Born in New York City in 1958, painter Diana Horowitz received her BFA from SUNY Purchase and MFA from Brooklyn College. She has had solo shows in San Francisco, Chicago and New York, and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Tyler School of Art / Temple Abroad Rome, among other places. She currently teaches at Brooklyn College.
Horowitz’s work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of the City of New York, the New-York Historical Society; Hunter Museum, Chattanooga TN; and the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, among others. In 2005, she was elected a member of the National Academy and she has received awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and grants from the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Horowitz has held residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s World Views program; and Ballinglen in Ireland. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and is represented by Bookstein Projects.
Bridges Across the East River, 2015
Brooklyn Tech Backlight, 2006
Early Summer Gowanus Bay, 2013
Como from Above Perled 2016
Bellagio Afternoon 2015
Varenna from Fiumelatte 2017
Beginning with Green Blue Green Blue Core Red Prism
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
HINT: YOU CAN EARLY VOTE IN THIS BUILDING, THOUGH THE POOL IS CLOSED
ARON EISENPRESS, ANDY SPARBERG, LAURA HUSSEY, HARA REISER AND ED LITCHER ADDED THIS:
The American Radiator Building (since renamed to the American Standard Building) was conceived by the architects John Howells and Raymond Hood and built in 1924 for the American Radiator Company. Raymond Hood, rose to prominence in 1922 when he won the international competition for The Chicago Tribune’s new office tower. After the competition, the young architect received numerous offers, including one from American Radiator for an office building facing Bryant Park. The skyscraper would be built of black brick and topped it with gold-colored masonry units, the architects combined Gothic and modern styles in the design of the building. Black brick on the frontage of the building (symbolizing coal) was selected to give an idea of solidity and to give the building a solid mass. Other parts of the facade were covered in gold bricks (symbolizing fire), and the entry was decorated with marble and black mirrors. Howells and Hood employed the talents of their frequent collaborator Rene Paul Chambellan for the ornamentation and sculptures. The basic feeling of the skyscraper is Neo-Gothic but the general ornament is abstract and moving towards Art Deco, which would become important in the following years inspiring neighborhood buildings including the Empire State Building. In 1998 the building was sold, later the American Radiator Building was converted to The Bryant Park Hotel with 128 guest rooms. The conversion also included building a film studio screening room in the sub-basement, a cocktail lounge in the lower lobby space and a restaurant in the lobby. The exterior of the building is a National Historic Landmark building so none of the exterior features of the building could be changed when converted to a hotel. Only the interior space was changed during the conversion. The American Standard Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building a landmark in 1974. The 26 story tower still stands out for its colors – black brick trimmed in gold – and unconventional shape.
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 FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
New York City’s Fifth Avenue in Manhattan has been associated with glamour and wealth since the 1800s. However, when this now-iconic street was first laid out, it was given a rather humdrum name, Middle Road. The undeveloped parcel of land Middle Road cut through, which was sold in 1785 to raise municipal funds for the newly established nation, would become the epicenter of New York City’s high society. As the 18th-century turned into the 19th-century and the Gilded Age began, the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan renamed Middle Road Fifth Avenue. Development of the city moved northward, led by millionaires who built palatial homes on the largely empty swaths of land. The string of fabulous Gilded Age 5th Avenue mansions that stretched from 59th to 78th Street was dubbed the “Gold Coast,” and “Millionaire’s Row.” While many of the grandiose 5th Avenue mansions of New York City’s 19th and early 20th-century millionaires have been lost to time, there are some that remain intact today, serving as homes for non-profits, museums, and cultural organizations.
WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT MANSION
Photo from Library of Congress
Richard Morris Hunt, the architect commissioned to design a home for William K. Vanderbilt and his ambitious wife Alva, “knew his new young clients very well,” writes Arthur T. Vanderbilt II in Fortune’s Children, “and he understood the function of architecture as a reflection of ambition. He sensed that Alva wasn’t interested in another home. She wanted a weapon: a house she could use as a battering ram to crash through the gates of society.” Alva’s home needed to stand out against all the other 5th Avenue mansions. Alva crashed through the gates of society in the spring of 1883 with her “Fancy Dress Ball.” Until that groundbreaking ball, Alva, part of the new money rich, was not welcomed into the established New York City social scene ruled by Mrs. Astor.
Besting Mrs. Astor’s 400, Alva invited 1,200 of New York’s finest to her ball. Mrs. Astor was conspicuously left off the guest list, until she came calling at Alva’s door, symbolically bowing to the new order as she sought an invitation for her and her daughter. Inside Alva’s home, guests were greeted in a hall built of stone quarried from Caen, France. The interiors were decorated from trips to Europe, with items from both antique shops and from “pillaging the ancient homes of impoverished nobility.” The Vanderbilts affectionately referred to their mansion as the Petit Chateau. Sadly, the mansion was demolished in 1926 after being sold to a real estate developer and in its stead rose 666 Fifth Avenue, an office tower.
WILLIAM A. CLARK MANSON
Image via Library of Congress
“Copper King” William A. Clark’s mansion at 960 Fifth Avenue was dubbed “Clark’s Folly.” The hulking home cost $6 million to build at the time, a sum that roughly equals $150 million dollars in modern times according to the Museum of the City of New York. Clark’s mansion, which took fourteen years to build, consisted of “121 rooms, 31 baths, four art galleries, a swimming pool, concealed garage, and underground rail line to bring in heating coal was completed in 1911.”
