Streetscapes: Socony-Mobil Building; A Building of Steel On East 42d Street
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
THE before-and-after drama of a building being cleaned always provides an interesting sidewalk spectacle. So do go and inspect the dramatic work on the waffled metal finish of the 1956 Socony-Mobil Building at 150 East 42d Street.
Except for cheap tin structures and copper buildings such as pier sheds, builders generally avoided metal-faced buildings until just after World War II. In 1946 Alcoa proposed an aluminum-faced office tower at 58th Street and Park Avenue. Although it was never built, the company did put up a similar office tower in Pittsburgh in 1953.
During the same period, the Goelet family, a major real estate owner, finally completed the assemblage of the entire block from Lexington to Third Avenues, between 41st and 42d Streets, parts of which it had owned for over a century. Two developers, John Galbreath and Peter Ruffin, persuaded the Goelets to accept their proposal for a first-class office building.
While accepting the basic form set out by the Goelets’ architect, John B. Peterkin, the developers brought in Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, who were the McKim, Mead & White of postwar New York — polished, educated and well-connected.
Apparently because Galbreath and Ruffin had close connections to the United States Steel Corporation, an original design of brick over a granite base developed into one for stainless steel panels above a lower portion of glass. Steel priced out at one and a half times the cost of brick, but United States Steel, nervous about the inroads aluminum was making in the building-metals industry, offered to make up the difference.
The architects wanted the 0.037-inch-thick panels stamped with a raised pattern, both for architectural effect and for greater strength, and worked out different modular designs: picture frames, fields of teardrops, a clapboard-like design, bicycle chains and others.
(Published accounts reported that the builders were concerned that flat panels might create bright reflections that would annoy neighboring office tenants.)
They finally settled on one of irregular pyramids arranged in rectangles and rosettes; the final effect is delicate, almost floral.
By using steel panels on the 1.6 million-square-foot building the team gained several inches of floor space on the inside wall, greatly reduced labor costs on the skin, and saved weight — the panels weighed 2 pounds per square foot as opposed to 48 pounds per square foot for brick.
Opened in 1956, the Socony-Mobil Building sheltered an office population of 8,000 and was the largest metal-clad office building in the world. There had been aluminum-skin buildings in New York before, but stainless steel was, and remains, unique on such a large scale.
The only critical discussion of the building was by Lewis Mumford, writing in 1956 in his column “The Skyline” in The New Yorker. He thought the skin was “a disaster,” making the building look “as if it were coming down with measles.” Mumford particularly objected to the fussy quality of the panel design, and much preferred the stark geometry of the diamond-shape pressing of the aluminum panels of the new building at 666 Fifth Avenue.
THE Goelet estate still owns the land, but Mobil left the building in 1987 and sold it to the Hiro Real Estate Company for $240 million. Mobil’s departure, and a general downturn in office rentals, brought the occupancy of the building dangerously low, only 15 percent in 1991 according to a report at the time published in Crains New York Business.
According to Frank Ward, chief operating officer of Hiro, the occupancy rate is now up to 28 percent, and his company has just put in a new chiller for air-conditioning service. Crews of workers are also cleaning the stainless steel skin — the metal is dull and brownish, like something lost in the bottom of a dishwasher for a year or two.
The cleaned stainless steel makes a brilliant and startling contrast: when older masonry buildings are cleaned, there is a dissonance between the freshly scrubbed surface and the natural age of the brick or stone. But this is a building that really does look like new.
There is, however, something even more striking about the building. In the current fashion, even the owners of the best postwar buildings — like the Corning Glass building at 56th and Fifth and the Look Building at 488 Madison Avenue — have succumbed to the temptation of new lobbies and entrances or even whole facades.
But Hiro has decided that the original architects must have had a reason for what they were doing. Except for a pair of video terminals, the soft, swooping marble lobby remains intact, and Hiro has resisted the temptation to do anything more than polish it, inside or outside. It is an approach as unusual as a stainless steel skin.
Photos: The Socony-Mobil Building, above left, in 1956, the year it opened. (Ezra Stoller $; Esto); Building, above right, glows anew after a recent scrubbing.; Entry, right, to marble lobby, which remains intact. (Photographs by Jack Manning for The New York Times)
CREDITS
Christopher Gray New York Times
*Gray passed away a few years ago, but his wonderful
essays live on and are a wonderful memory of a
unique architectural essayist
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from the collection of the New York Public Library
As the 1920s roared on in New York City, Irving Chanin was busy building. The developer was responsible for several Garment Center buildings, as well as the famous Roxy Theatre, the Majestic Apartments and the Century Apartments on Central Park West, and the Royale and Majestic Theatres.
