BUILDING A NEW COMMUNITY TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2024
ISSUE # 1303
JUDITH BERDY
AUGUST, 1972 NYS URBAN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
CHAPEL OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD BEING PRESERVED AS THE HOLY SPIRIT LUTHERAN CHURCH NEXT DOOR IS BEING DEMOLISHED.
EASTWOOD IS JUST BEGINNING TO BE CONSTRUCTED.
“Many of us have lived here for decades and have accumulated vast amounts of information (and some mis-information…)
Join Judith Berdy, long time resident. She takes us on a history trip. She explains how the community developed. She discusses how it became the Roosevelt Island we live in today.
“This is a great introduction for our new residents who have many questions about our community,” Judy says. “Join us for a fun evening of facts, fiction and fantasy.”
When: September 17th, @ 6:30 p.m.
Where: New York Public Library Branch, 504 Main Street *This is a free public program of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society (RIHS).
CREDITS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
EYESORE OF THE DAY
Time to take back our Tram and Subway Plazas from vendors. This morning the one by the subway’s entrance was venting foul fuel smells. Let’s take a new look at some of the sights RIOC has permitted to be damaged..
CREDITS NYS URBAN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION JUDITH BERDY
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.
The Great Elephant Migration is a global fundraising adventure to amplify indigenous knowledge and inspire the human race, to share space.
A collaboration between indigenous artisans, contemporary artists and cultural institutions, it will raise millions of dollars to power human-wildlife coexistence projects and protect migratory animals making spectacular journeys across land, rivers, skies and oceans.
ELEPHANTS ARE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
The creators of the herd live in the Nilgiri Hills, Southern India, where humans and elephants coexist in the densest overlap on the planet. The indigenous communities here see everything in nature as being alive and having a soul. The wind has a spirit, whispering secrets to the trees as she moves through. The stars, rocks, rivers, trees, plants and animals are all part of a big family.
This way of looking at the world is rooted in mutual respect and reciprocity. There’s a reverence for nature and all its inhabitants and a belief that the earth will look after us if we are respectful towards the earth and all of its inhabitants. Humans are a part of a larger web of life, where everything is interconnected. When we harm the earth or other beings we harm ourselves. If we behave respectfully towards the elephants, they are expected to behave well in return. This way of looking at the world is key to everyone’s survival and successful coexistence between all living beings.
Kris Tompkins
“I’m very proud to be a Matriarch of The Great Elephant Migration. Audacious and exceptional voices who incite fierce protection of wildness not only around single species but for all life are lacking around the world.
Every category we humans use to communicate with one another is essential and art and scale are both powerful and impossible to ignore. These giant, beautiful beings touring the world speak louder and more profoundly than any or
Freeing The Forests
Each elephant is made from Lantana camara, the second most widespread invasive species in the world. This fast growing, toxic shrub has taken over 40% of forests in India, obliterating native plants and diminishing food sources for animals, pushing them out of forests and into urban areas.
The migration supports a large scale lantana removal project, converting it into biochar which improves soil fertility and water retention. Biochar is the only feasible direct capture solution for sequestering carbon into the ground to mitigate climate change – the biggest problem humanity faces today. The project will restore vast areas of forests over the next five years. By the close of 2025, this effort will have sequestered 2,625 tons of carbon.
Along 9th Avenue to the south of 15th Street and west on 14th Street and at Ganesvort Square the elephants are on display until October 20th.
From our perch at a outdoor dining spot, we were in the audience for the great human migration.
CREDITS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
THE GREAT ELEPHANT MIGRATION JUDITH BERDY
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The store was founded in 1865 in Brooklyn, New York, as Wechsler & Abraham by Joseph Wechsler and Abraham Abraham. In 1893, the Straus family (including Isidor Straus and Nathan Straus), who acquired a general partnership with Macy’s department stores in 1888, bought out Joseph Wechsler’s interest in Wechsler & Abraham and changed the store’s name to Abraham & Straus. While Abraham & Straus did not at that time become a part of Macy’s, the two stores shared an overseas office and maintained close ties. Ed Litcher and Arlene Bessenoff got it right.
PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE DAY
Dan Freedland and I love exploring neighborhoods of New York.. Look for his photos in an upcoming edition.
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.
Ever since I visited Kansa City in 2017, when I saw this fountain, I have been curious about it traveled from Pennsylvania Station to Kansas City. Here is the answer.
