The five boroughs house 83 museums, with the heaviest concentration on a one-mile stretch of Fifth Avenue on Manhattan’s East Side. The Metropolitan Museum stands at 80th Street, hugging Central Park, from which it has taken substantial property over the years. The NYBG points out that the replica uses cinnamon curls to recall the Met’s Ionic columns.
(Left) Classic New York row houses, some demolished (Right) The elegant National Arts Club is located at 15 Gramercy Park South.
The Frick Collection, a favorite with New Yorkers and especially European tourists, stands ten blocks away from the Met at Fifth Avenue and 70th Street. “The Met is admired, but the Frick is beloved,” says architecture critic Paul Goldberger, comparing New York City’s largest and wealthiest museum with its reserved Fifth Avenue neighbor, which recently reopened after years of renovation.
“Are those mushrooms, daddy?” asked the little boy to my left. Yes, indeed, the Guggenheim has been recreated with shelf fungus. “I think Frank Lloyd Wright would approve,” says Dolan, referring to the Guggenheim’s famously irascible architect. The Guggenheim is both a New York City landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a private college founded by Peter Cooper in 1859, was tuition-free for most of its history. Its alumnae include renowned architects, engineers, and artists, such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Milton Glaser, Lee Krasner, and Thomas Edison. Appropriately enough for the train show, Cooper was an industrialist who designed and built the first American steam locomotive.
Similarly, the replica of Grand Central has columns of sticks, stone walls mimicking limestone, huge rounded windows, and three detailed statues of Hercules, Mercury, and Minerva, representing strength, commerce, and wisdom.
MORE IMAGES TOMORROW…
HANSA AND DORIS DISPLAY LOVELY HOLIDAY ART AT THE CARTER BURDEN OLDER ADULT CENTER.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
HOW WAS DAY ONE ON THE NEW COMMUTE ON THE M TRAIN?
CREDITS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
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.
This tucked-away holdout house in East Midtown was built 3 years afer the end of the Civil War
All around it are structures you expect to see in the contemporary office enclave west of Lexington Avenue known as East Midtown—imposing facades, lots of glass, buildings that try to make a statement.
When it was completed in 1868, this lovely little survivor was not designed to stand out. It may have been built as an outlier, but it was likely part of a row of identical houses meant to appeal to upper middle class buyers enriched by the city’s gangbusters post-Civil War economy.
The architect, James W. Pirsson (who co-designed the city’s first co-op apartment building on West 57th Street in 1881), created a row of eight Italianate houses with brownstone fronts starting at 113 East 55th Street, according to Andrew S. Dolkart, historic preservationist and author of Central Synagogue in Its Changing Neighborhood.
It’s likely Number 119 was part of that row, which was constructed for a speculative developer. Who would have been the first buyer?
The rapidly developing neighborhood east of Park Avenue attracted business owners and other professionals with large families and several servants, states Dolkart. “Many of the residents were born in Germany, some undoubtably Jewish, reflecting the success of the German immigrant community in New York,” he wrote.
That professional likely commuted to a downtown shop or office via a horse-drawn streetcar, as elevated trains wouldn’t run this far away from the city center until the 1880s.
If they were German Jews, they may have joined the congregation at Central Synagogue, the spectacular Moorish synagogue opened in 1872 around the corner on Lexington Avenue.
With the arrival of mass transit, changes came to East 55th Street. Elite residential areas moved north of 59th Street and commerce came in. Some single-family brownstones were carved into multi-family apartments; others became boarding houses.
Architectural styles changed as well. Assuming it was part of the original row, Number 119 lost its brownstone front and stoop. Are the Greek urns on the window lintels original or a new feature to give the house a Classical edge? The research is scant.
Newspaper archives reveal the names of owners in the 20th century. In 1905, the house was bought by an Abraham Schwab, per the New York Herald.
Mrs. C. Russell Auchincloss resided there with her three children in 1910; she surprised a thief who broke into her bedroom one night to steal her jewelry (he made off with many pieces).
Real estate titan Charles F. Noyes occupied (or at least owned) the house in the 1930s through the 1950s or 1960s. Probably before Noyes moved in, some part of the former home served as the Tree Club, a Prohibition-era speakeasy on a stretch of the city known for its many secret drinking spots.