To facilitate the construction of the extravagant home, Clark bought a quarry in New Hampshire where he sourced stone and transported it to New York via a railroad he built specifically for that purpose. He also acquired a bronze foundry to make all of the metal fittings. Marble was imported from Italy, oak brought in from the Sherwood Forrest of England, and pieces of a French Chateau shipped over from France. After all of the work on the mansion was complete, Clark had a mere fourteen years to enjoy it before he passed away in 1925. The home became a white elephant. It eventually sold in 1927 for less than $3 million dollars and was promptly demolished, making it one of the most short-lived buildings in New York City. The mansion was replaced by a 12-story luxury condo building designed by Rosario Candela.
The Vanderbilt Triple Palace: 640 and 660 Fifth Avenue and 2 West 52nd Street
Image from Public Domain from the A. D. White Architectural Photographs Collection, Cornell University Library
Two granddaughters of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt were each given their own 5th Avenue mansions. In 1882, the girls’ father, William Henry Vanderbilt, bought an entire block between 51st and 52nd Street where he built the “Triple Palaces,” three near-identical brownstone homes for himself and his wife along with their two daughters, Emily and Margaret. When hosting large events, the separate drawing rooms could be converted into one large ballroom!
The “palaces” caught the eye of another wealthy New Yorker, Henry Clay Frick. Frick is reported to have said, “That is all I shall ever want” on a drive past the Triple Palaces with his friend Andrew Mellon. In 1905, Frick would get the chance to have his own palace when he rented one out on a 10-year lease while George Vanderbilt was preoccupied with building the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. He would have bought the house if William H. Vanderbilt’s will had not barred George from selling the home and art outside of the family. Later, via a loophole, the property and artwork were able to be sold by Vanderbilt’s grandson to the Astors, who in turn sold the holdings in the 1940s. Today, skyscrapers stand in place of the palaces and where once there were ballrooms and drawing rooms, there are now retailers like H&M, Godiva, and Juicy Couture.
FOR THE VANDERBILT KIDS
Photo by Albert Levy in public domain from Wikimedia Commons
William Henry Vanderbilt’s other two daughters, Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly and Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb, also got their own mansions on Fifth Avenue. In fact, there were so many Vanderbilt mansions built along Fifth Avenue, that a stretch of the street became known as “Vanderbilt Row.” Florence and Eliza’s townhouses were designed by architect John B. Snook in 1883. The two neighboring homes were very different than their sisters’ “Triple Palaces.” Florence and Eliza’s mansions boasted rusticated stonework, turrets, bow windows, and a mixture of domes and galbes that resulted in busy rooflines.
Florence lived at 684 Fifth Avenue until 1926 when she upgraded to a new mansion further north along Central Park. The Webbs sold 680 to John D. Rockefeller in 1913. Both were demolished for a skyscraper that has The Gap as its anchor tenant.
As a founding partner and treasurer of Standard Oil, Jabez A. Bostwick was one of the many men who made it big in the oil business. Bostwick, like most wealthy men of his time, took his fortune and his family to Fifth Avenue where he built a 10-room French Second Empire mansion in 1876 on the corner of 61st Street. When his daughter Nellie married, he extended the mansion to 801 and 802 Fifth Avenue.
After Jabez’s death and other family tragedies befell the Bostwicks, his wife Helen remained in the home until she too passed away in 1920. Family friend Mrs. Marcellus Hartley Dodge, a daughter of William Rockefeller purchased the Helen Bostwick home in 1922 and left it seemingly abandoned until 1977. In 1979, the homes were demolished to make way for a 33-story luxury apartment building.
When Caroline Astor’s nephew William Astor knocked down his own townhouse to build the original Waldorf Hotel, right next door to her own mansion, she up and left. In 1894, Caroline and her son headed uptown to a more fashionable spot on 65th Street and Fifth Avenue. “Starchitect” Richard Morris Hunt, the same man who designed other Gilded Age 5th Avenue mansions like William K. and Alva Vanderbilt’s Petit Chateau, was hired to design Caroline’s new abode. While the exterior appeared to be that of one large mansion, the interior was actually split into two separate living spaces, one for Caroline, and one for her son John Jacob Astor. The two residences were connected by a ballroom that could hold 1,200 guests (the same amount of guests that Alva Vanderbilt had invited to her fancy dress ball).
After Caroline’s death, John Jacob Astor took over his mother’s portion of the mansion and made some major renovations. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy the new space. After honeymooning in Europe with his new second wife, he booked a return trip aboard the doomed RMS Titanic. John did not survive the tragedy. While his new wife and her maid did make it safely back to New York City, they were forced to give up the mansion, as dictated by Astor’s will. It passed to Astor’s son from his first marriage, William Vincent Astor. Preferring his estate out on Long Island, William sold the 65th Street property to developers and auctioned off the interiors. Today the Temple Emanu-El stands in its place.
FRICK MANSION
Magnolias in bloom, The Frick Collection, Fifth Avenue
Today, we know the Henry Clay Frick House as the Frick Collection, a repository of old masters (and a hidden underground bowling alley!). Frick began to amass his art collection while staying at one of the Vanderbilt Triple Palaces. In 1912, he commissioned Thomas Hastings, of the firm Carrère and Hastings, to build his own mansion on 5th Avenue and 7oth Street. The illustrious firm of Carrère and Hastings designed the New York Public Library at Bryant Park.
Fricks instructed Hastings to build him “a small house with plenty of light and air,” one that would be “simple, in good taste, and not ostentatious.” Despite what Frick may have said, he ended up with a palatial, 61-room home embellished with ancient symbolism and decorated inside with Rococo and Renaissance furniture and decorative arts, and of course, his collection of old masters. The Frick mansion recently had a starring role in the HBO Max television show The Undoing. While the mansion is under renovation, the priceless works of art have been moved for the first time in nearly 80 years, into the Met Breuer.
This new Street Seat in Long Island City highlights an ancient rock formation on 12th Street. The VOREA Group
A Long Island City street with an unusual, ancient impediment has been transformed from a derelict strip of concrete into a vibrant pedestrian plaza.