Before this sculpture became part of an Eagle Scout memorial in Missouri, it hung above the Seventh Avenue entrance to the original Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. The colossal train station designed by the illustrious architecture firm of McKim, Mead, and White opened in 1910, welcoming the first LIRR train on September 2nd. When the station was infamously demolished in the 1960s, some ornamental pieces of the structure were salvaged. Stone eagles that sat atop the station’s cornice were spread throughout the northeast, St. John the Divine acquired lampposts that still sit in the cathedral’s basement, and this sculpture traveled halfway across the country.
German-American sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman created the pink Milford granite sculpture at the center of the Kansas City Eagle Scout fountain. It features two female figures leaning on opposite sides of a central wreath that once encircled a 7-foot wide clock. The allegorical women are meant to represent Day and Night. While the figure on the left (Day) is adorned with sunflowers, the figure on the right (Night) is shrouded under a cloak. Both figures have an eagle at their feet.
Weinman created four pairs of Day and Night sculptures for Penn Station. When the station was demolished, the sculptures and clocks met various fates. The clocks were disposed of in the Meadowlands of New Jersey along with other debris from the demolition. Some fragments of the female figures and a couple of eagles turned up at a New Jersey Transit facility in Newark a few years ago and one Night figure is stored safely in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
So how did this sculpture end up in Kansas City? When news of Penn Station’s impending demolition was announced, John W. Starr, chairman of the Eagle Scout tribute committee, thought the entablature would make for the perfect Eagle Scout memorial in his hometown. According to a Kansas City Times article from 1968, the Kansas City area council awarded more Eagle Scout badges than anywhere else in the United States. Becoming an Eagle Scout is a rare feat that only a small percentage of Boy Scouts obtain. In 1966, the Pennsylvania Railroad gifted the statue to the Boy Scout organization.
The next hurdle was transporting the 62,000-pound piece over a thousand miles west. The Pennsylvania Railroad carried the sculpture to Saint Louis, its western terminus. It was then picked up by a flatcar on the Missouri Pacific Railroad for the rest of the journey to Kansas City. Finally, it was driven to a warehouse.
A few modifications were made to the original sculpture before it was unveiled in Missouri. In place of a central clock, an aluminum replica of an Eagle Scout badge was added to the middle of the wreath frame. The entire sculptural work was set atop a fountain designed by Maurice McMullen on land donated by The Kansas City Park and Recreation Department and the City of Kansas City. Starr raised the funds to pay for the design, construction, and landscaping. The fountain was dedicated on October 6, 1968.
You can now see the sculpture at the intersection of 39th Street and Gillham Road in Kansas City, but you don’t have to go all the way to Missouri to see remnants of Day and Night. An art installation by Andrew Leicester, titled Ghost Series, brought remnants of the original station into the modern transportation hub as bas-relief terra cotta murals. There are five murals in total scattered throughout the station. The Day and Night one can be found on the east end of the main LIRR concourse, near the 1,2,3 subway entrance. See this mural and more pieces of the original station on our upcoming Secrets of Penn Station and Moynihan Train Hall Tour!
100,000 plush flowers crafted by artist CJ Hendry will take over Four Freedoms Park from September 13-15! This immersive floral exhibition, Flower Market, is housed within a greenhouse built on the park’s lawn. Colorful florals inside were inspired by the Roosevelt family: the yellow Eleanor Roosevelt Rose, Tulips for the Roosevelt family’s Dutch heritage, red roses symbolizing the Roosevelt name, and Peonies, a signature flower of the family’s farm. Twelve original drawings by Hendry accompany the blossoming meadow. Visitors are encouraged to pluck their own flowers from the garden to take home. This exhibition is free and open to the public from 10am to 4pm on September 13 to 15.
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.
Photo by Corey Favino, Courtesy Elephant Family USA and Newport Restoration Foundation
A herd of 100 Indian elephant sculptures will descend upon the Meatpacking District on September 6th! The arrival of The Great Elephant Migration marks the largest installation to come to New York City since Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in 2005. The herd started its journey in Newport, Rhode Island and after New York, it will travel to Miami, Blackfeet Nation, Buffalo Pastures in Browning, Montana, and Los Angeles. As the installation moves across the country in electric trucks adorned with Indian lorry art, it will bring awareness to the relationship between humans and animals and raise funds for organizations supporting that coexistence such as local groups like New York City’s Wild Bird Fund, INDIGENOUS LED, and Lion Guardians.
All of the elephants were crafted by Coexistence Collective, a community of 200 Indigenous artisans living within India’s Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. The sculptural herd is based on the elephants that India’s Soligas, Bettakurumbas, Kattunayakan, and Paniyas tribes live amongst. Every elephant is unique.