By the 1940s, 119 East 55th Street looked almost identical to the way it appears today. But it’s still on a townhouse row, flanked on the right by the other survivors of this post-Civil War row.
At some point after the 1940s, the other row houses began to go down. Someone moved the front door at Number 119 to the middle of the ground floor between the windows; the house also gained its rooftop sunroom addition.
Now it’s the last house standing. The story of how it managed to survive in a neighborhood known for its wrecking balls isn’t clear.
But it’s not going down yet. In fact, it’s actually for sale. With an ultra-modern interior(see photos here) its original occupants probably couldn’t even imagine, this historic holdout from New York’s early Gilded Age can be yours for a cool $14 million.
MORE IMAGES TOMORROW…
SHAYLA,ARIEL AND MAGGIE JOINED JUDY BERDY CELEBRATING OUR HOLIDAY WINDOWS. THE LADIES VOLUNTEERED TO DO A GRAND JOB DECORATING THE RIVERCROSS WINDOWS!
PHOTO OF THE DAY
TODAY IS THE DAY FOR MONDAY COMMUTE ON THE M TRAIN
MYSTERY PHOTO
TARGET STORE ON 70 STREET AND THIRD AVENUE BUILDING WAS FORMER NYC FBI HEADQUARTERS IMAGINE WHAT WAS STORED IN THESE VAULTS!
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There’s nothing on the planet quite like the New York Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show, which replicates our city’s most treasured buildings, recreating them as botanical masterpieces. Limestone, marble, iron, wood, glass, and steel are replaced with evergreens, twigs, hollies, moss, pine cones, bark, and tree roots. Among and between the nearly 200 buildings, trains chug and glide on 1,200 feet of track, reminding us that New York was once a great train city. And now, in the Bronx, it is once again.
The original genius who created the first train show in 1992—and who invented the term “botanical architecture”—is landscape architect Paul Busse. One of his designers, sculptor Annette Skinner, says that her boss “has a unique concept that requires integration of the natural world with traditional G-scale model railroad layouts.” Founder of the firm Applied Imagination, Busse is a train buff as well as a lover of the forests around his headquarters in Alexandria, Kentucky, 14 miles down the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Those forests provide much of the material to fabricate New York’s skyscrapers and mansions.
Busse’s first building for NYBG was what his daughter, Laura Busse Dolan, calls a “sample:” Poe Cottage. The original cottage, built in 1812, is situated a few blocks away from the Botanical Garden in the Bronx. There Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Bells,” inspired by the church bells ringing at neighboring Fordham University’s bell tower, and “Annabel Lee,” one of his greatest poems.
Paul Busse’s “sample” construction, Poe Cottage, where Edgar Allan Poe lived in the 1840s.
Poe Cottage is far plainer than the magnificent building that Busse replicated next: St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. Busse’s botanical St. Pat’s looks remarkably like the real one standing majestically on Fifth Avenue. Designed by James Renwick, Jr., one of the nineteenth century’s finest architects, St. Patrick’s is the largest Neo-Gothic Roman Catholic cathedral in the country. Dolan, who now heads Applied Imagination, says she isn’t sure why her father chose St. Patrick’s as his first major botanical building. But she notes that one huge plus in addition to its fame is its sumptuously decorated facade.
Fifth Avenue’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral was the first major botanical building.
The botanical model of St. Pat’s required three artists working hundreds of hours to complete, using 60 different plant parts overall. Its rose window is composed of eucalyptus pods, pine cone scales, grapevine, poppy seeds, and Siberian iris seed pods.
New York as Train City
The Train Show offers two extraordinary train headquarters: the tragically demolished Penn Station and the still-standing, formidable Grand Central Terminal.Demolished in 1963 by its owner, the Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Station was spectacular.
Penn Station’s botanical building materials, according to NYBG, include “columns made of honeysuckle, façade trim of sea grape leaves, peppercorns, viburnum, willow, and oak bark, and railings of screw pod, burning bush, willow, and acorn caps. The roof is magnolia, and pine cone scales, and the sky lights are burning bush and basket reed. The adorning eagles have white pine cone bodies, hemlock clove feet, magnolia bud feathers, and acorn cap wings. The clocks are birch bark and wheat seeds, and the statues have pistachio bodies and cedrela wings.”