His signature building would rise at 122 E. 42nd Street at Lexington Avenue, The Chanin Building. Chanin commissioned architects Sloan & Robertson to design his 56-story tower. It would be the first major Art Deco office building in the city and, according to The City Review, “the finest expression of Art Deco in the city.”
Mayor James Walker was on hand for the dedication of the building in January 1929. It heralded the beginning of an age of iconic Art Deco buildings in Manhattan: Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building would all rise in a matter of years.
Although the bulk of the structure, complying with the city’s demand for set-backs, has been declared somewhat unexciting; the crown of the building with its buttresses and piers has been called the finest in the city. What no one complains of, however, is the exuberant Art Deco decoration.
In their New York 1930, Architecture And Urbanism Between the Two World Wars, Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins write:
Above shop fronts sheathed in bronze and black Belgian marble, a bronze frieze narrated the story of evolution, beginning with the lower marine forms and then bursting forth with fish and birds. This formed a plinth for a two-story colonnade of massive Norman piers whose squashed cushion capitals were carved with writhing sea monsters. The fourth story was sheathed in terra-cotta panels rendered with a bold overall pattern of abstract floral patterns.
The frieze depicting evolution stopped at geese; the designers no doubt feeling that including man in the process, only four years after the Scopes Trial, might be too controversial.
Chanin used his own architectural department head, Jacques I. Delamarre and Rene Chambellan, an architectural sculptor, to decorate the interiors. Fantastic Art Deco grills, elevator doors, mailboxes and sculptures greeted the visitor. Two bronze-painted plaster reliefs by Chambellan represent Achievement and Success. The means by which to gain these are represented in six matching reliefs: three are physical, Effort, Activity and Endurance; and three are mental, Enlightenment, Vision, and Courage.
On the 54th floor was an roof top observatory and on the 50th and 51st floor a 200-seat theater decorated in silver and black for the tenants’ sole use. Later the space was converted to offices.
Chanin installed his own offices on the 52nd floor, lavishing it with Art Deco ornamentation, including bronze gates. Below ground, the Baltimore Ohio Railroad Company leased space for ticket offices, waiting rooms and a bus terminal–complete with an immense turntable to turn the busses around.
The Chanin Building was perhaps solely responsible for making 42nd Street the premier commercial address of the time. The imposing structure became the subject of one of Hugh Ferriss’s architectural paintings. Throughout the 20th century to the present it remains a striking presence in midtown–an Art Deco masterpiece.
CREDITS
Daytonian in Manhattan
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Under marquee and above 1260 Avenue of the Americas entrance
These six playful plaques under the marquee on the granite wall are both architectural decorations and introductions to the stage events ahead. Each one represents a different scene typical of international ethnic performances of the early twentieth century. Characteristic accessories and carefully depicted native costume make each easily recognizable, from five American dancers (the Rockettes) precision-kicking to a French cellist and German accordianist. Chambellan was also commissioned to model nearly all the architectural details, including grilles, handrails and moldings, in the Center.
Carving
Aspects of Mankind
Gaston Lachaise
American, born France. 1882 – 1935
1250 Avenue of the Americas
These four allegorical stone carvings express ideal aspects of the development of modern civilization: Genius Seizing the Light of the Sun (the development of electricity and communications), The Conquest of Space and Gifts of Earth to Mankind (an acknowledgement of spirituality), and The Spirit of Progress (a reference to the bond between capitalism and the unions during the building of the Center). Although Lachaise wasn’t popular with art critics at the time, he was championed by Nelson and Abby Rockefeller, who were supporters of avant-garde artists and collectors of his work.
Carving
Cornucopia of Plenty
Lee Lawrie with colorist Leon V. Solon
American, born Germany. 1877 – 1963
10 West 51st Street
This polychrome-painted stone carving depicts a messenger soaring from the clouds, emptying an overflowing horn onto the earth. Lee Lawrie wrote that it symbolizes “the plentitude that would result from well-organized international trade”, a theme compatible to the activities of the building. The figure’s downward angle, her flowing golden hair and the dramatic spilling of contents from her cornucopia all skillfully convey a feeling of motion and energy.