Glenn Ligon, Untitled (America/Me), 2022/2024 (rendering). A High Line Billboard. On view September–November 2024. Rendering courtesy of the artist and the High Line
A new billboard will appear on the High Line at 18th Street on September 3rd. The giant sign created by artist Glenn Ligon is an altered image of a neon piece he created back in 2008. In revisiting a piece originally created during an election year (the year Obama won), Ligon examines the shift in America’s political climate and culture as we face another presidential election. In this new iteration, Ligon has taken a photo of the neon work and added thick black X’s over some of the letters in “America.” The only unaltered letters that show through spell “Me.” By manipulating the image this way, Ligon calls attention to the self-focused tendencies of today’s society and inspires viewers to contemplate the complex relationship between our nation and ourselves.
Iván Tovar, La chaise adulte, 1969
A new monumental installation by the late Dominican artist Iván Tovar is coming to Times Square on September 15th. Standing 13 feet tall,TOVAR The Chair is a large-scale version of Tovar’s earlier work, La Chaise Adulte (The Adult Chair). The installation of this surrealist, stainless steel sculpture coincides with the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month and calls attention to the 800,000 Dominicans living in the New York region. A 50-foot screen-printed timeline chronicling Tovar’s inspiring career will accompany the sculpture. TOVAR The Chair will sit in Broadway Plaza between 45th and 46th Streets and 7th Avenue until November 15, 2024.
Edra Soto, Graft, 2024 Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY
Edra Soto debuts her first large-scale public art commission in New York City on September 5th at Doris C. Freedman Plaza. Titled Graft, the sculptural installation is part of an ongoing series based on rejas, wrought iron screens frequently seen outside lower and middle-class homes in Puerto Rico. Soto was born in Puerto Rico and currently lives in Chicago. For her New York installation, Soto has created an inviting domestic scene out of red terrazzo concrete and corten steel. Three tables with seats beckon passersby to take a rest.
Patterns on the rejas cast playful shadows of Caribbean palm leaves and other imagery sourced from Yoruba symbols of West Africa, a prominent influence on Puerto Rican design. By combining these symbols of her birthplace with the bustling scenes of New York, Soto “reflects on themes of migration, displacement, and the search for belonging.”
Photo by Jen Phanomrat and Leonardo Samanamud, Courtesy of Morningside Lights
You can help create a dazzling light display this month as the annual Morningside Lights parade returns to celebrate “100 Years of New York Art.” Ahead of the grand illuminated parade on Saturday, September 21st at 8 PM, New Yorkers can help create the glowing handmade lanterns in a lantern-building workshop. The workshops will run from September 14th through 20th at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University (116th St. and Broadway). Interested participants can register here!
This year’s theme, In Retrospect, “celebrates how a century of New York art has shaped our image of where and how we live.” On September 21st, the luminescent parade will travel from the heart of Morningside Park, up Morningside Drive, to the Columbia campus. Participants and spectators are welcome to join anywhere along the roughly one-mile route.
Hedgework by Marek Walczak
Buildings 77 and 92 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard are currently home to two unique installations. At Building 77, visitors will find Hedgework by Marek Walczak (Civic Space LLC), Mark Shepard (Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies), and Antonina Simeti (Timbre Consultants). This outdoor piece is a sentient hedgerow made up of native plants, environmental sensors, and materials such as sand, stone, and solar panels sourced straight from companies in the Yard. Visitors can interact with the piece by sitting among the plants and by scanning a QR code which will provide information about the habitat and the Brooklyn Navy Yard with AI technology. On September 19th, co-creator Mark Shepard will host an Eco Data Workshop where you’ll learn about the data collected by the hedge, how to document and interpret the data, and how to use data for various purposes from policymaking to art. Book your ticket here!
Steven and William Ladd’s Transforming America through Art: A Vision for Brooklyn’s Community at Building 92 was created with input from Brooklynites. Locals responded to the prompt, “What one word describes your hopes for the future?” The installation displays answers to this question along with photographic reproductions of collaborative textile artwork created by the Ladds over the past ten years. On September 17th, you can join the Ladd brothers for a free artmaking workshop and tour at the Navy Yard. Your contribution will become part of a community art project on view in the exhibition! These sessions are designed for industry professionals working at and around the Brooklyn Navy Yard and are open to anyone who is 18 years or older. This Brooklyn installation is part of a larger project called Scrollathon which will be on view at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. as part of a 250th anniversary celebration of the United States’ founding.