Similarly, the replica of Grand Central has columns of sticks, stone walls mimicking limestone, huge rounded windows, and three detailed statues of Hercules, Mercury, and Minerva, representing strength, commerce, and wisdom.
MORE IMAGES TOMORROW…
SHAYLA, ARIEL AND MAGGIE JOINED JUDY BERDY CELEBRATING OUR HOLIDAY WINDOWS. THE LADIES VOLUNTEERED TO DO A GRAND JOB DECORATING THE RIVERCROSS WINDOWS!
PHOTO OF THE DAY
TODAY IS THE DAY FOR MONDAY COMMUTE ON THE M TRAIN
MYSTERY PHOTO. CAN YOU LOCATE THIS SITE?
CREDITS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
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.
Is it ever possible to get tired of exploring Manhattan’s little-known lanes and dead-end side streets?
Mitchell Place is an oddity. It isn’t a continuation of East 49th Street, which runs across First Avenue to the East River at a lower level. Mitchell Place is an entity of its own on an incline flanked by 20th century residential buildings on one side and an iron fence on the other.
Quiet and with almost no foot traffic, Mitchell Place is surrounded by the modern city, from the United Nations to the south to the FDR Drive on the east to the buses and taxis jostling their way out of the traffic tunnel on First Avenue.
But dial your imagination back to the mid-19th century before Mitchell Place began appearing on street maps. It’s not aligned to the city street grid, so why did it emerge, and who lived there?
This landmark house (below), built in 1763-1764 by wealthy and prominent merchant James Beekman, served first as a family country home, then the British headquarters during the Revolutionary War after the Beekmans fled. (George Washington reportedly stopped in after the Battle of Brooklyn and warned the Beekman family about the impending invasion.)
Known as Mt. Pleasant, the house was abandoned again by the Beekmans during a cholera epidemic in 1854. It was demolished two decades later, not long after the Beekmans created a new street, Beekman Place, on the grounds of their estate.
The land from the estate was sold to developers, who built brownstones for well-to-do families. Likely to maximize real estate potential, two streets were cut between Beekman Place and First Avenue. One, Dunscombe Place, became East 50th Street, according to Valentine’s Manual of Old New York. The second was Mitchell Place.
The Mitchell name is another mystery. According to Henry Moscow’s The Street Book, Mitchell Place takes its moniker from esteemed 19th century jurist William Mitchell (below right). The presiding justice of the New York State Supreme Court, Mitchell retired in 1857, states Moscow, and the street took his name in 1871.
Mitchell made his own home miles away on West Ninth Street, per his 1886 obituary in the New-York Tribune. Perhaps Mitchell traveled in the same elite circle as the Beekmans, and they named the street. Or it honors another Mitchell, a family name dating to 18th century New York City.
To confuse things further, references to real estate dealings on Mitchell Place (below) began appearing in city newspapers in the 1860s, years before the street was supposedly named. Through the later decades of the 19th century, Manhattan’s East Side changed, and Mitchell Place changed with it. Working-class residents employed by the area’s factories and slaughterhouses replaced more elite homeowners. Brownstones were carved up into flathouses with stores on the ground floor.
And then something weird appeared in the press in 1896. Apparently, the city had no record of Mitchell Place and did not recognize it as an actual Manhattan street, several papers reported.
“Found a new street in this city,” read a New York Times front-page headline. “The Board of Street Openings and Improvements discovered a new street yesterday whose existence had not before been known to this board.”
Mitchell Place was described by the Times as a private street. “When they examined the matter, it was found that not one of the persons who own the street is assessed anything by the Tax Commissioners,” continued the Times.
Residents started paying taxes, Mitchell Place went public (if it was really private to begin with), yet it suffered from neglect. The street “was guiltless of paving blocks or macadam,” reported The World in 1897, which added that it “is the dumping ground of all the rubbish in the vicinity.”
What changed Mitchell Place’s fortunes? The early 20th century renovation of Beekman Place back into a fashionable enclave, with fancifully restored townhouses and elegant apartment residences.
As an even smaller lane adjacent to Beekman Place, Mitchell Place saw the fall of its shabby brownstones and the rise of new real estate (above photo).
Since the 1920s, only two buildings actually carry a Mitchell Place address. The first is the apartment house at Number 10, formerly known when it was completed in 1928 as Stewart Hall. French Modernist painter Henri Matisse was known to spend time there.
