OVER 50 YEARS FROM TUBE PLACEMENT TO L.I.R.R.MIDTOWN DIRECT UNDER ROOSEVELT ISLANDDIRECTLY INTO GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL
We have an original of this 1971 brochure describing the process of building the 63rd Street tunnel. I will be glad to give you a clear copy for you to read.
Judith Berdy
MY TRIAL RUN
I decided to try to get to Jamaica thru the new line. I left Roosevelt Island on the F train to 42 Street Bryant Park. Exit train at rear and take staircase “S” shuttle thru new passage.
At the end of the passage you are on the “S” shuttle platform. Board the train for the 3 minute ride to Grand Central.
At Grand Central look for exit to the left directly into LIRR area.
You are now under the new One Vanderbilt building. You are exiting the subway system. Follow the signs to the LIRR, It is a rather long walk
Take the elevator or escalator down to LIRR area.
The directional signs are the best to follow. The map on the wall needs studying .You are walking south from 42 Street north to 48 Street under Vanderbilt Avenue. There are street entrances, which I have not explored, As you go along the concourse passage there is art, two public bathrooms (easy to find) and escalators leading down to a mezzanine level and then to the track levels. There are two track levels also. The track to the Jamaica train was 303 and easy to find. In simple terms there are 4 access points to each track from 45,46 47 a 48th Streets plus and entry from Park Avenue and Grand Central.
I did not worry, I figured this out after studying the map when I got home.
Since there are only shuttles running to Jamaica the next few weeks, the schedule indicated the schedule was ever 30 minutes.
There are graphics in light boxes all over the terminal. My favorite is the LIRR route map stretched out over 8 panels. Easy to read and vibrant!!!! Many mosaics decorate the vast walls. Too many to photograph and study today!
One the mezzanine level mosaics of wildlife decorate the panels. I feel this deer is lost in the woods,
Finally down to the track and on to the 1:59 p.m. local to Jamaica. I did find 3 lone vending machines in the terminal selling tickets. The conductor on the way out gave me a free ride, seeing my curiosity.
After local stops at Woodside, Forest Hills, & Kew Gardens we arrive at Jamaica. A MTA staff member gave me a map of Grand Central for me to study on the way home.
Twenty minutes later, I am back on the train to Grand Central. This conductor accepted my $5- fare for the in-city fare.
I met some wonderful, enthusiastic staff members and they should be proud of a project that took over 50 years and billions to complete.
FROM ED LITCHER: Fraunces Tavern is a museum and restaurant in New York City, situated at 54 Pearl Street at the corner of Broad Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. DeLancey built the current building as a house in 1719. The small yellow bricks used in its construction were imported from the Dutch Republic and the sizable mansion ranked highly in the province for its quality. His heirs sold the building in 1762 to Samuel Fraunces who converted the home into the popular tavern, first named the Queen’s Head. Periodically known as Boltons Tavern or The Coffee house.
ANDY SPARBERG, PAT SCHWARTBERG, HARA REISER, LAURA HUSSEY AND ARLENE BESSENOFF ALL GOT IT RIGHT!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK STATE 1971
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Washington, D.C., 1921 or 1922. “UnionStation waiting room.” National Photo Company Collection glass negative.
Circa 1906. “Union Station, Indianapolis.” If we step on it (but not in it) we just have time to make the 3:25 to Terre Haute. 8×10 glass negative
Cincinnati, Ohio, circa 1905. “Central Union Station.” You there in the window — get to work! 8×10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co.
Albany, New York, circa 1900. “N.Y.C. & H.R.R.R. station.” Temple of the New York Central and Hudson River Rail Road, topped off by a sculptural representation of Liberty and Justice over the state motto, EXCELSIOR. Also note the small sign behind the fire hydrant: DINNER NOW READY. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company.
Boston, Massachusetts, circa 1905. “North Station.” An update of this view. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
Worcester, Massachusetts, circa 1906. “Union Station.” Whose clock tower illustrates the campanile vogue in public architecture at its vertiginous peak. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.
Atlanta, 1864. “Federal Army wagons at railroad depot.” And maybe Scarlett O’Hara in the distance. Wet plate negative by George N. Barnard.
Circa 1905. “Union Station, Toledo, Ohio.” Completed in 1886; replaced by the Central Union Terminal of 1950. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Co
Circa 1900. “Union Station, Nashville, Tennessee.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.
Memphis, Tennessee, circa 1907. “Union Depot, Calhoun Street.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
Detroit circa 1909. “Union Depot, Fort and Third Streets.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, … Company. View full size. Detroit’s second station. This was the smaller, and in my mind more beautiful, of Detroit’s …
Circa 1902. “UnionStation, Pittsburgh.” Detroit Publishing Co. View full size. Upper … supposed to be standardized. That’s my favorite part! UnionStation Why were so many train stations named “UnionStation“? …
1906. “Savannah, Georgia — UnionStation.” (Did anyone think of calling it Confederate Station?) 5×7 inch dry … Publishing Company. View full size. Not that Union I’m sure you know this, but others might not. Many cities in the US …
New York ca. 1910. “Pennsylvania Station. Track level, main and exit concourses, stair entrance.” 8×10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co.
New Orleans circa 1910. “Terminal Station, Canal Street.” Demolished in 1956. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, … in 1956 after passenger service was relocated to the new Union Terminal. After station and tracks were removed the ground was landscaped …
1864. “Nashville, Tennessee. Rail yard and depot with locomotives.” Wet-plate glass negative by George N. Barnard.
Long Island RR Jamaica Station, looking west towards Manhattan, in early 1950s. The train on the right is steam-powered. The; the last such locomotive was retired in October 1955. Train on the left is an MP54 model electric train that was common all over the LIRR third rail lines until the last ones were retired in the early 1970s. Andy Sparberg
Laura Hussey also 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
The 1840s brought about a transformation in the nature of transatlantic shipping. With the development of European colonial empires, the forced transportation of African slaves had become big business.
Liverpool was the focus of the British slave trade. As a result of crusading abolitionist movements and subsequent legal intervention, the brutal practice declined there during that decade. But more or less simultaneously a new form of people trafficking took its place.
The flow of destitute migrants from Europe to the United States offered lucrative opportunities for Anglo-American shipping lines. The epoch established the cynical maxim that there is money in misery. Liverpool developed into the main port of departure for countless emigrants on the seemingly endless sea journey to New York. For all too many it proved to be a deadly voyage.