The city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) has partnered with developer the VOREA Group to overhaul a stretch of 12th Street between 44th Avenue and 43rd Road, where through traffic was previously prohibited by a glacial rock formation. The partnership came to be through the Street Seats program, a citywide effort that converts underused streets into public spaces.
The geological quirk left the street, which originally lacked pedestrian sidewalks, in a sort of limbo; it couldn’t easily be accessed by the public, so was previously used as employee parking for a local company. Enter VOREA, which owns properties along the street, and who applied to work with the city to turn the block into a pedestrian oasis in a largely industrial swath of the Queens neighborhood. Now, instead of functioning as an obstacle, the rock formation and its history serves as a focal point.
“That was the vision we had with the developer, to highlight that as a unique element within the space,” says Samantha Dolgoff, the director of strategic initiatives with DOT. “We didn’t want the rock to just be there. We wanted it be more prominent in the space.”
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2021
THE 501st EDITION
The story of the house-size rock
between two
apartment buildings off
Riverside Drive
from EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
West 114th Street between Riverside Drive and Broadway is a quiet sloping block of light brick rowhouses, similar to other side streets in the area.
But there’s one massive difference that sets West 114th apart: the 100-foot rock lodged between two houses and walled off behind an iron fence. This hulk of Manhattan schist was nicknamed Rat Rock years ago by locals, who were understandably spooked by the rodents that used to enjoy nesting there, according to a 2000 New York Times article.
Like all the rock outcroppings found in Manhattan, the story of Rat Rock began hundreds of millions of years ago, when the bedrock that helps support skyscrapers was formed. Manhattan schist is a type of bedrock, and while most bedrock lurks beneath ground, geological fault lines forced some rocks to the surface, The Times piece explains.
Having big boulders above ground wasn’t a problem in Central Park. Though some were dynamited away when the park was being built, others were left behind to provide a rustic feel amid the lake, pond, and pastures.
Rat Rock in 1917
But when developers encountered rocks like this on the street grid, they either blasted them away or left them alone. For unknown reasons—perhaps because it’s just so enormous—Rat Rock remained, and builders worked around this break in the streetscape.
Apparently, it’s here to stay. The land is owned by Columbia University, and they have no plans to get rid of it. “The lot and development rights are incredibly valuable, but removing the rock could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” states The Times.
Enormous boulders like this didn’t get in the way of nearby development a century or so ago, however. The Museum of the City of New York has this 1903 photo in its collection of a similar rock thwarting the building plans of a row of houses on Riverside Drive between 93rd and 94th Streets.
I’m not so sure this photo is labeled correctly; it doesn’t look like the Riverside Drive of the era to me. But assuming it is, the rock has long been removed.
Over on the East Side, this undated photo shows rock outcroppings at Fifth Avenue and 117th Street, with modest houses built on top of them far off in the distance. The rocks here are no longer.
THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE WITHOUT THE LIGHT NEW TOP IS BEING INSTALLED, STAY TUNED Laura Hussey, Jay Jacobson and Andy Sparberg & Hara Reiser got it
from Andy Sparberg: Good morning, this is Andy Sparberg. The answer to the Thursday photo is Roosevelt Island lighthouse, and Hallet’s Cove Apartments in the background.
May I add something to the Grand Central photo that appeared on Wednesday morning: If you look in the lower right of the Grand Central photo, you can see an elevated train. Until 1923, a short branch of the Third Avenue Elevated line existed atop 42nd Street between Third and Park Avenues, carrying a two car shuttle train that connected with the namesake elevated at Third Avenue. In December 1923 this branch was closed, and razed soon afterward. Dear Everyone at RIHS and “from the Archive” – –
Another terrific daily e-letter – – and YOWZA, it’s the 500th!
To Judy and all your wonderfully helpful e-docents, you are just amazing, and soooooooo appreciated, for the totally interesting and fact-filled slices of living here in NYC. I’m a NYC native born and bred, and these subjects you select, and present so well, are so terrific! I really look forward to my daily e-letter!
I also recognize the time it takes to put out this daily e-letter, and to provide such compelling content. . so your contributions of time and brain power are also recognized, with gratitude.
Best to all,
Susan Rodetis (Manhattanite . . and I teach bike lessons around NYC and on Roosevelt Island)
from Clara Bella ANOTHER DELIGHTFUL MORNING JOURNEY INTO THE PAST! The tributes said it all. HAPPY 500th!!!!🎉🥳👏🏼🎊🙌🍾 At last! A topless photo in From the Archive! The Roosevelt Island lighthouse is being renovated. Not quite as well-known as its counterpart under the George W Bridge, the RI Lighthouse has been the subject of much conjecture. From the delightful tale about the person who erected the lighthouse to prove that he had been improperly detained in the insane asylum to the saga of the memorial to lives lost on vessels traversing the notorious Hell Gate where waters from Long Island Sound, and the East and Harlem rivers swirled, our lighthouse has stood. In the late 1970s, when it was not yet fully secured, our son Dan and I wandered in with the hope of climbing to the peak for the view. We found, however, such a state of disrepair that even we foolhardy folks realized we couldn’t responsibly risk the intrusion. JAY JACOBSON JJJ
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)
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
Riverside Drive is one of New York’s most historic (and beautiful!) streets. Join Ephemeral New York on a walking tour of the Drive from 83rd to 107th Streets on October 24 that takes a look at the mansions and monuments of this legendary thoroughfare.