The second is the Panhellenic Tower, now the Beekman Tower, which went up between 1927-1929 (above). Originally a female-only apartment house for college graduates, this Art Deco skyscraper has served as a suites hotel in recent years with a rooftop nightspot.
Few New Yorkers would have a reason to find themselves on this narrow, almost hidden street elevated above the hustle of contemporary Manhattan.
But if you do, take in the incredible view of the East River and the 1920s vibe of its few buildings, born from a country estate in the wilds of colonial-era Turtle Bay.
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.
This is my understanding of the RIOC meeting on Tuesday:
Last evening, the RIOC Operations Advisory Committee – along with the RIOC President, RIOC staff, and residents – met with a representative of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to discuss the demolition of the Steam Plant under the “Emergency Demolition Order” of the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB).
The sole HPD representative at the meeting was Rachel Swack, Acting Chief of Staff at HPD. Ms.Swack is not an engineer, lawyer or expert on the project. No representatives from DOB or Statewide Demolition (the contractor) were present. The first question posed was: Why is this being treated as an emergency now, since the plant closed in 2013?
We were presented with a copy of the handwritten Emergency Demolition Order from DOB.
Ms. Swack presented a spreadsheet, provided by Statewide Demolition, identifying the initial tasks and timelines covering the first two months of the 9-12 month demolition project.
The project is estimated to cost $7,300,000, and does not include any remediation of the steam tunnel that runs under the Queens-side promenade between the Steam Plant and Coler Hospital. When asked detailed questions, Ms. Swack had no specific answers. Her reply to the question about the lack of community involvement was that this is an emergency where public safety was the foremost and critical criteria. Therefore, community discussions about the merits of the demolition were moot. Concerns raised about the DOB emergency demolition order included:
1. What is the public safety emergency, other than the demolition of the smokestacks? What person or circumstance initiated DOB’s action to assess the Steam Plant for emergency demolition?
2. Can the main Steam Plant building, sans smokestacks, be preserved and re-purposed through remediation rather than demolition?
3. If public safety is of primary concern, the steam tunnel poses a much greater risk than the Steam Plant building, absent the two smokestacks. The tunnel is at risk of collapse taking down the promenade above it, was the conduit of serious flooding to Coler Hospital during Hurricane Sandy, and poses a threat to vast stretches of our seawall. , Community concerns expressed at the meeting concerning the method of demolition, should it go forward, included the following:
1. The most important need is barging all debris off the island. Ms Swack responded that the contractor was asked to prioritize barging wherever feasible, but that honestly speaking there will be the need for trucking as well. Members of the public were adamant that barging is the only way to protect our singular Main Street road – and the health, safety and peaceful enjoyment of the community.
2. Since the area is polluted are soil tests being taken before soil is removed?
3. What remediation and removal would be used? Has the EPA been contacted about the pollution monitoring needed?
4. What conversations are being held with the MTA since the building is over the N/R subway tunnel built in 1917?
5. What conversations have been held with POMA on the safe removal of the two smokestacks?
6. What conversations have been held with the Department of Transportation since the site is adjacent to the Queensboro Bridge? 7. One audience member, an architect aske for more specific information on the condition of the building and copies of inspections and reports on the condition.
Committee Chair Faye Chistianson asked Ms. Swack to address all of the community concerns raised at the meeting in a follow-up report. More information, hopefully from knowledgeable HPD/DOB and contractor experts, will be forthcoming.
Judith Berdy
TO READ THE FULL HISTORY AND SEE IMAGES OF THE INTERIOR AND WORKINGS OF THE STEAM PLANT GO TO:
CHARLES GIRAUDET IS A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER WHO SPENT MANY MONTHS ON THE ISLAND RESEARCHING GOLDWATER HOSPITAL AND THE STEAM PLANT. HE INTERVIEWED THE STAFF OF BOTH FACILITIES AND HIS WRITINGS AND PHOTOS ARE THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE RESEARCH AVAILABLE
JUDITH BERDY
UPDATE:
THERE WILL BE A RIOC MEETING TOMORROW TO DISCUSS THE PROCESS TO DO THIS PROJECT.