Sculpture
Industries of the British Empire
Carl Paul Jennewein
American, born Germany. 1890 – 1978
Above 620 Fifth Avenue entrance
The nine gilded allegorical figures on this large bronze panel represent industries that were once considered major sources of income for the British. Depicted as beautiful, unemotional and idealized, they include Coal, Fish, Salt, Tobacco and Sugar. Australia is symbolized by Wool, Canada by Wheat and Africa by Cotton. A stylized sculpted sun is symbolic of the saying, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” In New York City, Jennewein’s works can also be found at the Brooklyn Central Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mosaic
Intelligence Awakening Mankind
Barry Faulkner
American. 1881 – 1966
1250 Avenue of the Americas
This mosaic of small glass tiles (tesserae) is composed of over one million glass tiles in two hundred and fifty colors, each hand-cut and hand-set. The work is a narrative concerning the triumph of knowledge over the evil of ignorance. The central figure of thought (intelligence) stands above the world, controlling the action in the mosaic; the two other powerful figures in this piece are spoken words and written words. Other figures symbolize creativity, ideas and intellectual efforts. The mosaic’s message is that thought will propagate new knowledge and advance civilization.
News
Isamu Noguchi
American. 1904 – 1988
Above 50 W 50th Street entrance of 30 Rockefeller Plaza
Soaring above the entrance to 50 Rockefeller Plaza, this dynamic plaque symbolizes the business of the building’s former tenant, the Associated Press. One of the major Art Deco works in the Center, it depicts five journalists focused on getting a scoop. AP’s worldwide network is symbolized by diagonal radiating lines extending across the plaque. Intense angles and smooth planes create the fast-paced rhythm and energy of a newsroom. News is the first heroic-sized sculpture ever cast in stainless steel and the only time Noguchi employed stainless steel as an artistic medium.
CREDITS
Rockefeller Center
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On busy 125th Street, it’s a lilliputian train depot, with a delicate blond-brick facade and a white cornice trimmed in terra cotta.
It’s so small, it looks like it’s hiding under the massive steel viaduct that carries Metro-North rail cars above Park Avenue to Grand Central Terminal in one direction and beyond Manhattan to Westchester in the other.
But once you walk inside, you’ll find yourself in a roomy rail station with a wall of ticket counters and a spacious waiting room straight out of the Gilded Age.
Oak paneling covers the walls, soft globes glow with light overhead, and the tiled floor and antique iron radiators give the feel of a late 19th century depot in a small village, not a major city.
The interesting thing is, despite the date “1897” carved into the entryway, what’s now known as the Metro North Harlem-125th Street station is not an actual relic dating back to the Gilded Age—not exactly.
Though some of its components are original, it’s considered a 1990s “replica” of the train station built by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroads on this spot in 1897—when Harlem was shaking off its agrarian village past and joining the urban city.
In a review just before the 1897 station opened, The New York Times deemed it a big plus for Harlem residents.
“Passing through the tiled vestibule, one enters a spacious waiting room, 40 feet broad by 70 feet long, containing comfortable benches,” wrote The Times. “In one corner of the room is an information bureau, parcel room, and bicycle rack, while in the opposite corner is the telegraph and telephone office.”
“Back of the waiting room is a gentlemen’s smoking room and toilet, fitted with marble basins and plumbing of the latest approved pattern,” continued the Times.
The smoking room is gone, alas. But this recreation of the 1897 station is the latest in a series of railroad stops or actual stations at Park Avenue and 125th Street.
Park Avenue, then known as Fourth Avenue, had train tracks running at street level through lower Manhattan since 1831. Besides being noisy and unsightly, the street-grade tracks were extremely dangerous to pedestrians.
“The tracks extended north to Harlem at street level in 1837, and by 1860 trains struck a person or an animal almost every week, according to news reports of the time,” wrote Tina Kelley in a 1999 New York Times article. “The tracks were then lowered below street level north of 116th Street.”
To accommodate passengers getting on the sub-level trains at 125th Street, a new station was constructed in 1874, according to Joseph Brennan of Columbia University’s Abandoned Stations website. (The fourth image, above, shows what the new station was supposed to look like.)
The New York Times article from 1897 described that station as small and dingy, “down in the old Park Avenue cut.”
Harlem’s population was booming, but it was the opening of the Ship Canal connecting the Hudson River to the Harlem River that necessitated a second station, one that needed to be elevated.
“After a navigable connection was cut from the Hudson River to the Harlem River in the 1890s, allowing boats from upstate to travel down the East Side, the railroad bridge across the Harlem River needed to be raised, so the steel viaduct was built,” wrote Kelley.
For decades, the 125th Street station and its steel viaduct transported passengers in and out of the city. But years of neglect in the later 20th century—resulting in boarded-up windows and water damage—took a toll.
By the time Metro-North considered renovating it, much of the original details were beyond repair—hence the careful replication rather than renovation.
These days, it’s a bustling station filled with commuters, day trippers, and time travelers who appreciate the opportunity to wander through a Gilded Age-style jewel box with a platform offering views of Upper Manhattan.