Art Professor Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons in her studio office and outside Ingram Fine Arts Center. (John Russell/Vanderbilt University)
Show your solidarity with fellow New Yorkers by participating in a walk from Harlem Art Park down to Madison Square Park on the mornings of September 7th and 20th. Conceived by artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity will highlight seven stops throughout Manhattan that were historically filled with agency, optimism, or trauma. Some of those stops include the Dos Alas (Two Wings) mural dedicated to revolutionaries Ernesto Che Guevara and Pedro Albizu Campos, the former site of the Colored Orphan Asylum, and a monument to independence leader José Julián Martí. Stops will include poetry readings and the procession on September 7th will end with an artmaking workshop, while the procession on September 20 will end with musical performances. Anyone who wants to participate is encouraged to register here. “
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
CREDITS
PHOTO OF THE DAY
49TH AND FIFTH
THE FDR FOUR FREEDOMS PARK FOUNDATION HOSTED THEIR ANNUAL FUNDRAISER ON THE 7TH FLOOR ROOFTOP GARDEN AT 520 FIFTH AVENUE. A WONDERFUL AFTERNOON FOR A GREAT EVENT!
EXCITING COMING ATTRACTION
100,000 plush flowers crafted by artist CJ Hendry will take over Four Freedoms Park from September 13-15! This immersive floral exhibition, Flower Market, is housed within a greenhouse built on the park’s lawn. Colorful florals inside were inspired by the Roosevelt family: the yellow Eleanor Roosevelt Rose, Tulips for the Roosevelt family’s Dutch heritage, red roses symbolizing the Roosevelt name, and Peonies, a signature flower of the family’s farm. Twelve original drawings by Hendry accompany the blossoming meadow. Visitors are encouraged to pluck their own flowers from the garden to take home. This exhibition is free and open to the public from 10am to 4pm on September 13 to 15.
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.
Ever since I visited Kansa City in 2017, when I saw this fountain I have been curious about it traveled from Pennsylvania Station to Kansas City. Here is the answer.
Before this sculpture became part of an Eagle Scout memorial in Missouri, it hung above the Seventh Avenue entrance to the original Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. The colossal train station designed by the illustrious architecture firm of McKim, Mead, and White opened in 1910, welcoming the first LIRR train on September 2nd. When the station was infamously demolished in the 1960s, some ornamental pieces of the structure were salvaged. Stone eagles that sat atop the station’s cornice were spread throughout the northeast, St. John the Divine acquired lampposts that still sit in the cathedral’s basement, and this sculpture traveled halfway across the country.
German-American sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman created the pink Milford granite sculpture at the center of the Kansas City Eagle Scout fountain. It features two female figures leaning on opposite sides of a central wreath that once encircled a 7-foot wide clock. The allegorical women are meant to represent Day and Night. While the figure on the left (Day) is adorned with sunflowers, the figure on the right (Night) is shrouded under a cloak. Both figures have an eagle at their feet.
Weinman created four pairs of Day and Night sculptures for Penn Station. When the station was demolished, the sculptures and clocks met various fates. The clocks were disposed of in the Meadowlands of New Jersey along with other debris from the demolition. Some fragments of the female figures and a couple of eagles turned up at a New Jersey Transit facility in Newark a few years ago and one Night figure is stored safely in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
So how did this sculpture end up in Kansas City? When news of Penn Station’s impending demolition was announced, John W. Starr, chairman of the Eagle Scout tribute committee, thought the entablature would make for the perfect Eagle Scout memorial in his hometown. According to a Kansas City Times article from 1968, the Kansas City area council awarded more Eagle Scout badges than anywhere else in the United States. Becoming an Eagle Scout is a rare feat that only a small percentage of Boy Scouts obtain. In 1966, the Pennsylvania Railroad gifted the statue to the Boy Scout organization.
The next hurdle was transporting the 62,000-pound piece over a thousand miles west. The Pennsylvania Railroad carried the sculpture to Saint Louis, its western terminus. It was then picked up by a flatcar on the Missouri Pacific Railroad for the rest of the journey to Kansas City. Finally, it was driven to a warehouse.
A few modifications were made to the original sculpture before it was unveiled in Missouri. In place of a central clock, an aluminum replica of an Eagle Scout badge was added to the middle of the wreath frame. The entire sculptural work was set atop a fountain designed by Maurice McMullen on land donated by The Kansas City Park and Recreation Department and the City of Kansas City. Starr raised the funds to pay for the design, construction, and landscaping. The fountain was dedicated on October 6, 1968.
You can now see the sculpture at the intersection of 39th Street and Gillham Road in Kansas City, but you don’t have to go all the way to Missouri to see remnants of Day and Night. An art installation by Andrew Leicester, titled Ghost Series, brought remnants of the original station into the modern transportation hub as bas-relief terra cotta murals. There are five murals in total scattered throughout the station. The Day and Night one can be found on the east end of the main LIRR concourse, near the 1,2,3 subway entrance. See this mural and more pieces of the original station on our upcoming Secrets of Penn Station and Moynihan Train Hall Tour!
