the most popular piece of apparel in the country; and Weinelbacher & Rice who called themselves “the largest glove importers in the country.”
On October 31 1899 King’s Palace Dept. Stores boasted of a new line of Becker & Co’s waists — The Evening Times (copyright expired) In the first decades of the new century Goldwater Bros., “laces and embroideries,” was here; as was the American Trunk and Bag Company. And by 1922 41-year old Samuel Zuckerman had his office and tie-manufacturing firm on the second floor.
On the night of Saturday, March 18, 1922 fire broke out in Zuckerman’s factory. Among the first respondents was Lieutenant William Coles of the Fire Department Bureau of Investigation. When the blaze was extinguished, Coles set to work. And what he found was disturbing.
He reported that “he found two fires had been started in the factory, ten feet apart, and that he found the safe stuffed with paper and silk soaked in benzene. There was no money in the safe.”
Detectives went to Zuckerman’s home on South 4th Street in Brooklyn to question him about the suspicious evidence. The tie manufacturer claimed he “knew nothing about the benzene.” But he was then showed a receipt for two gallons of the liquid that was recovered from the site. Suddenly he recalled the purchase.
“When confronted with the receipt, he said he had sent an errand boy to get benzene one gallon to be used at his home, the other to clean silk at his factory,” reported the New-York Tribune on March 20. Unknown to Zuckerman, detectives had already interrogated the retailer who had “identified Zuckerman as the person who had bought the benzene.”
Samuel Zuckerman was taken from his house in handcuffs, charged with suspicion of arson.
The cast iron storefront has been returned to its 19th century appearance.
The handsome building at No. 510 Broadway survived the rest of the 20th century without major change. At some point the railing of the balcony was lost and although the cast iron storefront had been slightly updated, it has been recently restored. In 1976 the upper floors were converted to “joint living/work quarters for artists.”
After filing numerous requests with RIOC, a contractor was here on Thursday to clean out storm drains at the Chapel and 540 sides of Main Street. Hopefully, we will not have the aromas this summer.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
BEAUTIFUL NEW PLAQUE OUTSIDE RIHS OFFICE IN THE OCTAGON THANKS TO BOZZUTO MANAGEMENT
NINA LUBLIN, ALEXS VILLAFANE, GLORIA HERMAN, CHRISTINA DELFICO AND VICKI FEINMEL 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
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The letters are large and elegant, but they’re easy to miss—set against an off-white facade above a rusty garage door on Lafayette Street. “Wanamaker,” the letters read. You’re forgiven if the name doesn’t ring a bell. This faint signage is just about all that remains of Wanamaker’s, a top department store that arrived in New York City in 1896 and became a leading retailer through the mid-1950s.
The story of Wanamaker’s echoes the story of so many of Gotham’s legendary dry goods emporiums, as they used to be known. These highly competitive stores made huge profits thanks to the riches of the Gilded Age and the introduction of modern consumerism.
Except Wanamaker’s got its start in Philadelphia, where namesake John Wanamaker opened his first men’s clothing shop in 1861. By the end of the century, Wanamaker began branching out into other cities as well as New York.
Wanamaker’s first occupied the former A.T. Stewart store on Broadway between 9th and 10th Streets (above, in 1901), then expanded its footprint by building a much larger store at 770 Broadway, between Eighth and Ninth Streets, in the early 1900s. A skybridge reportedly connected the two structures.
“Clad mostly in terra cotta, this grand shopping palace contained thirty-two acres of retail space, an auditorium with 1,300 seats, and a large restaurant to round out the shopping experience,” states Village Preservation’s Off the Grid blog.
Unlike other major New York City department stores, Wanamaker’s never moved to Midtown. The store stuck it out on Astor Place until shutting its doors in the mid-1950s. A fire then consumed the empty older building. An apartment residence called Stewart House sits there today.
The Wanamaker sign I found isn’t on the 770 Broadway building; you can view it on the Lafayette Street side of 730 Broadway, where the company had a warehouse, according to a 1982 New York Times article.