To this day, the image of migrants at sea remains an emotive but unresolved issue that has its roots in “business” models going back as far as the slave trade.
Liverpool & Slavery
Between 1550 and 1850, approximately twelve and a half million Africans were transported by English ships. Eleven million survivors landed in the West Indies and the Americas, the majority of whom were sold to Brazilian and Caribbean sugar plantations. The others went missing. Liverpool was central to Britain’s involvement. By the heyday of the Atlantic trade, one in six enslaved Africans made their forced journey aboard a Liverpool-registered ship.
In February 1781, with the 4th Anglo-Dutch War in full flow, the English brig HMS Alert captured the slave ship Zorg (meaning: care / caring) which operated from Middelburg delivering kidnapped Africans to the Dutch colony of Surinam to work on its plantations. Renamed rather oddly as Zong, she arrived at the Gold Coast of West Africa later that month where the slaver was purchased on behalf of a Liverpool syndicate led by James Gregson.
By the standard of similar ships, the Zong was small in size and designed to carry just under two hundred slaves. When she sailed from Africa in September 1781 bound for Jamaica, Captain Luke Collingwood had more than doubled the ship’s capacity, carrying 442 slaves in order to maximize profits.
When reaching a corridor near the equator known as “the doldrums” because of intervals of extreme heat and no wind, the ship sat stranded, short of water and food. Driven by the critical state of affairs, Collingwood gave the order that the numbers on board had to be reduced. Crew members threw 142 slaves over the side. On arrival, the insurers refused to pay the claim for compensation. The matter had to be settled in a British court.
The issues of who had committed the atrocity and why were not considered. The central question before the court was if the “lost cargo” was covered by insurance or not. A jury heard the dispute at London’s Guildhall in March 1783 and ruled in favor of the ship owners. The insurers appealed and the case came before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. The latter rejected the verdict by pointing to new evidence which suggested the Captain and crew were responsible for the tragedy (Collingwood had died three days after his ship reached Jamaica).
Those responsible for the Zong massacre were never brought to justice, but the tragedy exposed the brutality of a trade that reduced African lives to mere items of commerce. Reports of the massacre increased momentum for the abolitionist movement, although it would take another half century before the United Kingdom passed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
Massacre at Sea
J.M.W. Turner was an outstanding marine painter and many of his canvasses depict storms at sea in which ships are torn apart and sailors struggle to survive. His unfinished “A Disaster at Sea” (c. 1835) was based on a real incident, the loss of the Amphitrite in September 1833.
The ship had sailed from Woolwich, London, bound for New South Wales. On board were over one hundred female convicts and twelve children. Gale-force winds drove the ship on to a sandbank off Boulogne, but the captain refused all rescue offers. The ship broke up and only three people survived. What political system could justify such cruel treatment of women and children?
Soon after this attempt, the painter would turn his anger on one of the deep and continuing injustices of his age. In 1840 Turner first exhibited “The Slave Ship” (originally titled “Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying”) at London’s Royal Academy. It depicts a ship at the mercy of a tumultuous sea, leaving scattered human forms drowning in its wake.
The canvas was inspired by the tale of the Zong massacre in Thomas Clarkson’s The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade, the second edition of which had been published in 1839. The 1840 exhibition of the painting coincided with various international abolitionist campaigns (that same year, two anti-slavery conventions took place in London). A public display of this horrific event was intended to evoke a strong response to the barbaric slave trade. A powerful protest, Turner’s painting functioned as a call to political action.
To present-day viewers Turner’s manner of applying Edmund Burke’s concept that connects the Romantic “Sublime” with awe and terror when facing the forces of nature may be over-elaborate, but his contemporaries felt the full impact of this intensely dramatic approach. Abolitionists had found a formidable ally.
Migrant Trade
As the slave trade declined, Liverpool became engaged in another form of people trafficking by which greedy ship owners packed as many migrants as possible in the limited space on board to make spectacular profits. The city opened up the route across the Atlantic for countless European emigrants. It was – in all but name – a new slave trade.
When the influx of Irish migrants hit Liverpool with the start of the potato famine in 1845, an estimated 1.5 million desperate people crossed the Irish Sea heading for the city, three quarters of which then boarded ships to New York, Philadelphia or elsewhere.
Early migrant vessels were nicknamed “coffin ships” because of the horrific conditions on board and the number of people who did not survive the crossings. In 1847, 1,879 immigrants died on the voyage to New York, forcing governments to (reluctantly) impose regulations that would limit fatalities and improve the conditions of travel.
Whilst living in New York in 1818, British merchant Jeremiah Thompson had pioneered the concept of the sailing packet which was guaranteed to depart on schedule rather than (the traditional) waiting until its hold was full. Offering a time table, his Black Ball Line revolutionized the transatlantic trade. British and American merchants joined forces to take full advantage of the migration boom. The Liverpool firm of Caleb Grimshaw & Company, specialists in migration traffic, teamed up as agents for Thompson in 1842 to take charge of the Liverpool to New York route.
Sailing under the “New Line” flag, they secured passengers and freight for the Thompson packets (and many others). By 1845 the company was advertising a dozen or more ships at a time and dispatching them every five to seven days. Having changed the name to “Black Star,” the firm sent out more American migrant ships under their flag than any of its rivals.
Caleb Grimshaw
One of the vessels operated by Grimshaw was the wooden packet ship Caleb Grimshaw (named after the company’s late founder). Built at William Henry Webb’s shipyard in New York and launched in early 1848, she sailed from Liverpool’s Waterloo Dock to New York under command of Captain William Hoxie with a crew of thirty men, carrying a maximum of 427 migrants. Samuel Walters, Liverpool’s leading marine artist at the time, painted a portrait of the full-rigged ship in 1848.
The ship completed a total of five trips before disaster struck on her sixth crossing in November 1849 with 425 migrants aboard. A fire created panic and chaos. A lack of leadership drove some passengers to take matters into their own hands, lowering one of the ship’s boats which crashed into the water. Twelve people were swept away and drowned. Another boat was lowered by the crew, equipped with supplies of food and water for a select number of passengers.
The next morning, with the blaze raging, a boat was reserved for the captain’s wife and daughter who were joined by some of the first-class cabin travelers. Later that day Hoxie himself abandoned ship. The unfortunate migrants in steerage were left behind to fend for themselves, building survival rafts with remaining members of the crew on board.