The work is beginning to demolish the steam plant. Not used since 2013, the original building opened in 1939 and an addition added in 1954. The plant provided steam to Goldwater Hospital, isalnd insttuions and all the up the east side to Coler Hospital.
The steam plant is in a complicated location and any demolition will be a massive exercise. Some of the compkications include: A building contaminated with asbestos, fuels, lead. Tunnels leading to the east side tunnel along the river Two smokestacks that are in dangerous locations, including one by the Tram Station Being located directly adjoining the Tram Station and under the Queensboro Bridge Being located adjacent to a subway tunnel N&R lines) A large area containing underground fuel storage to the south of the building. Being located on the only southbound access street to the south end.
The original building designed by Starrett & Van Vleck Architects
A smokestack next to the Tram
I visited the interior of the plant in 2012-2014 while it was still staffed by Goldwater engineers.
The building was used for movie shoots and then closed down due to asbestos concerns.
Whatever actions are taken, this will be a massive project due to the buildings location, condtion and all the structures and roads that it is surrounded by, A Special Job
PHOTO OF THE DAY
SHOP THE RIHS KIOSK OPEN DAILY EXCEPT TUESDAYS 12-5 P.M. OPEN UNTIL 5:30 ON FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS
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.
THERE WILL BE A RIOC MEETING TOMORROW TO DISCUSS THE PROCESS TO DO THIS PROJECT.
The work is beginning to demolish the steam plant. Not used since 2013, the original building opened in 1939 and an addition added in 1954. The plant provided steam to Goldwater Hospital, isalnd insttuions and all the up the east side to Coler Hospital.
The steam plant is in a complicated location and any demolition will be a massive exercise. Some of the compkications include: A building contaminated with asbestos, fuels, lead. Tunnels leading to the east side tunnel along the river Two smokestacks that are in dangerous locations, including one by the Tram Station Being located directly adjoining the Tram Station and under the Queensboro Bridge Being located adjacent to a subway tunnel N&R lines) A large area containing underground fuel storage to the south of the building. Being located on the only southbound access street to the south end.
The original building designed by Starrett & Van Vleck Architects
A smokestack next to the Tram
I visited the interior of the plant in 2012-2014 while it was still staffed by Goldwater engineers.
The building was used for movie shoots and then closed down due to asbestos concerns.
Whatever actions are taken, this will be a massive project due to the buildings location, condtion and all the structures and roads that it is surrounded by, A Special Job
PHOTO OF THE DAY
SHOP THE RIHS KIOSK OPEN DAILY EXCEPT TUESDAYS 12-5 P.M. OPEN UNTIL 5:30 ON FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS
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.
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.
SAVE THE DATE SPECIAL DEMONSTRATION AND HOLIDAY CELEBRATION THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2025 5 TO 9 P.M. BLACKWELL HOUSE WATCH FOR DETAILS
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.
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.
Magda Love, also known as Maria Magdalena Marcenaro, is a distinguished Argentinean visual artist and muralist based in the United States. Her artwork is a celebration of color, nature and humanity. Her aim is to inspire others to recognize the value in shared personal experience and emotional connectivity. Magda loves to play with the ideas of Magical Realism, a contemporary twist on Latin American folk arts and literature, inviting the viewers to discover, imagine and bridge to a land of make believe Renowned for painting one of the largest murals in NYC; she is constantly on a quest to explore different mediums including painting, sculpture, textiles and embroideries.
Magda Love’s work has made a significant impact globally, collaborating with prestigious entities such as Google, Red Bull, W Hotels and Johnnie Walker, leaving an indelible mark on cityscapes worldwide.
Her commitment to community engagement and education has earned her recognition from esteemed institutions such as the United Nations, TEDx Fulton ST, MOMA PS1, The Carole Feuerman Foundation, Catholic Charities, The JPB Foundation, The Broward County Cultural Division grant, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.
Magda Love is passionate about public art and community engaged projects. She has collaborated with companies like Google, Red Bull, Johnnie Walker, W Hotel, Hudson Yards and more. She regularly collaborates with educational institutions and NGOs around the globe to ensure inspiration, education and art shine in the eyes of those who need it most.
HANDS THAT WEAVE LIGHT
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A fun pop up fun event at The Sanctuary last evening. A fun way to welcom the holdiday.
Credits
Material for the Arts Foundation
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.