Tags: Bedrock in NYC, Boulders of NYC, Central Park Rock Outcroppings, Geology of Manhattan, Manhattan Schist NYC, NYC Geology, Rat Rock 114th Street, Rock Outcroppings Manhattan
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
The days of the flagship New York City department store of B. Altman are numbered. At one time, the glamorous New York City department store was the height of fashion, filled with opulent spaces and genteel clientele. Attentive employees and over-the-top merchandise were hallmarks of this experience. Unfortunately, changing tastes doomed all but the biggest stores in the 1980s. For the past decade, online buying has also taken its toll on these historic structures. Once pillars of the New York department store scene, Lord and Taylor, Henri Bendel, and Barneys New York were shuttered in 2020. Although B. Altman and Co. was lost to bankruptcy thirty years ago, its allure and nostalgia still live on.
The “B” in B. Altman stood for art collector and owner Benjamin Altman. Leaving the family business, he opened his own store in 1865 on the Lower East Side. The store quickly grew and so did the need for a bigger building. Moving to a new location on 6th Avenue and 18th Street, B. Altman was now part of “The Ladies’ Mile.” Ladies’ Mile was where wealthy ladies shopped. Stores like Macy’s and Lord & Taylor also clamored for business. Eventually, New York society would migrate uptown, and so too did the department stores. Anticipating this move, the enterprising Benjamin Altman had quietly been buying land along 5th Avenue and 34th Street. B. Altman’s new location would be neighbors with The Waldorf Astoria Hotel and Macy’s. Today, if you look hard enough, you can see glimpses of that grand era of department stores in Macy’s Herald Square store.
From Wikimedia CommonsPortrait of Benjamin Altman
The architectural firm Trowbridge and Livingston, who designed John Jacob Astor’s St. Regis Hotel, was commissioned for the project. B. Altman and Co. would be built in the Italianate Renaissance style. The French limestone exteriors complemented the large plate glass windows. The storefront windows included tantalizing merchandise and clothing guaranteed to attract customers. Additionally, interiors were magnificent with dramatic mahogany wood staircases, Doric columns on the first-floor showroom, and beautifully detailed elevators. The massive store had eight floors that sold luxury items such as perfume, china, art, furniture, tailored clothes, coats, and shoes. Huge crowds attended the opening of B. Altman and Co.’s proclaimed it the “Palace of Trade” in 1906.
According to The Life and Legacy of Benjamin Altman by Dr. Jeann Abrams for the Altman Foundation, Altman honed his skills as a tastemaker and trendsetter, transforming New York retail. B. Altman and Co. was one of the first to have distinctive clothing departments such as women, men and children for its clientele. Likewise, B. Altman used quality fabrics for its revolutionary ready-to-wear as well as its custom-made clothing. The store also had the ingenious idea of having a dedicated buyer in Paris. Yes, B. Altman had whole departments dedicated to Parisian fashion right on 5th Avenue.
Constant competition with the New York department stores drove B. Altman to innovate. The store would create the position of “walker” to assist both customers and employees. The walker was similar to a section manager who “walked” the floors to assure quality and satisfaction. Along with this new management style, the attentive staff and uniformed elevator operators generated a standard of refinement for its well heeled customers. Not to mention, the store had a waiting room for customers to rest until their carriage driver of chauffeurs arrived. Benjamin Altman wanted to accommodate his guests’ needs, big or small. And to that end, the store had a grand awning to protect the fashionable ladies from weather and wind.
“The Ladies Who Lunch at B. Altman and Co.”
In the late 19th century, New York society had strict rules for women both married and single. Surprisingly, New York’s department stores created the original “ladies who lunch.” And B. Altman and Co. provided its guests with lovely but reputable places for tea and eventually a restaurant, thus allowing unaccompanied women to shop and eat without a chaperone or husband. By the 1930s, New York department store restaurants were evolving into charming dining locales. Not to be outdone, B. Altman’s Charleston Restaurant had not only delicious meals but also a full-size Southern porch.
From Wikimedia CommonsAdvertisement for B, Altman and Company
It is important to realize that after Mr. Altman’s death in 1913, the Altman Foundation took over ownership of the store. With philanthropy as its driving force, B. Altman and Co. founded a program to help employees that had not finished high school to earn their degree. Indeed, this program was the continuation of Benjamin Altman’s thoughtful approach to his staff. Altman had already initiated a shorter workweek, subsidized meals and in-house doctor and medical care for his employees. Many employees would remain at B. Altman’s for decades thanks to these benefits. Due to changing tax laws, the Altman Foundation had to relinquish control of the famous New York City Department Store, and it was sold in 1986.
Lost New York Department Stores
By the 1980s, changing tastes and the modernity of the smaller chain store (such as the Gap) made shoppers take a another look at retail. Department stores were now thought of as old-fashioned and stuffy. With the fall of Gimbels, the formidable New York City department stores were at a loss about what to do. Once known as Macy’s rival in the film Miracle on 34th Street, if Gimbels could close, who was next? Unfortunately for B. Altman and Co., it would not be too far behind. The famed New York department store would declare bankruptcy in 1989. In November 1990, with no Santa but just a “going out of business” sale, B. Altman and Co. was no more. Fortunately, B. Altman’s magnificent architecture was given landmark status by the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission in 1985. In 2000, CUNY Graduate School moved into the historic building. Luckily, some of the original interior details are still intact, such as the limestone facade, large display windows, and the beautiful curvy glass canopies. Beneath, a metal frieze runs above the entrance.
EDITORIAL
My mother would take me to Altman’s for much of my wardrobe. There was always a great selection of clothes. Lunch at the Charleston Garden was always included. Your tray came with your meal on it and the tray filled into a slot on the table top.
In later years I would haunt the china and glassware clearance area for bargains. I remember purchasing gifts that were beautifully wrapped by ladies behind high counter.
The ambiance was calm and civilized.