Help arrived on the fourth day when the trading barque Sarah, sailing from London to Halifax, drew alongside. Her master David Cooke first rescued the passengers on the boats and rafts, leaving more than 250 passengers on board clinging to the burning wreckage. It took a total of ten days to save the last of the survivors and deliver them safely to the port of Flores in the Azores. When the Caleb Grimshaw finally sank, the lives of ninety migrants had been lost.
When news of the rescue spread in New York, Captain Cooke was granted the Freedom of the City and he and his crew shared a reward for their bravery. Although the tragedy caused angry exchanges in the British press, Captain Hoxie escaped official censure for leaving his ship prematurely. Questions were raised in Parliament as to the cause of the fire, but no one was held responsible or further action taken.
Art & Calamity
The pictorial representation of catastrophe in the centuries before the invention of photography took the shape of a visual commemoration of events with a narrative content. The 1666 Fire of London, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake or the 1794 eruption of Vesuvius were all treated in this manner.
More generally, disaster was treated as an allegory, demonstrating man’s insignificance when faced with the terrors of nature. Tiny painted figures face a panorama of atmospheric effects behind which hides the hand of a wrathful God. The might of a turbulent sea was there to remind us of our frailty and impermanence. This is the realm of mythological or Biblical retribution, the seascape of Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee” (1633). Even the loss of the Titanic was interpreted by some moralists as divine “punishment” for man’s hubris.
Over time artists have paid ample attention to violent phenomena such as armed conflict and warfare. In the seventeenth century grand battles at sea were a favorite theme of marine painters. It was not the suffering of sailors, but the grandiose spectacle of warships in combat that made such paintings popular.
Calamity – and more specifically: calamity at sea is a much rarer theme in art history. There are few painted reminders of disasters in which overloaded migrant ships ran by unscrupulous owners went down with the tragic loss of many lives. Turner’s brush had highlighted the viciousness of the slave trade, but the urgent need to artistically record the maltreatment of migrants was obscured.
Ford Madox Brown’s “The Last of England” depicts a couple of emigrants sailing away from the country. Created in 1855, the artist painted the scene in his Hampstead garden; he himself and his wife posed as “suffering” migrants. Since Turner, public taste had changed. Pain and anguish were covered with a sugar coating of sentimentality; the destructive powers of the elements tamed for domestic use; the troublesome subject of migration was sanitized. Brown’s image has persistently been named one of the nation’s favorite paintings.
The rather pathetic nature of this painting becomes clear when put in the context of real events. On October 1853 the migrant ship R.M.S. Tayleur was launched on the River Mersey. Designed by William Rennie of Liverpool, the vessel was built within six months and chartered by the White Line. She left Liverpool in January 1854 on her maiden voyage with 652 passengers and crew on board. The ship’s master was young and inexperienced; the crew consisted of ill-trained seamen some of whom did neither speak nor understand English.
In poor weather conditions, the ship drifted off course and ran aground on the east coast of Lambay Island, close to Dublin Bay, and sank. An inquest blamed its owners, accusing them of neglect for allowing the ship to depart with faulty equipment (compasses). The number of people who lost their lives in the disaster varies from three to four hundred, depending on source. There were over one hundred women on board. Three survived.
HARA REISER, GLORIA HERMAN, VICKI FEINMEL ALL GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: diagram (1787) of the Liverpool-launched slave ship Brookes; the vessel is known to have carried 609 slaves at one time; 1782 woodcut of the Zong massacre; The Slave Ship, 1840 by J.M.W. Turner (Tate Gallery, London); The Caleb Grimshaw, 1848 by Samuel Waters; Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633) by Rembrandt; The Last of England, 1855 by Ford Madox Brown (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery).
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
When you walk through the front doors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you enter a Neoclassical lobby that’s an architectural treasure in its own right—with dramatic archways, a marble floor, and a ceiling that seems to soar to the heavens.
But amid the coolness of the stone and marble, there’s a feature of the museum’s “Great Hall” that adds an aura of warmth and life: the giant urns that contain beautiful oversize fresh flower arrangements.
These lovely blooms change weekly; they tend to reflect the seasons. And just like every work of art displayed at the Met, there’s a story behind them.
The flowers were the idea of philanthropist Lila Acheson Wallace. In the late 1960s, she funded an endowment that would allow Met administrators to purchase and display weekly “starburst” flower arrangements throughout the lobby.
“An ephemeral addition to an otherwise timeless space, the florals change every Tuesday thanks to the generosity of a single donor, Lila Acheson Wallace, whose endowment in 1967 funded fresh flowers in perpetuity,” reported the New York Times in 2016.
Wallace, who with her husband founded Readers’ Digest in 1922, was a major benefactor of the Met. Museum-goers may recognize her name above the entrance to the Lila Acheson Wallace wing, which opened in 1987 to exhibit modern art.
Though she passed away in 1984, her endowment continues to grace the Great Hall and bring a sense of the present to a building famed for its antiquities.
For some years in the 1980’s I worked for a travel agency doing corporate business trips for employees of Reader’s Digest.
Reader’s Digest, based in Pleasantville, NY was a large worldwide privately owned business.
Lilia and DeWitt Wallace, aside from owning the publishing business were art collectors. Their headquarters was famous for the impressionist art on the walls of all the offices. From the staff I learned that the environment was lovely and lots of amenities that other 1980’s offices did not offer.
Some of my time at the agency, we booked trips for staff to Paris. Mrs. Wallace was on of the donors (mostly American) to fund the restoration of Giverny, Monet’s home outside Paris.
I did visit Giverny shortly after it opened and a plaque to the American’s generosity was on the wall.
In the late 1990’s and corporate restructuring the art collection was sold and only memories remain of the long closed campus.
Every time I visit the Met, I smile at the flower arrangements and the plaque acknowledging Lila Wallace.
CAN STREET BRIDGE ARON EISENPREISS AND ANDY SPARBERG GOT IT RIGHT!
One of the more ornate features of the West Side Elevated Highway was the bridge constructed over Canal Street and opened to the public in February 1939. In November 1982, the bridge was ripped down and sold for scrap. I’m not sure of the exact date of the photography above (courtesy the Library of Congress) but it’s clearly after the entire elevated highway was closed. Notice the weeds growing from the highway partition!
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
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
What the figures on the doors of a Third Avenue Gap store tell us about the building
The front doors caught my eye first. Heavy and bronze, these two doors at the entrance of the Gap store at Third Avenue and 85th Street feature intricate carvings and curious allegorical figures reminiscent of ancient Greece.