The only other remnant of this retail giant is on New York City maps—Ninth Street between Broadway and Lafayette is still called Wanamaker Place.
BEAUTIFUL NEW PLAQUE OUTSIDE RIHS OFFICE IN THE OCTAGON THANKS TO BOZZUTO MANAGEMENT
NINA LUBLIN, ALEXS VILLAFANE, GLORIA HERMAN, CHRISTINA DELFICO AND VICKI FEINMEL 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
On November 1, 1939, prominent figures of New York City including Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and David Sarnoff, President of the Radio Corporation of America, along with 300 spectators, crowded into the unfinished lobby of the U.S. Rubber Company Building at Rockefeller Center. The crowd watched eagerly as John D. Rockefeller Jr. marked the ceremonial completion of the Art Deco complex’s construction. Rockefeller, with some assistance, wielded a 60-pound pneumatic hammer and drove in the building’s final rivet. Today, you can see that rivet, if you know where to look.
The ceremony marking Rockefeller Center’s completion was presided over by John D.’s son Nelson Rockefeller, then president of Rockefeller Center, Inc. The festivities, including a speech by John D. Rockefeller, were broadcast over the radio. Surrounded by red, white, and blue bunting hanging from the concrete walls of the building’s lobby, John D. Rockefeller spoke of the complex’s origins in “times of abnormal prosperity” and how construction “carried on throughout the long years of the depression without abatement of halting,” as reported by the New York Times.
When Rockefeller hammered in that final Rockefeller Center rivet, it marked the completion of the fourteen buildings in the original Rockefeller Center complex. The final structure, the U.S. Rubber Company Building, was right next door to the Roxy Theater. The theater is the only original Rockefeller Center building to have been demolished. It was taken down in 1954 and replaced by an annex of the U.S. Rubber Building, now known as the Simon and Schuster Building.
The last Rockefeller Center rivet, which bears Rockefeller’s engraved signature, is located inside a column in the lobby of 1230 Avenue of the Americas. Cut into a gold panel, there is a small round peephole with a button below. Pressing the button will turn on a light that illuminates the rivet inside. Made of a silver alloy, the rivet itself weighs 2 pounds! This rivet is just one of 10,000,000 used throughout the complex.
STAFF COTTAGE, ONE OF 6 NEAR THE BLACKWELL HOUSE USED UNTIL THE EARLY 1950’S TO HOUSE SENIOR ISLAND OFFICIALS.
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
Around the time of the Civil War Joseph and Jesse Seligman were the most prominent Jewish businessmen on Wall Street – financiers of the Northern effort in the Civil War and close associates of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.
Every summer in the 1870s they would bring their families with a retinue of servants to stay at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, NY among the most prominent resorts in the United States. In 1879 however, the new manager of the hotel, Judge Henry Hitlon, announced a new policy — henceforth no Jewish people would be allowed to stay there.
The Seligmans were outraged and publicly denounced the policy. Although their efforts attracted some support from prominent christian clergymen such as Henry Ward Beecher, Judge Hilton stood his ground and the Seligmans efforts to overturn his anti-Semitic policy failed. In fact, Hilton’s policy was followed by more hotels following suit so that Jews were barred from hotels around New York State (leading to the rise of Jewish resorts in the Catskills, Adirondacks, and elsewhere).
Furthermore, Jews began to be excluded from residential neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Many Jews at the time criticized the Seligmans for their boisterous opposition Hilton’s policies, arguing that it only made bigotry more prominent. The Seligmans responded by arguing that if anti-Semites could exclude the wealthiest and most established Jewish people in New York, how would poorer Jews, including those fleeing pogroms in Europe and Russia expect to be treated?
Ironically, one of the only upscale neighborhoods from which Jews were not restricted was Harlem, which by 1890 became home to one of the largest Jewish neighborhoods in the city.
Around this time there was also significant increase in discrimination against African-Americans in New York City. Most Black people were restricted to a slum area on the West Side of Manhattan called San Juan Hill (today Hell’s Kitchen) where they were forced to live in dilapidated housing. In 1900, after a Black resident killed an off-duty policeman leading to a riot in which police indiscriminately beat, arrested and tortured the area’s Black residents.