I would meet our neighbor Ed O’Flynn who worked on the main floor and when Altman’s closed moved to Saks Fifth Avenue.
The top floor of the CUNY building is a bland and most unattractive cafeteria.
But, past the library on the 34th Street side of the building two elevators remain, with their decorative iron work. There is a water fountain around the corner in the offices of Oxford University Press at 198 Madison Avenue. The Madison Avenue side is vacant since the NYPL has left.
FROM OUR READERS
Jay Jacobson Starting out as a publishing toddler at pandemic lockdown, the RIHS daily diary has become a vibrant, thriving, “wonder-what -wonders -she -will -share -with -me” part of starting the day. New to me information about our Island, our City, and people who have been active in both. Introductions to art by artists whose names were unknown and artists who were old acquaintances. Fascinating guides to places and people, and “oh, I recognize that picture!” puzzles. Congratulations to the dedicated folks with the RI Historical Society on #500! And please don’t let our defeat of the pandemic diminish what you all have done! xoxoxoxox Sorry if it’s too long, but you guys have done a great job!
About the 500th issue—enjoy checking the mail first thing every morning to see another unique topic.
My favorites are many but love familiar places that I thought I knew but maybe didn’t know the whole story. Love pieces about transportation, especially our subway.
More of? One was trolley cars and els but that was featured the other day. Other topics to explore might be secret rooms and/or hideaways, prohibition, the polio vaccine, pigeons.
Thanks Judy. This has become part of my day
GLORIA HERMAN
As we come to our 500th edition of the From the Archives, I’ve taken a moment to reflect on the variety of interesting topics. We started with the history of Roosevelt Island and moved well beyond. We have learned about bridges, buildings, and architecture. We have explored neighborhoods, regions, and icons. These pieces have given life to colorful characters who have influenced Roosevelt Island and the surrounding city. The most impressive editions, to me, are the seemingly endless artists both foreign and home grown. I hope each of you are continuing to learn and enjoy each piece.
Deborah Dorff
Is it possible this is the 500th issue of “From the Archives”?!? The slog that has been our collective Covid-19 experience for the past year & a half (plus!) has been made bearable, hopeful & even enjoyable at times by my daily emails from the Roosevelt Island Historical Society’s “From the Archives” publication. Judy Berdy has been tireless in her efforts to publish & I have to think that it has helped give her life focus during this difficult time–I know it has mine! No one is an Island unto themselves & Judy has had the help of Stephen Blank, Bobbie Slonevsky, Melanie Colter, Deborah Dorff and many others to make “From the Archives” seem effortless. The stories have been broad in their scope reflecting Roosevelt Island & NYC’s checkered history. I’ve especially enjoyed the different stories of visual artists, people of color & LGBTQ+ communities that have been represented by this publication. Broadening our scope of who gets to tell their stories has only ever enhanced our collective, ongoing history on Roosevelt Island……Thank you Judy et al for enhancing my life “From the Archives”…….. Most sincerely:
Thom Heyer
I have really enjoyed reading the previous five hundred entertaining and informative notes from the Archives. I look forward to reading the next five hundred. Keep reporting on past and present art and artists and architecture around the city. And there is a lot I learned that I didn’t know about New York City history.
The length of the articles make them very readable. Not so long that I don’t have time to read them but long enough to provide insight on any given topic.
Laura Hussey
Judy: Your From the Archive series is a joy for both the reminders of New York lore I’ve forgotten and for new tidbits to add to my mental swamp of treasures and trivia. Thanks to your stable of writers and researchers. Matt
ANDY SPARBERG, LURA HUSSEY, P. WALTER, ARLENE BESSENOFF, ARON EISENPREISS, HARA REISER GOT IT
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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
TOMORROW IS ISSUE #500. PLEASE SEND US YOUR COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, SUGGESTIONS TO BE INCLUDED IN THIS SPECIAL ISSUE. SEND TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021
499th ISSUE
THE SECOND AVENUE
ELEVATED SUBWAY
ON THE
QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
ANDY SPARBERG
We all know that the Queensboro Bridge (aka Ed Koch Bridge, popularly the 59th Street Bridge) has two decks for motor traffic. But it’s been lost to history that the upper deck carried, between 1917 and 1942, two elevated train tracks that connected Manhattan’s old IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) Second Avenue Elevated Line with the Queensboro Plaza station complex, which allowed the Second Avenue trains to travel to Astoria and Flushing on today’s N and #7 lines, respectively.
The bridge elevated tracks were a part of the Dual Contracts, which greatly expanded the initial subway system constructed between 1900 and 1913. Under the Dual Contracts, the two rapid transit operating companies, the IRT and BRT (Brooklyn Rapid Transit), were granted the right to operate, through a lease, a whole series of new lines that NYC government built between 1913 and 1931.
These transit lines connected Manhattan with a whole variety of neighborhoods in The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. New housing, made possible by the new transit connections, induced people to move out of Manhattan, whose population dropped from 2,332,000 in 1910 to 1,867,000 in 1930, or a 20% drop.
In the same twenty years, Queens grew from 284,000 to 1.079,000, a 280% increase. The two bridge tracks, along with tunnels at 42nd and 60th Streets, were key reasons why Queens grew so rapidly. Population data is rounded to the nearest thousand.
Originally the Queensboro Bridge tracks were in the center of the upper deck. In 1929 the tracks were moved to the north side (Manhattan-bound traffic today) to permit installation of two automobile lanes on the south side.
The BRT was reorganized into the BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit) in 1923. In June 1940, New York City purchased the IRT and BMT firms, and merged them with its IND subway (always city-owned from its 1925 inception) to create a single unified city-wide subway system under the Board of Transportation.