On one door, a woman balances a locomotive engine in her left hand and grips a caduceus in the right. Behind her is a sailing ship, and beside her head are the words “commerce and industry.”
The man on the opposite door holds a staff with a beehive at the top. In his other hand is a key, and at his feet a cornucopia. “Finance and savings” is inscribed at his shoulder.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Classical figures like these are pretty much the last thing you’d expect to find as you walk into the Gap. But the same set of doors also exist on the 85th Street side of the building, and the allegorical images offer a solid clue about what this unusually dignified building in the heart of Yorkville was built for.
The building was once the home of Yorkville Bank—an Italian Renaissance Revival structure built to serve this growing middle- and working-class immigrant neighborhood in 1905, according to a 2012 Landmarks Preservation Commission report.
The cast-bronze doors, fabricated by John Polachek Bronze & Iron Company of Long Island City, arrived after a renovation in the 1920s.
Four stories of limestone, brick, terra cotta, and granite, the building has the imposing, fortress-like look of a typical bank building from turn of the century New York City—when savings bank failures weren’t uncommon and financial institutions wanted to instill a sense of trust and strength to entice potential customers.
The allegorical figures are part of this strength and trust. The train the woman holds is a symbol of industry; the caduceus suggests commerce, according to the LPC report. The key in the man’s hands represents prudence, and the cornucopia is a sign of plenty.
Four stories of limestone, brick, terra cotta, and granite, the building has the imposing, fortress-like look of a typical bank building from turn of the century New York City—when savings bank failures weren’t uncommon and financial institutions wanted to instill a sense of trust and strength to entice potential customers.
The allegorical figures are part of this strength and trust. The train the woman holds is a symbol of industry; the caduceus suggests commerce, according to the LPC report. The key in the man’s hands represents prudence, and the cornucopia is a sign of plenty.
Thankfully the Gap kept the doors, as well as the charming “YB” (Yorkville Bank, of course!) inscription above them.
Aerial view of City Hall (left foreground) in Lower Manhattan. Domed building to the right is the New York World newspaper office. I’m not 100% sure, but I am guessing that the photo is taken from the top of 15 Park Row, a building completed in 1899 that was then the tallest in the world at 391 feet (31 stories). It originally was an office building; today it still stands, repurposed as an apartment building. More info from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Row_Building FROM ED LITCHER: pre-1900 aerial view of New York City Hall Park and the surrounding buildings, including City Hall, the New York County (Tweed) Courthouse behind City Hall and to the right, the buildings of Park (Newspaper) Row, the World (the copper domed building) the Tribune and the New York Times.
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
WE ARE SENDING THIS ISSUE OUT EARLY, SO YOU CAN SUBMIT THE SURVEY AND TAKE A WALK IN BLACKWELL PARK AND SEE THE CONDITIONS. BELOW ARE 10 YEAR OLD IMAGES OF PARK THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN UPDATED.
HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR AND WELCOME THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT ED LITCHER AND LAURA HUSSEY 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
ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Courtesy Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Henry Lyman Saÿen worked as an artist and scientist throughout his career. He acquired several patents for his inventions, which included a new type of X‑ray tube and a steel billiard ball. He traveled to Paris in 1906 to produce illustrations for a New York department store and joined Henri Matisse’s class. Saÿen was one of the first painters to introduce modern art into the conservative culture of Philadelphia, and his large vibrant images of landscapes and still lifes shocked many people. An assistant at the department store even told the artist that “if that is the way you paint you will never put shoes on your child’s feet.” World War I forced Saÿen to return to Philadelphia, where he spent his weekends at his friend Carl Newman’s summer home, painting the Huntington Valley landscape. (Breeskin, H. Lyman Saÿen, 1970)
H. Lyman Saÿen, Self-Portrait, 1910-1913, encaustic on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation, 1967.6.17
H. Lyman Saÿen, Zinnias, 1909-1912, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation, 1967.6.23
H. Lyman Saÿen, The Thundershower (study for painting), ca. 1916, tempera, pencil and printed paper on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation, 1968.19.6
H. Lyman Saÿen, Valley Falls I, 1915, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation, 1968.19.1
H. Lyman Saÿen, Rooftops, Paris, 1909-1912, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation, 1967.6.15
H. Lyman Saÿen, Notre Dame, ca. 1907, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Colonel Harrison K. Sayen, 1967.137
H. Lyman Saÿen, Child in Rocker, ca. 1916, opaque watercolor on paper mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation, 1967.6.3
H. Lyman Saÿen, Portrait of a Girl, 1909-1914, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation, 1967.6.13
H. Lyman Saÿen, Daughter in a Rocker, 1917-1918, tempera and collage on wood, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation, 1967.6.4
THE FORMER STEINWAY HALL THAT HAS BEEN INCORPORATED INTO NEW BUILDING AT 111 WEST 57 STREET. JAY JACOBSON, THOM HEYER,, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT RIGHT. FROM ED LITCHER:
111 West 57th Street, also known as Steinway Tower, is a supertall residential skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Developed by JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group, it is situated along Billionaires’ Row on the northside of 57th Street near Sixth Avenue. The main portion of the building is an 84-story, 1,428-foot (435-meter) tower designed by SHoP Architects and completed in 2021. Preserved at the base is the 16-story Steinway Building (also Steinway Hall), a former Steinway & Sons store designed by Warren and Wetmore and completed in 1925, which originally carried the address 111 West 57th Street.
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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Manhattan’s 57th Street, the world’s “most expensive” street, was laid out and opened in 1857 as the city of New York expanded northward.With the Hudson and East Rivers on either end, the area was until then largely uninhabited and clustered with small factories and workshops. As late as the 1860s, the area east of Central Park was a shantytown with up to 5,000 squatters.Half a century later it was Manhattan’s cultural heart and an intercontinental meeting place of artists, collectors and dealers.