FOR THREE WEEKS ONE OF THE AVAC TUBES WERE CLOGGED WITH LARGE ITEMS THAT HAD TO BE EXTRACTED. THIS LARGE SIZE DUFFEL BAG AND TWO STEP STOOLS CERTAINLY SHOULD NEVER BE PLACE IN THE AVAC CHUTE IF THE ITEM IS LARGE LEAVE IT FOR STAFF TO REMOVE IT FROM AVAC ROOM AND DO NOT STUFF IT IN THE CHUTE.
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Photo Courtesy of the New York Botanical GardenMr. Flower Fantastic’s Concrete Jungle Orchid Show exhibition turns ordinary urban scenes into extraordinary floral arrangements! We got a sneak peek at the newly opened exhibit, which features iconic scenes of NYC recreated as bountiful floral displays at the New York Botanical Garden:
See the city’s urban spaces transformed by lively bursts of flowers!
But then Alicia Keys and Jay-Z in their song, Empire State of Mind, called New York the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of,” a place where anything is possible for the talented and the ambitious. “These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you.”Now the New York Botanical Garden, in its glorious 23rd annual orchid show, introduces New Yorkers to Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Concrete Jungle. And what a gorgeous, innovative, endearing jungle it is. MFF, as Mr. Flower Fantastic prefers to be called, maintains his anonymity with a cap, dark glasses, rubber gloves, and the gas mask that he needs for his severe pollen allergies. A self-taught floral artist, MFF developed his love for flowers growing up in Queens, tending to his mother’s garden.
Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Brownstone
The first art you’ll see on entering the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is a brownstone, covered in pink, fuchsia, and white orchids of the genus Phalaenopsis, says the NYBG. Frequently called the moth orchid, this flower that many of us have in our homes should not be disdained, says Marc Hachadourian, curator and manager of the garden’s Nolen Greenhouses. It likes the conditions we like—moderate light, humidity, and temperature—making it easy to grow and thrive. And thrive it certainly does in this orchid’s show. Hachadourian also says that the living orchids are not harmed by their lavish display over Mr. Flower’s “icons of everyday” New York life.
Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Trash Can
It may not be an object of beauty to you, but to Mr. Flower Fantastic, the classic New York trash can is to be cherished and planted with orchids.
How could New York function without the dumpster, that ubiquitous receptacle for construction debris and household trash?
Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Car Wash with Yellow Taxi
This is one adorable car wash, with an adorable, carnation-covered yellow taxi pushing in to be washed. The current taxi was inspired by a previous installation, Taxi!!!, at the Queens Botanical Garden. MFF says that his tribute to the yellow cab “embodies diversity, tenacity, imagination, and brilliance.”
What can one say? Without their neighborhood pizzeria, many New Yorkers would starve. Here, for 99 cents a slice, you can get a Margherita, Pepperoni, or Neapolitan pizza with orchid toppings.
Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Newsstand
Reflecting the turmoil in the newspaper industry, newsstands are closing all over New York. But Mr. Flower Fantastic’s orchid-covered newsstand has a customer who is pondering picking up one of the guides to orchid care.
Lauren Fuller, NYBG Cultivator
One of the many joys of the annual orchid show is that regulars often dress up for the event. Here, Lauren Fuller, a social media influencer with the handle @node.mama, poses beautifully with cascading orchids. Lauren began her career in NYBG’s cultivators program, which gives social media influencers access to the garden’s grounds, as well as behind-the-scene tours. “Then we put everything up on social media,” says Lauren, “to get everyone excited about NYBG.
The mysterious Mr. Flowes know as MFF
CREDITS
Julia Vitullo-Martin
NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN
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Artist Augusta Savage overcame poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination to become one of America’s most influential 20th-century artists. (More on her career in an upcoming issue)
Artist Augusta Savage and the Tragic Story of Her Lost Masterwork
The photo of Savage working on ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ that was blown-up to life-size in the New-York Historical exhibition (Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library)
An estimated 44 million people attended the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, and witnessed its vision for a shimmering, Art Deco “World of Tomorrow.” Some five million of those visitors got a chance to behold Lift Every Voice and Sing. A sculpture by artist Augusta Savage, it stood at a towering 16 feet tall and was mounted in the courtyard of the Contemporary Arts Building near one of the Fair’s gates. Also called The Harp (a name Savage reportedly hated), the piece depicted a kneeling Black man holding a bar of music and 12 Black chorus singers representing strings on a harp, the sounding board of which was no less than the hand of God.