In the first decade of the 20th century however, through a surprising turn of events, the situation would change dramatically, when a young black college dropout from Westfield, Massachusetts, named Philip Payton got a job in a Hell’s Kitchen real estate office dealing largely with Black tenants. After taking a course sponsored by Booker T. Washington’s National Negro Business League, he quit his job with the real estate company to strike out on his own, advertising that he was a realtor specializing in Black tenants.
Payton noted that real estate developers had overbuilt in the northern part of Harlem around 135th Street and Lenox Avenue so there were many vacant or near vacant buildings whose rents were not much higher than in Hell’s Kitchen. However, Blacks people were restricted from living there because virtually no real estate owners there would rent to them.
As Payton would later tell it, one day a landlord on 134th street (presumably having difficulty filling their buildings) was fighting with another and threatened to rent his building to Black people. This landlord offered Payton a lease on his building if he could fill it. Through his real estate contacts in Hell’s Kitchen, Payton found Black tenants who were delighted to sublease apartments in the building from him at rents that were not too much higher than they were paying in the slums of Hell’s Kitchen.
From Payton’s point of view, he now had a fully rented building in a difficult market. Soon other landlords on the block contacted him to see if he could duplicate his success. Payton shortly had several buildings under management and his real estate business was prospering.
He was then approached by the Hudson Realty Company which offered to buy out his leases for an unusually high price. At first he was delighted at his good fortune, until he learned that the Hudson Realty Company was an agent for the Harlem Protective Owners Association and was evicting Black tenants. The Harlem Protective Owners Association sought to have all landlords in Harlem adopt restrictive covenants that barred them being rented or sold to African-Americans.
Payton found a real estate firm that owned properties across the street, Kassel and Goldberg, which agreed to work with him. Whatever their motives, the result was that the Harlem Protective Owner Association failed in its attempt to keep Black people off the block and ultimately was obliged to sell the buildings back to Payton. This gave Payton tremendous credibility and attracted attention throughout the city. Payton appealed for help from the Black business community, which was largely dominated by members of the National Negro Business League. Many of these members of the Committee were older men who had come to New York from the South, and were fearful that confronting the white establishment would risked violent reprisals.
Payton argued that conditions in New York City, with its various ethnic groups, was different. He argued that the time to take a stand against discrimination was now and the place was Harlem. The Jews that lived there also faced their own bigoted attacks and were more sympathetic. Jews like Kassel and Goldberg recognized that it was that if racial restrictions could be beaten in Harlem, they could defeat similar restrictions in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn.
Payton’s arguments largely carried the day and he formed a new company, the Afro-American Realty Company, capitalized with more than $500,000 contributed by the leading black businessmen in the city. This corporation issued a prospectus seeking contributions from Blacks throughout the City stated that the Company intended to practice “race economics” and attack racial barriers in housing.
Ultimately the company had a capitalization of more than a million dollars, making it one of the largest black-owned enterprise in the country at the time. Backed by the full weight of New York’s black business community, the Afro-American Realty Company began buying buildings in Harlem (sometimes through white agents) and moving black tenants into them.
A New York Times article of December 8th, 1904 entitled “Race War Breaks Out in Harlem Real Estate” described the company’s operations and the consternation that its activities brought to many white people living in Harlem. It’s estimated that within three years it owned more than 25 buildings (many of them renamed for black heroes such as Phyllis Wheatley or Crispus Attucks) and had more than 1,500 tenants under management. In his 1907 report of the National Negro Business League, Booker T. Washington said Payton, who he noted had been on both sides of an eviction proceeding, was one of the most prominent black businessmen in the nation.
Payton’s efforts to move African-Americans into Harlem faced virulent opposition from the Harlem Protective Owners Association and similar groups, but Payton retained the support of some landlords (including many Jews) who refused to join their efforts to keep Harlem segregated.