57th StreetIn 1823, society doyenne Mary Mason Jones inherited the wasteland of what is today Fifth Avenue & 57th Street from her father, the President of Chemical Bank. In 1868 she commissioned architect Robert Mook to build her a spectacular mansion in the mode of a French chateau along with a row of similar marble dwellings (the project was completed in 1871). The block of five between 57th & 58th Street was treated as a single unit. After Jones moved into her corner mansion, she rented the remaining four to others in her social circle.Her initiative had an immediate impact. In the mid-1870s, wealthy New Yorkers began to put up “choice” family residences in a mixture of styles, from brownstone mansions to French chateaux and Gothic palaces. These grandiose erections were interspersed with structures dedicated to the arts.During the 1890s and early-twentieth century an artistic hub developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue to Broadway. Predating the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891, the thirty-eight Osborne Apartments at 205 West 57th Street were built to provide soundproof residences for musicians. During the mid-1920s, the piano showrooms of Chickering Hall and Steinway Hall were developed there. The composer Bela Bartok spent the last year of his life at 309 West 57th.On the south side of the street studio apartments were constructed that offered artists the advantage of light from the north, including the Rembrandt Studios at 152, Sherwood Studios at 58 (both demolished), and Rodin Studios at 200 West 57th Street. Childe Hassam worked in a double-height studio at 130 West 57th. The same street also served as headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Art Students League, and the Architectural League of New York.
Durand-Ruel Gallery
In 1839 Jean-Marie-Fortuné Durand and Marie-Ferdinande Ruel set up an art shop at 1 Rue de la Paix in Paris, naming it the Galerie Durand-Ruel. In 1865, their son Paul Durand took over the family business and moved the gallery to 16 Rue Lafitte with an additional branch at 111 Rue Le Peletier.During the 1860s and early 1870s he represented the landscape painters of the Barbizon School. He then became intrigued by a group of young Impressionist painters who, at the time, were lambasted by the critics and ridiculed in the press. When he filled three rooms of his Le Pelletier gallery with paintings for the second impressionist show in 1876, French critics were viciously hostile.Durand’s dealings with American collectors began during the 1860s, but were initially kept to short-term ventures such as exhibitions in Boston and Philadelphia. Struggling to make a living in Paris, he packed up some three hundred works in forty-three crates and sailed to America. In April 1886, the American Art Association (AAA) used its premises at 6 East 23rd Street to present a major exhibition of French Impressionism. The show consisted of 289 paintings that were assembled from Durand-Ruel’s stock.The favorable reception of the exhibition motivated him to open permanent quarters at Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street. It proved to be the cornerstone to his phenomenal success. Durand’s name became interlocked with the migratory history of Impression. He turned Manhattan into an Impressionist haven.Durand-Ruel & Sons was the official name of his venture which by 1893 included the participation of his sons Joseph, Charles and Georges. Having moved the firm’s location to 12 East 57th Street in 1912, the pioneering gallery supported a new breed of American art lovers in their foundation of some important private collections which, in turn, would form the basis of major museum holdings.Motivated by the success of Durand-Ruel, other galleries soon followed suit and relocated to “arty” 57th Street. It was just a matter time before additional exhibition spaces and auction houses opened up in the immediate vicinity. One of the newcomers was a young man named F. Valentine Dudensing.
Valentine & Foujita
Foujita exhibition the Valentine Dudensing GalleryIn 1926 the Dudensing name was well known in New York. Born in 1892, Valentine was the third generation of his family to be engaged in the art business. His grandfather Richard had emigrated from Germany in 1853 and worked as an engraver and printer.
In 1904 his father Frank opened the Dudensing Galleries at 45 West 44th Street, specializing in Barbizon School paintings and the work of young American artists. Valentine joined him after graduation in 1913. It was, from a dealer’s point of view, an exciting time. In the wake of the Armory Show there was a sudden interest in and enthusiasm for modern (European) art.
During a trip to Paris in the early 1920s, Dudensing became acquainted with Pierre Matisse, the painter’s younger son. Together, they conceived the project of a gallery managed by Dudensing in New York, while Matisse organized and curated art from Paris.
The F. Valentine Dudensing Gallery opened on February 8th, 1926, at 43 East 57th Street with an exhibition of work by the Franco-Japanese painter Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita. It was the artist’s first American showing. While his work was acclaimed in Parisian circles (he was hailed as the “Japanese Ingres”), his work was virtually unknown in New York.The artist’s obsession with the female nude was highlighted with Déese de la neige (1924), a painting over six feet in length. Dudensing sold the painting of this lady with “porcelain” skin to Carl Weeks, a collector from Des Moines, Iowa, and owner of the highly profitable Armand cosmetics company who, at the time, was in the process of building Salisbury House, a grand manor that he planned to fill with his extensive art collection (the painting was donated to the Fogg Art Museum in 1974 by the owner’s son).The New York gallery was instantly hailed as an important venue for contemporary art. The show’s success was in part due to the gallery’s ground-breaking décor of pale grey walls, bare floors and abundant natural light from south-facing windows. Valentine created a Continental model that would followed by other Manhattan galleries. In 1927 he changed its name to the Valentine Gallery to distinguish it from his father’s art firm.
Valentine & Picasso
The Dudensing-Matisse partnership was hugely successful and lasted until 1931 when Matisse decided to open his own gallery in the Fuller Building on 57th Street where, for about six decades and some three hundred exhibitions, he introduced to New York some of the latest European art. He also promoted the careers of emerging American talent.Valentine’s program alternated between shows of contemporary French art, arranged with Matisse’s help as an agent and shows of American artists organized by Dudensing. The gallery presented the first American solo exhibitions of many (now household) names, including Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and others. In addition Dudensing arranged retrospectives of the work of Henri Matisse, Chaïm Soutine and Maurice Utrillo.Valentine and his wife Margaret [Bibi] van der Gros, an American artist who had studied in Paris, befriended Picasso during the late 1920s. In a letter of November 1928 he complained to Matisse that he had been unable to find buyers for Pablo’s work, but his fortunes would change rapidly. In early December that same year he sold a 1906 gouache Woman with Kerchief to the prominent New York attorney and collector T. Catesby Jones. The latter was one of a small group of Picasso collectors in the city who had purchased work from other sources, either in Paris or elsewhere.This sale seemed to have been the catalyst Valentine needed to begin handling and promoting the artist’s work. According to its sales records, the gallery sold six Picassos in 1929 and seven in 1930. This sudden interest motivated Dudensing to present the first Picasso exhibition at the Valentine, by then located at 69 East 57th Street.Making initial arrangements for the show, Matisse visited Picasso in April 1930 and reported that the artist was very keen on the project and promised to lend pictures. Abstractions by Picasso opened in early January 1931 with works dating from 1914 to 1930 and became one of the gallery’s most notable exhibitions. It gained Dudensing the reputation as a leading dealer and connoisseur of Picasso’s work.Just days after Abstractions show closed, he was alerted to the fact that Pablo’s masterpiece Family of Saltimbanque (1905) was offered for sale. The painting had been owned since 1915 by Hertha Koenig, a private collector in Munich, who had pledged it as collateral for a bank loan on which she defaulted. Dudensing immediately alerted Chester Dale and negotiated a deal on his behalf. The painting was shipped to America and put on view at New York’s Museum of French Art. Today it is part of the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Spanish Refugees
Throughout the 1930s Dudensing sold more works by Picasso than any other European artist and he did much to promote and establish the painter’s reputation in America. He included Picasso’s paintings and drawings in numerous group exhibitions over the years and mounted seven solo shows between 1931 and 1939.