The piece represented the pinnacle of Savage’s career, and the fascinating story behind it was part of New-York Historical’s exhibition Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman. Born in Green Cove Springs, FL, in 1892, Savage had already faced a lifetime’s worth of adversary, from her minister father who almost “whipped all the art out of me,” as she once said, to an American art world that could not and would not support the work of an African American woman. (Just one example: In 1923, she won a scholarship to study at the Fontainebleau School in Paris, an award that was revoked when the committee learned she was Black.) Savage persevered, and by 1937, she was a graduate of Cooper Union who had studied and exhibited in Paris, received commissions for busts of W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey, and founded the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in New York, one of the centers of the Harlem Renaissance. She was the director of the WPA-funded Harlem Community Arts Center in 1937, when she received a commission for a piece from the World’s Fair board, the only Black woman to receive that honor. The president of the Fair Corporation told the New York Times that they would have “no such segregation of this country’s different racial groups as had marked other American expositions.”
The piece—for which Savage was paid $360—was intended to celebrate African Americans’ contributions to the music of the world, and Savage already had a personal connection that lent itself to the theme. She had been friends with writer and activist James Weldon Johnson, whose poem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was set to music and later adopted as the “Black National Anthem” by the NAACP.
Little is known about the creation of the piece, but Savage left her job at the Harlem Community Arts Center and worked on it for two years. The finished work was made of plaster that was lacquered to look like black basalt. This attention to the medium of her message is a running theme: Always short of funding, she often sculpted in fragile, but cheap, plaster or clay and rarely had the means to get her pieces cast in bronze.
The Fair opened in April 1939, and Lift Every Voice got its spot on a main stage of one of the biggest events in the world. “Miss Savage’s creation stands in a niche at the focal point of the building front and is commented upon by practically everyone who passes,” wrote The Afro-American, a Baltimore newspaper, at the time. In her essay on Savage in Women Artists of the Harlem Renaissance, art history professor Theresa Leininger-Miller notes that Savage certainly created more radical pieces in her life, like the figures of lithe modern dancers and fierce African Amazons she sculpted during her time in Paris in 1929 and 1930. But Wendy N.E. Ikemoto, the New-York Historical curator behind the exhibition, argues that the piece is ambitious even in the crowd-pleasing context of the World’s Fair. “It’s an inventive, gorgeous sculpture in many ways,” she says. “On the World’s Fair stage, it still communicates Savage’s mission: to promote Black arts and the Black community. In that sense, it’s an activist sculpture.”
Savage presenting a replica of the piece to the President of the World’s Fair, Grover Whelan (Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library)
Small, metal replicas of the piece were sold as souvenirs, and images of it were reproduced on postcards. But what became of the work itself? Sadly, it was destroyed by a bulldozer after the Fair’s close in the fall of 1940. World’s Fairs were meant to be temporary and ephemeral, and it wasn’t shocking for structures or artworks to be demolished at the end.
But the destruction of Lift Every Voice speaks to the larger tragedy of Savage’s work and how little of it survives today. Leininger-Miller—who’s working on a biography of Savage—now estimates that of the approximately 160 documented works by Savage, about 70 have been lost, mostly because Savage never had the means or support to cast them in more durable material.
This was true of Lift Every Voice, as well. The common assumption is that Savage wanted it preserved, but wouldn’t have been able to pay for storing it or casting it. So, all we have left are the small, imperfect replicas, one of which is part of Renaissance Woman, along with a blown-up, life-sized photo of Savage and her work-in-progress, just to give a measure of what was lost
The statue on display at the World’s Fair (Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library)
Thwarted by never-ending racism and poverty, Savage left New York City in the 1940s for a rural life in Saugerties, NY, withdrawing from the art scene before her death in 1962. She’s best remembered today as a key mentor and educator in the Harlem Renaissance, and one of her often-repeated quotes takes pride in that, while betraying a heartbreaking resignation about her work. “I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work,” she said in a 1953 interview. Still, who knows what new attention to Savage’s life and career might bring? In 2017, a New York Times op-ed called for the full-scale re-creation of Lift Every Voice as a public work of art. Maybe one day, Savage’s monument will be her own.
CREDITS
Written by Kerrie Mitchell, Content Editor New York Historical Society Blog
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At present, politicians London and Washington are alert to Beijing’s attempts to exploit Anglo-American technology. They are weary of China stealing trade secrets, copying methodologies, or obtaining sensitive business data, whilst Western companies continue to seek admission to the Chinese market.
Over time, Britain and America themselves have been involved in acts of intellectual property theft. In fact, the United States accuses China of similar illicit practices that helped its nascent industry leapfrog that of European rivals and come out as an industrial giant. The means used today may be more sophisticated, but the purpose of gaining a competitive edge remains the same.
Fears of Espionage
Platform eleven at London’s Paddington Station hosts a tavern named the Isambard. This public house at one of the city’s main stations celebrates the genius of engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859). Father and son Brunel are notable examples of the contribution European migrants have made to Britain’s technological development.