Mayor LaGuardia choreographed this event, which he called “a good deal” because the five-cent fare was saved for the duration of his years in office. Unfortunately, part of LaGuardia’s deal was the closing of the Second Avenue elevated south of 60th Street, and its connecting tracks on the Queensboro Bridge, both of which occurred in June 1942. The elevated north of 60th Street had already closed (June 1940).
There’s more to this story, but for now suffice to say that no elevated train has crossed the Queensboro Bridge for close to eighty years. The former train tracks on the upper deck north side were converted to two automobile lanes in the late 1950s and are still in that use today.
A view of Long Island City from Blackwell’s Island (around 1901), showing the under construction footings of the Queensboro Bridge and the New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Works factory
. In his 1891 book Terra-Cotta in Architecture, Walter Geer described the factory in detail. “The first story contains the engine, boilers, machinery for preparing clay, and the clay, coal and grit pits.” This machinery included washer and slip tanks, crushers and mill stones, as well as some items known as pug mills. There were 12 kilns.
The clay came from New Jersey. It was mined, seasoned, and delivered to the factory, where it was crushed, ground, washed, and mixed with grit before being molded and sculpted. From there, the terra cotta got shipped off to adorn some of the most beautiful buildings in the city. Ed Litcher
FROM CLARA BELLA, Who commented that we did not mention the Bronx:
And by the way, although I’ve resided in this area for 18 years (longer than anywhere else I’ve ever lived) I didn’t know the great majority of the info you featured today, the significant history of my humble neighborhood.AND THANKS for featuring my local Armory!! There has been debate and discussion about how to re/use the space for well over a decade. It was/is supposed to become the world’s largest ice rink complex but progress has been stalled for a number of years. About a decade back, Macy’s filmed a holiday tv ad in the hangar, and that same space served as a pandemic food distribution center in 2020. Someone who worked there told me that the basement contains about 8 feet of foul water that freezes every winter and melts every spring, as well as a thriving population of rats and raccoons. Currently the chain-link fence around the Armory provides the perfect display wall for informal second-hand clothing sellers and street vendors who set up a variety of stands and tables offering everything from industrial equipment to mostly-used electronics to handicrafts to rescued and recycled furniture to gold jewelry, all at rock-bottom prices.
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Do you remember the 3.9 magnitude earthquake that shook the New York City region on November 30, 2010?
No reason you should, unless you’re a seismologist. The US Geological Survey reported that the tremor occurred in the Atlantic Ocean, about 80 miles off the coast of Southhampton. The earthquake wasn’t big enough to do any damage or hurt anyone, and the Coast guard said there was no threat of a tsunami. It was the biggest earthquake for our area in 18 years.
Not a danger, but the 2010 quake wasn’t unusual. Five earthquakes have occurred in the same area in the past 20 years, including a 4.7 magnitude quake in 1992. New York, which is riddled with faults, has a long history of earthquakes: On average, the region has witnessed a moderate quake (about a 5.0 on the Richter scale) every hundred years. The last one was in 1884 and had a magnitude of approximately 5. For this earthquake, observations of fallen bricks and cracked plaster were reported from eastern Pennsylvania to central Connecticut, and the maximum intensity reported was at two sites in western Long Island (Jamaica and Amityville). Two other earthquakes of approximately magnitude 5 occurred in this region in 1737 and 1783.
“Riddled with Faults”??!?!? Some basic geology: At plate boundaries like the San Andreas Fault, scientists can often identify the specific fault on which an earthquake took place. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. The New York City area is far from the boundaries of the North American plate, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Caribbean, and along North America’s west coast.
But this doesn’t mean we are home free. The seismicity of the northeast is felt to be due to ancient zones of weakness that are being reactivated. In this model, pre-existing faults formed during ancient geological episodes persist in the intraplate crust, and earthquakes occur when present stress is released along these zones of weakness. The stress that causes the earthquakes is generally considered to be derived from rifting at the Mid-Atlantic ridge. Some experts feel that seismicity is scattered throughout most of the New York metropolitan area, particularly around Manhattan Island. What about faults?
Map of geologic faults lines in NYC region
The Ramapo Fault is viewed by some as a major seismically active feature of our wider region. The Ramapo Fault zone spans more than 185 miles in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
A 2008 study argued that a magnitude 6 or 7 earthquake might originate from the Ramapo fault zone, which would almost definitely lead to many fatalities and billions of dollars in damage. And by the way, just off the northern terminus of the Ramapo fault is the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. You don’t have to worry about this one – the plant was closed down in April.
Earthquake Likely?
By looking at the City’s past earthquakes, experts point to the likelihood of 5.0 or greater hitting the city soon. “Researchers say New York City is susceptible to at least a magnitude 5 earthquake once every 100 years, a 6 about every 670 years, and 7 about every 3,400 years,” writes one. “It’s been 134 years since New York was last hit by at least a magnitude 5.”
Damage worse?
As quakes go, a 5 would not be a big one. But earthquake damage could be worse here than out west. Why? One reason is the nature of our geology. The cooler rocks in the northeast contribute to the seismic energy propagating as much as ten times further than in the warmer rocks of California. A magnitude 4.0 eastern earthquake typically can be felt as far as 60 miles from its epicenter. A magnitude 5.5 eastern earthquake, although uncommon, can be felt as far as 300 miles from its epicenter.
But not just geology. “While uncommon, the earthquake hazard of the New York City metropolitan area has been assessed as moderate,” the New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation writes on its website. “Considering population density and the condition of the region’s infrastructure and building stock, it is clear that even a moderate earthquake would have considerable consequences in terms of public safety and economic impact.”
Only is 1995 were seismic provisions included in the Building Code, meaning that relatively few buildings currently located throughout the city were erected with earthquake protections in mind. 200,000 buildings in NYC are unreinforced brick, with the most located in Brooklyn. These are most vulnerable to an earthquake because the walls in these buildings are prone to collapse outward.