Although the Afro-American Realty Company became over extended financially and went bankrupt in 1908, Payton’s efforts to settle African-Americans in Harlem were continued by other black realtors such as John E. Nail, who were affiliated with wealthier black churches. In 1911, a critical row of previously all-white residences on 135th Street was purchased for a very high price by one of these churches (the “so-called “million dollar houses”). With this purchase, the Harlem Protective Owners Association collapsed and the area north of 125th Street quickly became a predominantly black community.
At a time when race relations in the South had reached a low point, word of the victory of the Afro American Realty Company and its successors in defeating racial covenants in the previously largely Jewish community of Harlem would spread through out the South and many African-Americans would buy one-way tickets to New York City, more than tripling the city’s black population.
James Weldon Johnson, head of the NAACP in New York wrote in 1925: “In the make-up of New York, Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world. It is not a slum or a fringe, it is located in the heart of Manhattan and occupies one of the most beautiful and healthful sections of the city. It is not a ‘quarter’ of dilapidated tenements, but is made up of new-law apartments* and handsome dwellings, with well-paved and well-lighted streets. It has its own churches, social and civic centers, shops, theaters and other places of amusement. And it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on earth. A stranger who rides up magnificent Seventh Avenue on a bus or in an automobile must be struck with surprise at the transformation which takes place after he crosses One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Beginning there, the population suddenly darkens and he rides through twenty-five solid blocks where the passers- by, the shoppers, those sitting in restaurants, coming out of theaters, standing in doorways and looking out of windows are practically all Negroes; and then he emerges where the population as suddenly becomes white again. There is nothing just like it in any other city in the country, for there is no preparation for it; no change in the character of the houses and streets; no change, indeed, in the appearance of the people, except their color.”
During the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s the neighborhood would become the unquestioned political, intellectual and cultural capital of Black America. Also, the benefits of the Black-Jewish alliance against racial and ethnic discrimination, which Payton had arguably forged with Goldberg & Kressel in Harlem, would soon become evident, as discriminatory covenants in real estate would be significantly reduced throughout the city.
Organizations such as the NAACP (headquartered in Harlem) and the Jewish Anti-defamation league would become major forces in the fight against racial and religious discrimination nationally as well, ultimately leading to the defeat of segregation and Jim Crow laws throughout the South.
Philip Payton, however, was largely forgotten and virtually nothing is known of Kassel and Goldberg. There is no monument, plaque or other recognition of Payton in Harlem or elsewhere, and there is no plaque marking the million dollar houses on 135th street, the purchase of which was so critical in the defeat of the efforts of the Harlem Protective Owners Association.
The financial empire of Joseph and Jesse Seligman was later eclipsed by rival Wall Street firms, and they too are largely forgotten today. Every New Yorker in New York State today stands in their and Philip Payton’s debt for their efforts to eliminate racial and religious discrimination more than 100 years ago.
On April 14th, 2023 at noon, the Lower Manhattan Historical Association will be awarding its Gershom Mendas Seixas Religious Freedom Award to William Tingling, the founder of Tour for Tolerance, an organization designed to educate African-Americans about the Holocaust and Jewish people about their common heritage in the struggle against discrimination. The award will be given during the annual ceremony commemorating the 1730 consecration of the Mill Street Synagogue, the first synagogue In North America, at 26 William Street in Lower Manhattan.