Educated in England and France, young Brunel was by far the most versatile engineer of the nineteenth century, responsible for the design of tunnels, bridges, railways, and ships. His father, Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849), had fled his native country during the French Revolution, but experienced plenty of adversity in his early career.
Having accumulated heavy debts in London, he was sent to prison. With no prospect of release, Marc let it be known that he considered accepting an offer of employment by the Tsar of Russia. In August 1821, facing the prospect of losing an able engineer and fearing industrial espionage, the government cleared Marc’s debts in exchange for his continued service. By any government’s standards, it proved to be a wise decision.
In the age of Brunel, British authorities feared that foreign intruders were out to steal the secrets of the nation’s industrial success. Ironically, many prominent tool and instrument makers were immigrants themselves who had traveled from German-speaking states or the Swiss – Italian Como district and settled in British cities to contribute to the industrial miracle of the nineteenth century.
The names of John Weiss, John Henry Dallmeyer, Francis Amadio, Martinelli & Co., Ronchetti Brothers, or Negretti & Zamba deserve a special place in the history of London instrument makers.
One would assume that unease about commercial espionage only became an issue at the time of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. That is not the case. Fears of losing production “secrets” were expressed earlier, leading to legal steps to prevent this from happening.
Danish Intruders
There is a tendency to associate migration with the movement of people from poor countries to more developed ones. The arrival of Flemish and Dutch nationals during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in England proves that this is not the case.
Strangers from the Low Countries were either welcomed as (Protestant) refugees or invited to settle because of their technical skill and commercial competence. Professional craftsmen such as weavers, gardeners, painters, stone masons, and musicians (instrument makers) were encouraged to cross the Channel. English ambassadors in the Low Countries functioned as industrial and artistic “spies.”
As British technology surged forward, industrial (or economic) espionage became a topic that was new to the debate on international relations and migration. The illegal acquisition of trade secrets was a by-product of mechanization.
Industrialists tried to keep hold of their tools, manufacturing processes, and research data to protect their market share against competitors. The government passed an act banning the foreign sale of knitting frames as early as 1696. Other legislation would follow to prohibit the export of machinery and prevent skilled workers from leaving the country.
Despite restrictions, many machine makers and operatives were tempted to emigrate, whilst foreign visitors managed to smuggle drawings of machinery out of the country for replication at home.
In 1777, Thomas Bugge (1740-1815) became Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the University of Copenhagen. Keen to modernize the observatory on top of the city’s Round Tower (Rundetaarn, Europe’s oldest functioning observatory), and promote Denmark’s industry, he sent his student Jesper Bidstrup to London in 1787 to learn about the latest technological advances. Bugge recommended Bidstrup to his influential friend Joseph Banks who introduced the young man to leading instrument makers.
These masters ran a “closed shop.” They charged high fees for training apprentices, and their output was protected by the 1790 Tools Acts. Getting access to Jesse Ramsden’s famous dividing engine, a tool employed in making scientific instruments, was open solely to British traders.
With the help of a network of Masonic brethren, Bidstrup set up a workshop at 36 St Martin’s Lane, just off Leicester Square (where Isaac Newton once lived). Around 1793, he published a sale catalogue of “optical, mathematical and philosophical instruments made and sold by J. Bidstrup.” It was a perfect cover.
He spent ten years in London copying models, buying tube glass cutting machines and a dividing engine, before planning his return in 1797. Dismantled machines were loaded on board separate ships destined for Cuxhaven and Copenhagen. Bidstrup did not live to enjoy the fruits of his activities. He died in 1802. His machinery was impounded as state property and handed to other Danish instrument makers.
Den of Piracy
For eighteenth century America to build its economy, it needed skilled workers able to assemble machines acquired overseas (by whatever means). The young United States began as a “pirate nation,” getting hold illicitly of European technology to fuel its Industrial Revolution. Lacking a manufacturing base, America relied on theft.
The nation’s first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton aimed at jump-starting industrialization and advocated a system that would reward those who brought “secrets of extraordinary value” into the country. The acquisition of technology was essential for transforming the United States from an agrarian economy into a manufacturing power. In 1791, he set out his strategy to Congress in the seminal “Report on Manufactures.”
Hamilton argued that procuring European machinery was vital to the American economy. With Britain as a prime target, he and his assistant Tench Coxe encouraged state-sponsored theft of trade secrets, blueprints, and industrial tools, as well as recruiting mechanics. They supported individuals who engaged in these actions.
Marylander Thomas Digges was an illicit agent encouraging English and Irish textile workers to emigrate to the United States. George Washington praised him for his efforts to send “artisans and machines of public utility” to America. Federal patents were granted to individuals for technological inventions pirated from abroad. The upstart country was a den of piracy, a rogue nation.