Early in the Spanish Civil War, the country’s Republican government commissioned Picasso to paint a mural for the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. Living and working in the capital, Picasso read in horror of the April 1937 German carpet bombing of Guernica, a Basque town that had sided with the Republicans against Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces. The latter had authorized the attack as a means of intimidating his opponents in the region. More than a thousand residents were killed.
In 1939, Picasso placed the painting in the care of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and decreed that it would not return from exile until democracy was restored in Spain. In May that year the American Artists’ Congress, chaired by the industrialist and gallery owner Sidney Janis, helped organize an American tour of Guernica along with a set of related drawings in order to raise funds for refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War.
Although MoMA’s new Goodwin/Stone Building at 11 West 53rd Street had opened that same month with enormous publicity, Picasso did not want the painting to be shown there fearing that the commotion would deflect attention from the serious purpose of the occasion. Janis selected the Valentine Gallery as the painting’s venue not only because its main room could accommodate the large painting, but also in recognition of Dudensing’s personal relationship with the artist.
The gala opening on May 4, 1939, was attended by nearly one hundred guests, including the former premier of the Spanish Republic, Juan Negrín, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; and many other dignitaries. Two thousand visitors paid the admission fee to see Guernica during the show’s four-week run in New York. It left Willem de Kooning in awe; Jackson Pollock visited the gallery on various occasions to closely study the painting; for Lee Krasner it was a deeply emotional experience.
The painting was put on display in the Stendhal Gallery Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Chicago Arts Club, before returning to New York for a Picasso retrospective at MoMA. By then war had begun in Europe and dealers were feeling its effects. New York’s art world was changing. An influx of dealers fleeing the Nazis stiffened competition in the modern art market. One recent arrival from Berlin was Curt Valentin who opened the Buchholz Gallery at 32 East 57th Street in 1938 (in 1951 renamed as the Curt Valentin Gallery). Although Jewish, the latter had gained permission from the Nazi authorities to sell German art in America to help fund Hitler’s war efforts. The similarity between names caused confusion (which continues to this today).
In the spring of 1947, without a murmur to the press, the doors to the Valentine Gallery were left shut as the owner and his wife had quietly moved to France. Once Manhattan’s most influential dealer had departed, his name was soon forgotten. The man who had made Pablo Picasso a widely admired painter throughout the United States, lived his final years in obscurity tending to his cattle and vineyards.
Spain’s transition to democracy led to the approval of the 1978 Constitution. In 1981, eight years after Picasso’s death and an exile of forty-two years, Guernica arrived in Madrid for the very first time.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: Mary Mason Jones’ marble mansion in 1917/8 (demolished in 1929); portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, c. 1910 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (The National Gallery, London); Foujita exhibition the Valentine Dudensing Gallery, East 57th Street, February 1926; Tsuguharu Foujita, Deésse de la neige, 1924 (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA); Picasso exhibition at the Valentine Gallery, November 1937; and Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso (Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid).
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The coffee habit was introduced into Western Europe in the mid-seventeenth century. The emergence of the London coffeehouse transformed various aspects of intellectual and commercial life. Lloyd’s insurance, the postal system and the auction house are some of the institutions that trace their origins back to the coffeehouse.
At a time that journalism was in its infancy, the coffeehouse provided a center of communication and news dissemination. It served as a forum of discussion, often becoming a hotbed of political strife and faction. Coffeehouse culture helped shape the public sphere of the Enlightenment.
Paris added its own dimension to the rise of the café. The political events of the 1790s released French chefs from aristocratic patronage. Facing a competitive market, they set up cafés and bistros to cater for a new clientele in abandoned hotels or basement localities. Offering a menu of modestly priced stews and slow cooked food, the Parisian café-bistro attracted a mostly young and bohemian clientele of students and artists. It became a center of aesthetic argument and artistic renewal and a drinking den for absinthe addicts.
Coffee culture in Greenwich Village followed the Parisian example. The mass settlement of immigrants as well as an influx of students and artists into this low rent district created a lively and buoyant atmosphere in cafés and small eateries where art and (anarchist) politics were hotly debated. It all began at a venue in Washington Place.
Paris & London
Until the end of the nineteenth century, the École des Beaux Arts in Paris controlled all aspects of artistic life in France. To aspiring painters and sculptors, it offered the only means of public art education and exhibition and as such became a stifling presence. The Academy came under attack at the same time that Baron Haussmann modified the face of Paris on behalf of Emperor Napoleon III.The effects of reconstruction went far beyond the physical appearance of the cityscape. The psychological impact of renovation enhanced the awakening consciousness of modernity. In the artistic break from the Academy, the Parisian café-bistro became a social institution and a symbol of modern life and art. The Café Guerbois and La Nouvelle Athènes played a major role in the emergence of Impressionism.Similar French-inspired developments took place in London. Daniel Nicholas Thévenon was a Burgundy-born wine-seller. Facing bankruptcy, he and his wife Célestine Lacoste fled to London in October 1863 where he assumed the name Daniel Nicols. In 1865 the couple took over a shop in Glasshouse Street, turning it into Café Restaurant Nicols. Having enlarged the premises in 1867, they renamed it Café Royal.Increasingly, the café attracted a bohemian clientele, including artists such as James McNeill Whistler, Augustus John and Auguste Rodin. During the early 1890s the café was frequented by Oscar Wilde and friends. By 1892 it was advertising itself as the “most brilliant, and best known Anglo-French café in the world.”Some of London’s intimate foreign restaurants were a magnet to young artists. Austrian cook Rudolph Stulik, who had reputedly been chef to Emperor Franz Josef, was proprietor of the Hôtel de la Tour Eiffel in Percy Street, Fitzrovia. In exchange for free meals, the owner-chef was given works of art to decorate his establishment.It was here that Wyndham Lewis launched the Vorticist magazine Blast in 1914. William Roberts depicted The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel in 1915. This group portrait includes Rudolph Stulik himself and Joe, the waiter at the house. Patronage of the arts was moved to a different level and location.