100,000 plush flowers crafted by artist CJ Hendry will take over Four Freedoms Park from September 13-15! This immersive floral exhibition, Flower Market, is housed within a greenhouse built on the park’s lawn. Colorful florals inside were inspired by the Roosevelt family: the yellow Eleanor Roosevelt Rose, Tulips for the Roosevelt family’s Dutch heritage, red roses symbolizing the Roosevelt name, and Peonies, a signature flower of the family’s farm. Twelve original drawings by Hendry accompany the blossoming meadow. Visitors are encouraged to pluck their own flowers from the garden to take home. This exhibition is free and open to the public from 10am to 4pm on September 13 to 15.
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.
One spring morning in 2016, I discovered a hidden gem on the quiet Rue de Braque in the 3rd arrondissement.
Until then, I thought there were only three major half-timbered houses in Paris.
This beautifully preserved house stands tucked away from the busy streets, offering a glimpse into the city’s pre-Haussmannian past.
It felt like stepping back in time to when timbered façades were common across Paris.
Discovering this rare piece of history was a reminder that Paris still holds surprises, revealing traces of its medieval charm when you least expect it.
Half-Timbered Houses in Central Paris
To my knowledge, there are three principal half-timbered dwellings in Paris, all of them situated in the 3rd and 4th arrondissements:
Rue François Miron (numbers 11&13):
Rue des Barres (number 12):
And Rue Volta (number 3):
A house dating back to the 17th century
This hidden gem dates back to the 17th century.
Originally, timbered houses were prohibited, so builders often concealed them behind courtyards, out of public sight.
Number 5 is one such example, originally covered with plaster to avoid detection.
However, a recent restoration has revealed the magnificent timber structure of the corps de logis, showcasing the craftsmanship of a bygone era.
Restricted access!
Despite its beauty, this property remains privately owned, with access strictly limited.
Visitors can only catch a glimpse if the courtyard gate happens to be open.
It’s this exclusivity that makes the house all the more intriguing.
For those seeking to explore Paris beyond the well-trodden paths, this discovery offers a rare glimpse into the city’s hidden architectural treasures—remnants of a time long before Haussmann reshaped the skyline.
A GREAT SELECTION OF RESTAURANTS AND THE SKYSCRAPERS LOOMING NEARBY
EXCITING COMING ATTRACTION
100,000 plush flowers crafted by artist CJ Hendry will take over Four Freedoms Park from September 13-15! This immersive floral exhibition, Flower Market, is housed within a greenhouse built on the park’s lawn. Colorful florals inside were inspired by the Roosevelt family: the yellow Eleanor Roosevelt Rose, Tulips for the Roosevelt family’s Dutch heritage, red roses symbolizing the Roosevelt name, and Peonies, a signature flower of the family’s farm. Twelve original drawings by Hendry accompany the blossoming meadow. Visitors are encouraged to pluck their own flowers from the garden to take home. This exhibition is free and open to the public from 10am to 4pm on September 13 to 15.
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.
Sleek, streamlined, and stylish, this bold new design heralded the skyscraper age of the 20th century.
It also transformed 57th Street into an east-west business and cultural artery, with the Fuller building as one of its premier towers.
But what I want to call out is the humanity of the Fuller Building—namely the respect the tower gives to the men who built it.
Each elevator door in the gleaming lobby features bas reliefs of overall-clad construction workers hoisting the blocks of granite that form the building’s base, hammering beams, securing steel, and plastering walls.
Few faces are shown. It’s more of a way to honor the tradesmen who put the plans of dreams of developers and architects into the cityscape, transforming the look of the skyline and the vantage point through which people saw the city.
The Fuller Building memorialized the workers who built it in another way: Elie Nadelman’s sculpture of two men in front of what looks like a skyline, flanking a clock (above).
There’s a lot to admire about the Fuller Building, the Art Deco masterpiece completed in 1929 on Madison Avenue and 57th Street.
Fuller and his company were behind some of New York’s first skyscrapers, including the Flatiron Building—originally called the Fuller Building when it opened in 1902.
It feels appropriate for Labor Day to post their images—the anonymous army of people who built and continue to build the city we live in.
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.
Bellevue Hospital is considered the oldest public hospital in the United States. Although its historical beginnings date back to Dutch settlement in the 1600s, the institution was officially founded in 1736 by the British on the second floor of a poorhouse, four decades before the outbreak of the American Revolution.