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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
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On March 27th, 1912, the first two of thousands of Japanese cherry trees were planted along the banks of the Potomac River in Washington, DC by First Lady Helen Taft, the wife of President William Howard Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, the wife of the Japanese Ambassador to the United States. The 3,020 cherry trees, as well as thousands of other planted in New York City and Detroit, were officially a gift to the people of the United States from the Japanese government, but the gift was financed by Japanese American chemist Jokichi Takamine, who lived for many years in Merriewold Park in the town of Forestburgh in Sullivan County.Today, his indispensable contribution to the project is often overlooked.Dr. Takamine, the first scientist to isolate adrenaline, one of several discoveries that made him a wealthy man, was married to Caroline Hitch, whose younger sister was married to the son of the Merriewold Park founder, the economist Henry George, and the couple purchased land in the park in 1902. Two years later, the Japanese government honored Dr. Takamine by presenting him with Sho Fu Den, the “Pine Maple Palace” the three buildings that had served as the Japanese exhibition at the St. Louis World’s Fair. The exhibit was disassembled and shipped to Forestburgh to be erected on Takamine’s Merriewold property, where it still stands.According to the book, Merriewold: The First Hundred Years, by David Colson, Dr. Takamine sent Alexander Moore, Jr., the superintendent of Merriewold Park, and a team of carpenters to St. Louis, “to watch and learn as Japanese craftsmen took the buildings down. Each piece was numbered and its position diagramed. Then it was all shipped to Merriewold via railroad.”Famed dancer and choreographer Agnes deMille, who was the granddaughter of Henry George, grew up at Merriewold. She recalled in her memoir, Where the Wings Grow (Doubleday, 1978), that the pieces of the palace arrived at the St. Joseph’s station of the Port Jervis & Monticello Railroad in freight cars. “Thirty-five sleigh loads were drawn through the winter forest,” she wrote.Even with the precise plans, it took the skilled workmen – and six gardeners sent over from Japan – 17 years to complete the reconstruction of the palace and grounds, which eventually comprised a small lake, as well.“As long as the doctor lived, he worked on the building of those terraced gardens, adding farm sheds and kitchen patches and rustic devices as the grounds opened toward the highway, until finally there was a country bridge and a water mill and thatched fence as a definition of property and in the thinning woods pump houses, all with charming red roofs,” deMille wrote.But back to the cherry trees.The idea to plant the trees in Washington originally came from Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, a young writer who had visited Japan in 1885 and fallen in love with the cherry tree there. For 24 years, she proposed the idea of bringing similar trees to the nation’s capital with no success.Finally, in 1909, she became aware of Helen Taft’s project to beautify Potomac Park, and sent a letter to the White House offering to raise the money to purchase 100 cherry trees a year for ten years as part of the beautification project. Mrs. Taft, who had lived in Japan herself and was familiar with the trees, was intrigued, and on April 8, 1909, wrote back to Scidmore that she liked the idea.“The very next day, Takamine was in Washington with Midzuno, the Japanese consul in Manhattan where Takamine operated his research laboratory and had founded the Nippon Club and the Japanese Society,” Debra Conway wrote in a Times Herald-Record blog in 2015. “When he was told that Washington was to have Japanese cherry trees planted along the Speedway, Takamine offered to donate an additional 2,000 trees to fill out the area. Midzuno thought it was a fine idea but suggested the trees be given in the name of the City of Tokyo. Within days they met with First Lady Taft and she agreed to accept the donation.”Unfortunately, the initial shipment of trees had to be burned.“To everyone’s dismay, an inspection team from the Department of Agriculture discovered the trees were infested with insects and diseased,” Conway wrote. “To protect American growers, the department recommended the trees be destroyed.”Dr, Takamine was not deterred, however, and arranged for another 3,020 trees to be sent to Washington, where they were all planted, beginning with the ceremonial planting of those first two on March 27. Those two trees survive to this day.“In New York, another 2,500 cherry trees (another anonymous donation from Takamine) were quietly planted along Riverside Drive surrounding Grant’s Tomb, in an area renamed Sakura Park, along what became known as “Cherry Walk,” and in Central Park,” Conway wrote. “And, for an additional expression of gratitude, Takamine sent 50 trees to the headquarters of Parke-Davis in Detroit, Michigan for planting on its front lawn.”Dr. Jokichi Talamine died in 1922. Although the cherry trees proved immediately popular with tourists, and to this day Washington celebrates them with its annual Cherry Blossom Festival, he never received recognition for his generous donation during his lifetime.Portrait of Dr. Jokichi Takamine.
DICK LUTZ, PUBLISHER & EDITOR THE MAIN STREET WIRE DICK’S WRITINGS, PERSPECTIVE AND RESPECTED PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM ARE SORELY MISSED NINA LUBLIN AND ELLEN JACOBY REMEMBER DICK AS I DO!
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
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