The VillageIn the sixteenth century, the marshland what is now Greenwich Village was known as Sapokanikan (“tobacco field”) and inhabited by Indigenous People who fished the trout-filled Minetta Creek, then one of Manhattan’s large natural watercourses. The area was named “Noortwyck” by Dutch settlers who cleared pastures and planted crops. By 1713, it was referred to as Grin’wich (Groenwyck) and the area developed as a green suburb that supplied the metropolis with fresh produce.An outbreak of cholera in New York during the late 1700s and early 1800s drove people away from the city, seeking refuge in this neighborhood which led to a substantial increase in population. Losing its farming nature, the re-developed area saw an influx of merchants and tradesmen.During the second half of the nineteenth century the character of the neighborhood changed again once immigrants from Ireland, France and Italy started settling in considerable numbers. The Village transitioned to a culture of ethnic and cultural diversity which was further accelerated by the expansion of New York University and associated cultural institutions.With prosperous New Yorkers starting to leave Greenwich’s labyrinth of streets and lanes and move northward, the availability of low rent housing and a growing reputation for non-conformism attracted both students and artists to the district. At the turn of the twentieth century, Greenwich boasted a dynamic and predominantly young population. The Village became synonymous with creativity and artistry.In 1901 a sixteen year old youngster entered the United States from a small town in rural Moldavia. Her father was a nomad Roma; her mother a Romanian Jew. Having settled as one of the newcomers in the Village, Marie Marchand played a key role in developing the bohemian character that was to define the neighborhood for generations to come. She would be crowned Queen of Greenwich Village.
The Making of Romany MarieMarie arrived in New York with $150 in her pocket and found work as a seamstress in the unforgiving environment of sweatshops. She fought her way through and brought her mother and sisters to New York. The family lived on the lower East Side near the Ferrer Modern School which offered workers free adult education. Marie supported the school’s activities and in doing so she met a number of artists and thinkers who later became her patrons.Founded in 1910 and first located at 6 St Marks Place, the school was based on the model of the Esquela Moderna founded by Catalan educator Francisco Ferrer, whose politically motivated execution in 1909 had sparked outrage in European and American left-wing circles. It inspired the founding of New York’s Francisco Ferrer Association and the pledge to start a school for adults and children with a curriculum that was based upon an anti-church, anti-state and anti-authoritarian philosophy.When the school opened its doors in September 1911, the New York Times reported that the occasion was attended by a “mass meeting of Socialists, Anarchists, Rationalists, Libertarians and radicals in general.” Initially, the Modern School offered adult classes in contemporary politics, history and English language (for immigrants) as well as lectures on art, literature, music and theatre. It was an atmosphere in which Marie’s fiercely independent mind flourished.Once she had mastered English, she joined a theater and attended anarchist meetings and rallies hosted by the likes of Emma Goldman and others. She began inviting like-minded souls to her home, feeding and entertaining them in a Roma tradition of communal hospitality. Her Continental cooking skills were appreciated; friends and guests encouraged her to start a bistro.In 1914, Marie opened her first café on the corner of Sheridan Square at 133 Washington Place in the West Village. The rented space was located on the third floor of a four-story building with poor amenities and outdoor toilets. For years she had no electricity, candles furnishing the only lighting, but for many of her clients Romany Marie became a second home. The place was filled artists, writers, philosophers and vegetarians – the Greenwich “intelligentsia.
Marie created a Left Bank of her own, her very personal interpretation of a Parisian café. She was renowned for Turkish coffee, which she would serve with a complimentary reading of the patron’s fortune, putting on a show every night dressed in colorful outfits, her arms and fingers decorated in shiny bracelets and jewellery.In 1915 Marie moved her bistro to 20 Christopher Street. It was at this location that her name became widely known and associated with bowls of 35-cent Romanian chorba (a stew with vegetables and meat).Over a period of three decades, the eatery changed addresses at least a dozen times. Marie herself always lived in the same building, maintaining that feeling of home at each location which was so important to her. She would leave a note overnight: the “Caravan has moved” and change place. Her faithful “tribe” would follow her wherever she chose to settle.
Volcano of CreativityMarie’s persona has been described as attractive, lively and generous. She would feed anyone in the Village as long as she was offered an exchange of art or good company. Marie never cared about opulence; her cafés were there to sustain the creative mind and stomach. She was a local mother of the arts, always offering support to struggling artists. The walls of her restaurant were full of local works of art which she considered a fair barter for a decent bite to eat.Marie’s proprietorship made her bistro feel and look more like a Parisian salon than a traditional New York styled eating place. At any time, any number of Village notables could be found in her establishment, working quietly on their next novel or debating politics or philosophical issues with friends and strangers. It has been said that Marie kept alcoholic Eugene O’Neill alive in 1916/7 by making sure that he would eat rather than drink.The intriguing figure of Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller, architect, engineer, designer, poet and bohemian polymath, was one of Marie’s regulars. He would turn up several times per week to give ‘thinking out loud’ lectures to fellow locals. He described his friend and hostess as “a Vesuvius of creativity in heart and mind.”
Marie managed a “patron’s table” where interesting or entertaining people would gather in conversation around a fireplace, be they anarchists, artists or Arctic expeditioners from the nearby Explorers Club. Her table was a hub of creativity. Poet Edna St Vincent Millay was a regular and often asked Marie to interpret the grounds in her cups of Turkish coffee. She apparently noted down the famous line “my candle burns at both ends” in Marie’s establishment.
Romanian modernist sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, whose work was the rage in Paris in the early 1900s, introduced Henri Matisse to her. Painter Stuart Davis, a daily patron, produced a watercolor in 1912 of Romany Mary’s interior. A decade later John French Sloan, the painter of so many iconic New York streetscapes, etched an inside view of the Christopher Street location (he was also responsible for Marie’s painted portrait in 1920).
Legacy
Romany Marie’s time as an entrepreneur was not without problems. The generosity and radical spirit that she brought to life and business were at odds with making a profit or paying rent. Benefits on her behalf were held amongst friends and supported by locals. Marie somehow remained in charge and kept supplying food to both hungry and talented fellow Villagers.
When she died in February 1961, Marie’s life was endearingly remembered by generations of artists, writers and activists. Her nephew Robert Schulman subsequently chronicled her life in an entertaining biography.