In spite of its contribution to the development of medical care in the metropolis, the hospital’s name occupies a dim place in New York City’s collective consciousness. In the later nineteenth century, the institution struck fear and disquiet in the hearts of New Yorkers. A grim sight on 1st Avenue and 26th Street, Bellevue was synonymous with degradation and death.
When a psychiatric unit was added to the hospital in the 1930s, its dire reputation grew even darker. An eerie red brick structure surrounded by an iron spiked fence, it inspired nightmare tales and horror films.
Most of the hospital’s Manhattan history has been recorded, but a strong Scottish connection with its early development needs further emphasis.
Infamy & Innovation
At the time of New York City’s massive expansion, Bellevue Hospital was overrun with victims of epidemics, homeless people, alcoholics, abandoned children and patients ranging from the suicidal to the homicidal.
Overcrowded and understaffed, conditions were abysmal. Antiseptic practices were poor and filthy surgical theatres not fit for purpose. In 1876 it was reported that nearly half of all amputations proved fatal due to a poor and ill-equipped working environment.
When in 1879 Harpers New Monthly Magazine ran an article on New York hospitals, it described Bellevue as serving the poorest of the poor, the dregs of society and the semi-criminal. Its wards were “filled with wasted souls drifting through the agonies of disease toward unpitied and unremembered deaths.”
For all this infamy and maybe because of it, Bellevue was also a pioneering place. It played a vanguard role in the battle against major epidemics, such as tuberculosis, typhus and yellow fever. It was the first American hospital to run a maternity ward; it established a nursing school (1873) and ran a children’s clinic, apart from playing a leading role in the search for new and effective medicines.
During the Civil War, the United States Army sent many of its wounded back there for medical care. Surgeon Colonel Edward Barry Dalton, a veteran of the conflict, had himself witnessed the urgent need to send injured soldiers for professional treatment as speedily as possible.
He introduced what is believed to be the first functioning ambulance in the city of New York, a horse-drawn wagon with removable slatted beds in the back, replete with medical equipment, morphine and brandy.
Wall of the Unknown Dead
In 1866, New York’s first professional morgue opened on the grounds of Bellevue Hospital. The term morgue is Old French for face or visage. Over time the word was applied to the space where unclaimed dead bodies awaited identification.
During the later nineteenth century, the Paris morgue was located on the Quai du Marche-Neuf, just behind Notre Dame. Two-thirds of the corpses that entered the building were retrieved from the Seine, being suicides, drownings or murders.
The morgue’s assistants methodically noted down the particulars of each corpse. The naked bodies, often in a horrible state of decay, would be displayed for three days on twelve brass-lined stone slabs propped up in the morgue window for the public to view and possibly recognize. This showcase became a piece of entertainment in Paris. People of all ages would visit the famous windows of death.
As both an object of macabre fascination and a theme of the new literary vogue for sensational subjects, the Paris mortuary bewitched the Victorian imagination. Thomas Carlyle, Frances Trollope, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Walter Pater and many others left accounts of their visits.
When living in Paris in 1855/6, a trip to the morgue inspired Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “Apparent Failure,” a moralistic poem about suicide.
Bellevue on the East River followed the Parisian example, but its staff made an interesting addition.
In 1867, the hospital established a Photographic Department where Oscar Mason (ca. 1830 – 1921), a thirty-seven-year-old portrait photographer, took pictures of anonymous corpses and hung them up for family or friends to identify the body. Mason established what New Yorkers would label as the “Wall of the Unknown Dead.” He subsequently created early criminal mugshots modeled after the Wall.
The Bellevue psychiatric hospital was erected on hospital grounds in 1931, a few blocks to the north of the main hospital on 1st Avenue. This haunting structure was once home to Mark David Chapman, on the night he shot John Lennon. Charlie Parker, Allen Ginsberg, Eugene O’Neill, William Burroughs and Sylvia Plath all stayed here at one point, as did Norman Mailer after he stabbed his wife.
The population of people who used its mental health facilities peaked in 1955 at 90,000. For locals, Bellevue was the end of the road. It was Manhattan’s Bedlam. So how did it all start?
An Early American Illustrator
Alexander Anderson was born to Scottish immigrant parents on April 21, 1775, near Beekman Slip, Manhattan, two days after the first bloody battle in the American War for Independence had taken place at Lexington and Concord. Many Scottish-Americans supported the Revolution, be they statesmen, soldiers or citizens.
Two signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Witherspoon and James Wilson, were of Scottish descent and so was naval hero John Paul Jones.