The British government introduced restrictions on the export of technology and limit the migration of innovators or skilled workers. Foreign head-hunters were threatened with a year in prison for every Brit they recruited to work overseas, but the authorities proved unable to stop the flow of skills.
The brain drain had started long before invention of the term. The creative mind is not and will never be state-owned. The most telling case of a British entrepreneurial exodus was that of Samuel Slater (1768-1835), the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution.”
Slater the Traitor
Although cotton was grown in the United States, the country had no domestic textile manufacturing industry. The technology was British and remained closely guarded. In 1733, Lancashire-born John Kay had patented the “flying shuttle,” allowing a single weaver to work at much higher speeds.
Half a century later (1785), Nottinghamshire-born Edmund Cartwright invented the mechanical “power loom,” moving production from homes to factories. Skilled workers and tool makers stood in the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution. They were forbidden to leave the country.
Samuel Slater was born on June 9, 1768, in Belper, Derbyshire, into a farming family. Aged ten, he began work at a local cotton mill recently opened by Jedediah Strutt, using the water frame pioneered by Richard Arkwright. By the age of twenty-one, he had gained a thorough knowledge of the cotton spinning process.
He embodied skills the British government wanted to hold onto, but Slater learned of American interest in developing similar machines and was tempted by the generous financial rewards on offer. He was also aware of the legal ban on exporting designs and blueprints. He memorized all vital details of Arkwright’s operation, before leaving for the city of New York in 1789.
Having secured the backing of Rhode Island merchant Moses Brown, he constructed America’s first water-powered cotton spinning mill in 1790. Three years later, Slater and Brown opened their first textile factory at Pawtucket, Providence County.
Domestic textile manufacture grew rapidly, becoming America’s most important pre-Civil War industry. Cotton production became a central part of the nation’s early economy. It marked the beginning of a manufacturing boom for New England.
In the South, cotton became the chief crop (both for export and domestic use); the increase in production was stunning: from about 3,000 bales in 1793 to over 175,000 bales by 1800. Vast demand for cotton shaped the region’s harsh slave labor economy.
Slater eventually owned thirteen spinning mills, developing settlements of working families around them (child labor at the mills was a standard practice). One of these towns was Slatersville, Rhode Island. In Derbyshire people named him “Slater the Traitor,” as textile workers considered his move a betrayal that threatened their mills and livelihoods.
Slater’s extraordinary power of recollection was equaled by the Massachusetts industrialist Francis Cabot Lowell who, in 1812, toured England and Scotland. Visiting various textile mills, he closely observed their design and operations.
On his return journey, Lowell’s ship was searched by British customs officers on suspicion that he was in possession of industrial designs. They found nothing as Lowell had memorized the blueprints of Cartwright’s power loom. He built the first integrated textile mill in Massachusetts.
Intelligence Services
During the First World War, industrial espionage became state-sponsored economic warfare, disrupting supply chains, gathering intelligence on weaponry and shipbuilding, and sabotaging munitions production. As the battlefield had become mechanized, both the Allied and Central Powers faced the challenge of destroying the enemy’s manufacturing capacity.
The war compelled the creation of professional intelligence services. The post-war focus shifted towards stealing data related to aeronautics, electronics, or chemicals. Cold War espionage became a systematic effort to narrow (nuclear) research gaps, involving attempts by the Soviet Union and its allies to get hold of American atomic, military, and industrial secrets.
Japan’s rise as a global powerhouse started during the Meiji Restoration Era and was driven by technology acquisition, either by legal means or through espionage. The aim was to catch up with the West. The government sent students and officials to Europe and America to infiltrate universities and gather data.
The country’s rapid ascent (an “Economic Miracle”) during the 1970s and 1980s was fueled by espionage, particularly targeting Silicon Valley.
Industries closed the gap by obtaining (stealing) trade secrets in sectors such as semi-conductors and computing (in the 1982 “Japanscam,” employees from Hitachi and Mitsubishi were caught buying stolen IBM secrets). As Japanese companies evolved from copyists to innovators, they were forced to find ways of protecting their own intellectual property.
Today, China is the primary actor in the theater of espionage. The “China Threat” (in terms of the FBI) consists of spying efforts pursued by the Communist government. The country is competing with the United States to become the world’s superpower by supporting predatory business deals, theft of intellectual property, and aggressive cyber intrusions.
Economic and national security can no longer be separated. Some American analysts label China a “rogue state.” The irony is that the practice was justified in black and white by Alexander Hamilton in his 1791 report to Congress.