Also, much of New York City’s waterfront is built on fill that will be unstable in a quake. Other areas that rest on artificial fill vulnerable to soil liquefaction are JFK Airport and the World’s Fair site in Queens. The UES and Chinatown are the same and they also have many unreinforced masonry buildings.
Earthquake scene from the film San Andreas 2015
But that’s not all. Experts wonder how our City’s ancient infrastructure would hold up in the event of an earthquake. Rubble of crumbled brick and stone buildings will clog already congested roads, blocking first responders and public transportation. Tunnels? Construction on the Steinway tunnel began around the time of the last earthquake, long before seismic codes or even modern engineering practices. In the event of a quake, holes where the tunnel walls no longer reach the surrounding mud will cause the tunnel to rattle around. And because the tunnel runs through both the soft mud of the riverbed and the hard bedrock on either side, different segments are going to rattle around at different speeds and frequencies. More than a dozen tunnels like the Steinway connect Manhattan to New Jersey and Long Island. All are at risk of serious damage in the event of a quake. Yikes.
Fact is that the City is doing better. Since the first seismic building codes for NYC were passed in 1995, additional steps have been taken to mandate earthquake protections into NYC structures. The Department of Building’s City Construction Codes in 2008 aim to make buildings stronger, more flexible, and more ductile – able to absorb energy without breaking in a brittle manner. The Codes have sections on soil types and building foundations. Seismic detailing is required to enable a building’s joints, structural connections and piping to hold up during an earthquake. Critical facilities such as firehouses and hospitals were required to be designed to both survive an earthquake event and to also remain open and functional following one. In 2014, the DOB revised the Construction Codes to follow the model of American Civil Engineers Standard for designing and constructing seismic-resistant structures, which requires “that new buildings in New York City are designed so it is less likely they will collapse or sustain significant damage during an earthquake.” To account for the inherent vulnerabilities posed by the prevalence of soft soil that structures all across New York are erected upon, “building designs must account for site-specific soil conditions and building foundations, and must ensure that joints and structural connections are flexible. Special detailing for electrical and mechanical systems, building contents, and architectural components are also specified.”
Still, unless we are too comfortable, did you see the piece in a recent Sunday Times that only three of New York’s 25 tallest residential buildings — and none of the towers on Billionaires’ Row — have completed building safety tasks required by the city?
And while new buildings may be built to the new codes, the vast majority of buildings in Manhattan were built long before these codes were introduced. Retrofitting these structures to make them more earthquake resistant – not to mention our abovementioned infrastructure – would be quite a task.
But I’m not going to worry about earthquakes here. Except, perhaps, about the fault on our Island.
New Supertalls Test the Limits, as the City Consults an Aging Playbook, New York Times, October 1, 2021
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
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The Jerome Park Racetrack, once described as the “national race course of America,” was a thoroughbred horse racing facility from 1866 until 1894 in that part of Westchester County that was annexed into the Bronx in 1874. There is nearly no trace of this once esteemed track that hosted the Belmont Stakes for over two decades. It and the land surrounding it became the site of the Jerome Park reservoir, but part of the reservoir was never built and became home to several educational institutions. A walk around the reservoir today brings you to several charming small parks and Revolutionary War fort sites.
Jerome Park on race day, as pictured in Harper’s Weekly in 1886. Image from Library of Congress.
Financier Leonard W. Jerome (who was Winston Churchill‘s maternal grandfather; the “King of Wall Street;” and founder of the American Jockey Club, the most exclusive organization of its kind in the U.S.) and August Belmont, Sr. built a racetrack on 230 acres that Jerome bought from James Bathgate in 1866. The racetrack hosted the Belmont Stakes, the oldest Triple Crown race, from 1867 until 1889. The first U.S. outdoor polo match was held there in 1876. According to the New York Times, it was “one of the most famous and charming spots in America that has ever been devoted to the interest of sport” and “the nursery ground of the sport of thoroughbred racing” It featured a large dining room, magnificent ballroom, and clubhouse accommodations comparable to a luxury hotel. However, what began as an exclusive resort for the social elite, attracting the belles and social and financial powers of New York and the U.S., eventually degenerated into a money-making machine dominated by scandals and bookmakers that catered to the lower classes.
The racetrack was accessible by both road and rail. Central Avenue, a plank road, was laid out in 1874 and connected what is now the Macomb’s Dam Bridge with the racetrack. It was paved and expanded into a tree-lined boulevard to be named after a city alderman. Jerome’s outraged widow paid for expensive bronze “Jerome Avenue” street signs and hired workers to install them. The Board of Aldermen relented, resulting in the officially named Jerome Avenue, at 5.6 miles, one of the longest streets in the Bronx. (Jerome Avenue becomes Central Park Avenue and then Central Avenue in current Westchester County and runs all the way to White Plains.)
Leonard Jerome‘s one-mile Jerome Park Railway ran from 1880 to 1906. It was a spur beginning at the N.Y. & Harlem River Railroad just north of the present-day Mosholu Parkway bridge and ran to the racetrack station south of Burnside Avenue at the rear of the grandstand. The N.Y. Central Railroad operated racetrack shuttles and special trains from Grand Central Terminal. The 1879 rapid transit routes map shows the Jerome Park Railway crossing Central (now Jerome) Avenue. Parts of the railway’s route can still be seen today where several oddly shaped buildings were built along its right of way.