Alexander’s father John Anderson was a “rebel” printer and publisher of a newspaper called The Constitutional Gazette which opposed James Rivington’s loyalist Royal Gazette. He was also responsible for printing New York’s first edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in February 1776. By far the most influential tract of the American Revolution, the pamphlet had first been published a month previously by Robert Bell in Philadelphia.
When the British took possession of Manhattan in August 1776, the family escaped to Greenwich, Connecticut, but John lost nearly all of his books and printing materials on the way. They returned home soon after the British had departed. John Anderson would later run an auction house from his shop at 77 Wall Street.
Young Alexander Anderson took an early interest in the skill of local engravers and silversmiths. At the age of twelve years he made his first attempts at engraving on copper. By 1794 he was employed by William Durell, bookseller at 19 Queen Street, to copy the illustrations of a popular little English work entitled The Looking-Glass for the Mind.
The original images were engraved on boxwood and produced by Thomas Bewick, the pioneer of wood-engraving. Anderson soon adopted and mastered the technique.
He established himself as an artist, producing engravings for books, periodicals and newspapers. He illustrated the earliest editions of Noah Webster’s best-selling Spelling Book and millions of school children were familiar with his monogram “A.A.” in the corners of woodcuts in educational books.
In 1804 he adapted Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds for the American market and created forty engravings for an edition of Shakespeare. He was celebrated as “America’s First Illustrator” and “The Father of American Wood Engraving.”
Young Anderson had taken special delight in making copies of anatomical figures from medical books. It would be a lifelong passion. In 1808 he executed on wood more than sixty illustrations for an American edition of The Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body by the Scottish anatomist Charles Bell. Medicine played a crucial part in his life and there was a time that he appeared to pursue a double career.
Scotch-Irish Patriots
After his fourteenth birthday and in spite of his passion for art, Anderson was apprenticed to the physician Joseph Young. It was a decision made for him by his parents. The idea of medicine was motivated by Alexander’s early interest in copying anatomical figures from text books, but the selection of their son’s master was significant.
John and Sarah Anderson most likely wanted him to pursue a socially useful profession in the city of New York’s independent but chaotic early development, rather than chase an individualistic career in the arts. Their Scottish identity remained strong, but they were patriots too and there was certainly a political motivation behind this choice.
Joseph Young was born in 1735 in Little Britain, Orange County, into a family of Scotch-Irish immigrants. During the 1760s he settled in Albany where he practiced medicine. In 1776 he joined the Albany Sons of Liberty and was appointed surgeon to the Ninth Connecticut Regiment of the Continental Army.
In 1778, he joined the staff of the Albany hospital. Three years later, he was promoted to hospital physician surgeon and served to the end of the war. He then removed to New York where he continued to practice medicine until his death in 1814. In their own individual ways, John Anderson and Joseph Young had been committed to the same cause.
Alexander received his license at the age at twenty. In his first year of medical practice he continued his artistic work and engraved a series of anatomical drawings on wood. In 1798 he produced a full-length and elaborate human skeleton copied from a 1747 edition of engravings by the German-born Dutch anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albinus.
Yellow Fever
Founded in 1736, Bellevue was established by the British as an alms house. Located in the old common ground that is today City Hall Park, the second floor of the property provided six beds for the sick and insane. By 1795, it had expanded to accommodate nearly eight hundred urban paupers. That year, Anderson was appointed the institution’s first resident physician.
His immediate challenge was to deal with an outbreak of yellow fever in the city. As treatment options were limited, he witnessed many patients perish. The inability of medical staff to intervene deeply frustrated him. The burden of his task affected his mental well-being.
In his grim recollections of the epidemic, he admitted to a state of great depression. In a detailed list written in his hand, 238 yellow fever patients were admitted between August and October. One hundred and thirty-seven died.
When the epidemic ended, he sought an academic qualification to enhance his personal ability as a physician. In May 1796, at the age of twenty-one, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the faculty of Columbia College. The subject of his inaugural dissertation (dedicated to Joseph Young) was “Chronic Mania.”
What motivated the young man to study this topic? Was he trying to deal with his own mental problems after the Bellevue experience?
With the city of New York’s burgeoning population and the alarming spread of contagious diseases, it became necessary to find a larger property to expand space for quarantine. In 1798 the commissioners purchased “Bel-Vue,” a parcel of land on Manhattan’s east side near Murray Hill, named for its fine view of the East River and the surrounding fields (the hospital was formally named Bellevue in 1824).
While New York Hospital on Broadway (opened in 1771) catered to high society, Bellevue became a refuge for the poor and destitute, mostly immigrants living in the slums of Lower Manhattan. Since its inception, Bellevue did not charge for treatment, acting as the hospital of last resort for the city’s most troubled inhabitants. It treated presidents and paupers alike.