Marie Marchand’s story is a tale that highlights the newcomer’s strength of character and pioneering drive. Young and courageous, she adapted to her new metropolitan environment, learned language and local customs, and used her charm to create an eccentric environment of hospitality, friendship and creative endeavor.
The Romany Queen single-handedly introduced “La Vie Bohème” to New York City. The Village owes her a statue and celebrate this migrant’s irrepressible spirit.
SACRED HEART CHURCH LOCATED ON THE EAST SIDE OF ISLAND JUST NORTH OF R.I. BRIDGE, WHERE TENNIS COURTS ARE NOW.
TO THE EDITOR:
In response to Having a Past, but No Future by Penelope Green, I am struck by the following. Many years ago I had the rare privilege of getting a tour of Hart Island. A number of the structures there that have long stayed with me are now under threat of demolition because, according to the DOB, they are structurally unsound. DOB has already allowed such other structures as the irreplaceable 14 Gay Street & 351-55 West 14th Street/44-54 Ninth Avenueto deteriorate until demolition seems most logical to them. To quote Judith Berdy of Roosevelt Island Historical Society, “remaining buildings could be preserved as stabilized ruins echoing the history of the island.” Will someone please tell that city department the importance of retaining physical structures that connect us to our past?
Joyce Gold
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: Au bistro, without date (Private collection) by John French Sloan, Romany Marie, 1920 by Jean Béraud (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York); Romany Marye [Marie] in Christopher Street, 1922 by John Sloan (The MET, New York); Romany Marie’s, 1912 by Stuart Davis (Private collection); and Marie Marchand in front of her restaurant door in New York, c. 1947 (Getty Images).
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
In the latest short film released by Unforgotten Films, you might be watching some of the final pieces of footage of the abandoned buildings on Hart Island. Eighteen of the crumbling historic structures were slated for demolition in an emergency order issued by the Department of Buildings in 2021. Since then, the neglected structures have continued to decay as they await the blow of the wrecking ball.
Hart Island has been used as a public burial ground since 1869. Civil War veterans, individuals who died of AIDS-related illness, and COVID-19 victims are just a few of the types of people who have been interred there. In 2021, the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation and the NYC Department of Social Services took over management of the island from the NYC Department of Corrections. Before the transfer, inmates of Rikers Island dug the graves. In addition to over a dozen buildings built between the early 1800s and mid-1900s, there are estimated to be over one million people buried on the island. In 1991, all uses of the island for purposes other than as a public cemetery ceased, but it did serve many different functions until then.
The Historic District Council created a report of 18 significant sites on the island including a Cold War-era Nike Missile launch site, an 1885 asylum, a 1930s chapel, a mid-century baseball field, and a 1912 dynamo building. While many of the extant buildings have historic and cultural value, the Department of Buildings has nonetheless deemed them unsafe and beyond repair. Citing the city’s emergency demolition order, the New York Times reported that “modern field offices for Hart Island operations, two decommissioned Cold War-era Nike missile silos, and a peace monument built by prisoners in the 1940s” will be spared from demolition and fenced off. Everything else will be razed.
The emergency nature of the demolition order allows the $52 million plan to skip the usual environmental review process and public hearings. This is a major point of contention for many preservationist groups and individuals who have a personal connection to the island and want to have a say in the fate of the structures. According to the New York City Parks Department, “all buildings in the scope of the current demolition project have been photographed and their histories recorded as part of Historic American Buildings Survey Level 2 status.”
Unforgotten Films has reached out to the Parks Department for comment and Untapped New York has sent inquiries to the Comptroller’s Office, the New York City Department of Design and Construction, and the Department of Buildings. [Update] The New York City Parks Department has responded to Untapped New York’s request for comment. “Decades of deterioration rendered the Hart Island buildings unsafe, necessitating DDC’s active emergency demolition work on our behalf,” the Department told Untapped New York, “it is expected to be completed early this year.”
Access to Hart Island remains extremely limited, with just two public visits open every month, an issue that Unforgotten Films calls attention to. While there is hope for expanded access now that the operation of the island falls to the Parks Department, all that will be left of the historic buildings are videos and photographs.
My first visit to Hart Island was in 1999, when Bernard Kerik was Corrections Commissioner. We were the first group of historians, relatives and press to visit the island which was under the administration of the Corrections Department.
To reach Hart Island you leave from a ferry pier on City Island for a 5 minute ferry ride,
We walked around the island viewing the abandoned church, power house, nuclear warhead silo, and other structures. I clearly remember an area with a memorial to soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic. The obelisk was still there though the bodies had been moved to Cypress Grove Cemetery in Queens.
In successive visits our phones and cameras were removed from our possession, we were shuttled around the island by bus and not permit to wander. Luckily, the Corrections Department is gone with its prohibitive visitation rules.
Parks has had to come up with plans to make the island welcoming, respectful and environmentally designed. This should include preserving the built history on Hart Island.
The remaining buildings could be preserved as stabilized ruins echoing the history of the island. For decades Hart Island served so many purposes and to obliterate history is a disgrace.
HONEY LOCUST PARK FORMERLY 14 HONEY LOCUST PARK EAST 59 STREET BETWEEN 1 & 2 AVENUES
ALEXIS VILLAFARE, GLORIA HERMAN AND JUDY & BARRY SCHNEIDER. ALL GOT IT RIGHT!!!! FROM ED LITCHER:
This park is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation (DOT). In September 1938, DOT issued a permit to NYC Parks that allowed indefinite use of the space as a public park. The park was informally called Gateway Park, possibly due to its proximity to the bridge roadway entrance, until it was formally named in 1996. For many years it was maintained by the community as a neighborhood garden and sitting area.
In 1980, NYC Parks requested to extend the permit boundaries to include the entire block along 59th Street, between First and Second Avenues. The park was extended to its current boundary, though bridge maintenance and utility vehicle parking necessitated continued joint occupancy of the site until the Department of Environmental Protection, which had been using it for staging nearby water main improvements, relinquished the site in 2018.
In 2022, NYC Parks redesigned the park to include seating and new plantings that offer respite from the imposing bridge and surrounding traffic, while allowing DOT access to perform maintenance and repair to the bridge.
NYC Parks Commissioner Henry Stern formally named the site Fourteen Honey Locusts Park in October 1996, ostensibly after the Honey Locusts that stretched the city block. The name was ultimately shortened to Honey Locust Park in 2019.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