This article in the New York Times Started the 4 year process of Bringing the kiosk to the Island.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Monday, February 9, 2026 Ephemeral New York ISSUE #1624
Though its roots stretch all the way back to the Roman era, Valentine’s Day as a cultural holiday celebrating romantic love was firmly established by the 19th century.
New Yorkers at the time could honor the day by exchanging love letters, mailing cards decorated with hearts and cupids, or buying small gifts as tokens of affection. (Chocolate didn’t become a Valentine Day’s staple until 1861, when British chocolatier and marketing genius Richard Cadbury invented the heart-shaped box.)
Another way to honor the day was to attend Gotham’s annual Bachelors’ Ball.
This swanky event was held every February 13th or 14th, first at the posh City Hotel beginning in the 1820s and then a decade later at Niblo’s Saloon—a theater that was part of the popular Niblo’s Garden pleasure ground at today’s Broadway and Prince Street.
The purpose of these invitation-only events—put on by one or more clubs made up of actual bachelors—seems to be for elite unmarried men to meet and potentially match with eligible women of high social class.
Holding the balls on Valentine’s Day really underlines the ultimate goal of turning single men into husbands. In an article about the Bachelors’ Ball of 1842, the New-York Mirror weirdly summed up the yearly event this way:
The balls were not “to confirm bachelors in single wretchedness, but to lead them into the silken chains of matrimony gradually—imperceptibly—sweetly—like a midsummer’s night dream—only to awaken to the realities of a sober, happy, married life.”
“These are the results of the Bachelors’ Ball; therefore, sweet ladies, prepare your brightest smiles for St. Valentine’s Eve, and be determined, on this jocund and interesting occasion, to select, cautiously but firmly, the men worthy of your hearts and hands, for, on that night, many are the contracts made, which last for life, for weal or woe.”
There may have been interruptions that prevented the Bachelors’ Ball from being held every year. But they seemed to have lasted into the early 20th century, subsumed into the Gilded Age social world with an invite list of Vanderbilts and other young eligibles.
Is there a modern equivalent of the Bachelors’ Balls? With so many people unhappy with dating apps, maybe it’s time to put them back on the calendar and open them up to every love-seeking New Yorker.
CREDITS
[Top image: MCNY, 49.268.1; second image: Wikipedia; third image: The Evening Post, 1828; fourth image: The Evening Post, 1842; fifth image: NYPL Digital Collections]
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Weekend, February 7-8, 2026 Judith Berdy ISSUE #1623
Legacy in Motion
Presented in celebration of Black History Month
Exhibition on view: February 4 – March 1, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 7, 6–9 PM
Location: RIVAA Gallery, 527 Main Street, Roosevelt Island, NY 10044
Legacy in Motion offers a glimpse into the work, process, and innovation behind the craft, seen through the lens of Black creators and artists. This exhibition highlights the tools shaped by Black hands, the techniques refined through lived experience, and the creative labor that has often gone unseen. While masterpieces born from Black artistry are too often overlooked, the recognition of the tools, methods, and makers behind those works is acknowledged even less.
This exhibition brings that history forward, honoring both the creations and the creators, and illuminating the foundational contributions that have given rise to so many of the artistic mediums we celebrate today.
RIVAA’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The artists gather to celebrate the exhibit opening featuring a Performance Artwork and Panel Dicussion.
K_N-_IFE Camp Sesame Street
NOLAN Cardboard City
Mercy K. Edwards
1080p
1080p Big Perp
CREDITS
JUDITH BERDY
PHOTO OF THE DAY
THINK 10 WEEKS FROM NOW
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
I decided to try something new for lunch today, since the cold weather has been wearing on ability to get to the City safely.
I chose the new restaurant, PINKS CANTINA. Located in back of Starbucks the shop is brightl, cheerful and Alex the proprietor is most welcoming.
The restaurant is bright, cheerful and seats about 12 persons comfortably, The menu above the counter is clear and easy to understand, It is easy to use tbe monitor to choose your items and pay for your dinner.
The Menu Board closeup
After you place your order the server puts a ping pong type ball in a tube and it proceeds thru a tube around the walls and ends up on a Cantinko board (sort of Pancinko board) where it lands on different gifts, you get at your next visit. This reminds me of pneumatic tubes of the olden days and the modern AVAC tubes.
Stop by for a delicious meal and enjoy the fun atmospher for kids and adults.
CREDITS
JUDITH BERDY
PHOTO OF THE DAY
TIME TO CLEAR ALL THE BUS STOPS SO IT IS SAFE TO ENTER AND EXIT THRU THE REAR DOORS.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Concrete Jungle Orchid Show exhibition turns ordinary urban scenes into extraordinary floral arrangements!