When another, even more serious outbreak of yellow fever occurred in 1798 (more than 2,000 people died in the epidemic), Anderson returned to Bellevue as resident physician. He resigned a few weeks later after his three-month-old son, brother and father all died in the epidemic. His wife and mother passed soon afterwards.
These devastating losses would haunt him for the rest of his days. Emotionally drained and deeply depressed, he gave up his career as a physician and decided to devote his life to creative endeavors.
Having enjoyed a productive career as an engraver, Anderson died in January 1870. That same year the US Census Bureau recorded New York’s population at a milestone number of 942,292 citizens, affirming its status as the nation’s most populous city.
Bellevue’s ambulances were busier than ever that year, attending to 1401 emergency calls routed through the police. Anderson had been one of the pioneers who had been prepared to risk to own lives during severe epidemics in order to shield fellow New Yorkers from suffering.
CREDITS
JAN HARSKAMP NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: New York Alms House, later Bellevue Hospital (Library of Congress); Stanley Fox, “A Scene in the New York Morgue: Identification of the Unknown Dead,” wood engraving (Harper’s Weekly, July 7, 1866); an engraved self-portrait of Alexander Anderson at eighty-one; Anderson’s list of yellow fever patients, 1795 (New-York Historical Society); and the Bellevue Hospital Ambulance.
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.
Image courtesy of the NYC Economic Development Corporation
A decade-old plan to fill in the gap in the East River greenway near the United Nations is finally moving forward. The city’s Economic Development Corporation last week issued a request for proposals (RFP) from contractors to supervise the construction of the proposed esplanade, which will span less than a mile between East 41st and East 53rd Streets, as first reported by Gothamist. The project is the city’s latest effort to reach its goal of creating a 32-mile cycling and pedestrian path along Manhattan’s waterfront.
Image courtesy of the NYC Economic Development Corporation
East Midtown Greenway opened in December 2023. Photo courtesy of Skanska
“The release of this RFP is another critical milestone towards completing the remaining gaps in the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway,” Adrien Lesser, vice president of media relations and public affairs at NYCEDC, told 6sqft in a statement. “Following last year’s opening of the East Midtown Greenway segment and Andrew Haswell Green Park, today’s RFP represents another major step forward by the Adams administration and NYCEDC to finish the long-envisioned Manhattan Waterfront Greenway.”
“These remarkable capital projects will not only improve the quality of life for New Yorkers but expand opportunities to commute by bike or foot while enjoying spectacular views of the East River. ”
To fill the gap, the esplanade will be constructed atop pillars spanning the waterway. Preliminary contract documents indicate that the expansion will open by the end of 2028 and cost roughly $120 million, according to Gothamist.
In April 2017, former Mayor Bill de Blasio announced it would cost $100 million to close the gap.
Last December, the city opened another section of the greenway, between East 53rd and East 60th Streets. The $197.6 million expansion delivered three acres of public open space, a new pedestrian walkway, a pedestrian bridge, landscaping, and a separate bike lane.
However, the greenway still reaches a dead-end before travelers reach the U.N., forcing bikers and pedestrians to travel along First and Second Avenues instead.
Plans to fill the gap in the greenway date back to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.
Other transportation infrastructure improvements will arrive on the East Side in the coming weeks. As reported by Streetsblog, city officials plan to install a protected bike lane along the First Avenue tunnel between East 40th and 49th Streets before the U.N. General Assembly begins on September 10.
Filling in the gaps in the East River greenway builds upon Mayor Eric Adams’ effort to expand the city’s greenway network by 40 miles and bring the total length of greenway corridors to 60 miles.
Additional greenway projects underway include the seven-mile continuous Harlem River Greenway in the Bronx. The new corridor aims to reconnect Bronxites to the Harlem River waterfront, which has been largely inaccessible since the construction of the Major Deegan Expressway in the 1930s.
The city has also identified future projects in the outer boroughs, including Queens’ northern waterfront, southern Queens from Spring Creek Park to the Jamaica Bay shoreline, Staten Island’s waterfront, the South Bronx, and an 11-mile stretch from Coney Island to Highland Park.
CREDITS
6SQFT
PHOTO OF THE DAY
WE REPORTED TO RIOC THE DETERIORATION OF THE BACK PORCH STEPS ON SUNDAY. TODAY, WE SAW THE AREA ROPED OFF. JUST WONDERING WHY THE WOOD IS DETERIORATING LESS THAN 4 YEARS FROM THE BUILDING BEING REBUILT?
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.