After the racetrack closed, the railway was used by the Jerome Park Reservoir contractor to haul away excavated material until 1906. The rail spur was extended four miles across the N.Y. & Harlem River Railroad tracks, through Bronx Park, and down Pelham Bay Parkway to the Meadows, tide lands formed by the head waters of Westchester Creek and Westchester Bay. A total of 3,200,000 cubic yards of sand, gravel, hardpan, and solid rock was dumped and filled in to a depth of 18 to 20 feet to turn the marsh into “valuable property.”
In 1875 the Jerome Park Reservoir was first formally recommended by the Public Works Commissioner and was included in Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1877 streets and parks plan. The Croton Aqueduct Commissioners decided to build the storage and distributing reservoir in 1884.
New York City condemned and purchased the racetrack in 1895 for the reservoir that was completed in 1906. The Morris Park Racecourse (in the Morris Park neighborhood), built by John Albert Morris, the Louisiana “Lottery King,” replaced the Jerome Park Racetrack, where racing ended in 1894. Morris Park opened in 1889, with Leonard Jerome as president.
The Jerome Park Reservoir is a major component of the Croton Aqueduct system built on the Old and New Croton Aqueducts. Most of the Bronx and Yonkers were surveyed to find an appropriate site close to the same elevation as the aqueduct at the reservoir site. This avoided loss of the water’s hydraulic head (or pressure) or the construction of extremely high reservoir walls.
The site selected was a natural depression in a high ridge of land that was excavated for an artificial basin. It contains 94 acres of 25-feet deep water and its two mile circumference is surrounded by 30 acres of constructed and landscaped earth. It became and remains the largest body of water in the Bronx. The reservoir has massive elegantly crafted Roman-inspired walls and brick and stone WPA-era Art Deco gate house superstructures with stone voussoir (wedge-shaped) arches below. The walls tower more than 30 feet above the reservoir bottom but are only 8 or 10 feet above the surrounding ground level.
The reservoir was designed with four separate basins divided by north-south and east-west roads. With the later construction of the Catskill and Delaware Aqueducts, it did not need to be as large as originally planned. In 1911 the state legislature authorized the building of the Kingsbridge Armory on the southern part of the eastern basins. Although excavation of the eastern basins began in the early 1900s, they were filed in and graded in 1912 and two roads were eliminated.
The Kingsbridge Armory
Numerous facilities were built on the unused reservoir site including the Kingsbridge Armory, Walton High School., Lehman College of the City University of New York (former Hunter College Bronx Campus that now includes High School of American Studies), Bronx High School of Science, DeWitt Clinton High School, early 1920s Jerome and 1930 Concourse Subway Yards (with Tracey Towers and Scott Tower apartments added over the yards), High Pumping Station, and Harris Field. The site was considered, but not used for the Museum of the Peaceful Arts.
The Kingsbridge Armory, reputedly the world’s largest, was built in 1912-17 on the site of the Bathgate home that was razed in the early 1900s. It is considered among the city’s finest brick facades. The city offered it to the United Nations as a temporary meeting place. The military turned it over to city management in 1996 and it has not had a permanent use ever since. Various failed redevelopment proposals have included a school, athletic center, shopping mall, and homeless shelter. The latest proposal is for the world’s largest indoor ice rink.
Lehman College
Lehman College was initially designed with nine collegiate Gothic buildings but only four were completed by 1934. During WWII its buildings were leased to the Navy to train 81,000 women volunteers for military service in the WAVES, becoming the main and largest women’s training site in the U.S. The U.N. held its first Security Council sessions in the gymnasium from March to August 1946. Lehman College sits directly behind reservoir walls.
DeWitt Clinton High School, opened in 1897 as the Boys High School in Greenwich Village, was renamed for New York governor DeWitt Clinton in 1900. It moved to Hell’s Kitchen in 1906 and then to the Bronx in 1929. With 12,000 students, it was said to be the largest high school in the world in 1934. (In 1935, an annex of DeWitt Clinton was located at the 1918 Evander Childs High School building at Creston Avenue and 184th Street and also served as the original home of Bronx Science in 1938 and then housed Walton High School in 1930.) DeWitt Clinton was the last gender-segregated public school in New York City until 1983. In 1999 US News and World Report named it as one of 96 outstanding schools in America.
The High Pumping Station on Jerome Avenue south of Mosholu Parkway South is an historic neo-Romanesque red brick building with a slate gable roof. It was built 1901-06 as part of the Jerome Park Reservoir complex. It was used to provide increased water pressure for tall buildings.
One of the more interesting proposed but unbuilt facilities was the “Museums of the Peaceful Arts.” In 1912 mineralogist and mineral collector George F. Kunz (in association with Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Robert Peary, Jacob H. Schiff, and Henry E. Huntington) proposed twenty museums (including a stadium, library, and meeting rooms) devoted to industry and learning either in Riverside Park or near the Jerome Park Reservoir. Estimated to cost $20 to $25 million, they would be the largest museum complex in the world. Incorporated in 1914 with a $1 million bequest from engineer and head of the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company, Henry R Towne, to illustrate industrial progress, it began with a few exhibits at 24 West 40th St. in about 1920.
In 1930 it moved to the Daily News Building at 220 E. 42nd St. In 1930 the N.Y. Times opined that “In time, perhaps, the enlarged museum may rival in importance of Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History and hold its own with such famous institutions as the Deutsches Museum of Munich, the Science Museum of London and the Technical Museum of Vienna.” In the 1930s the 20-museum complex plans were scrapped and the collection was transferred the New York Museum of Science and Industry and the endowment given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History.
The reservoir area was the site of several Revolutionary War forts and is now the site of four parks. Jerome Park, along the north and northeast sides of the reservoir, was opened as a park in 1940. Fort Independence Playground, at the northwest corner of the reservoir, came under Parks Department jurisdiction in 1915. It has a plaque commemorating Fort Independence that was located nearby. Its elevated site gave an extensive view of the surrounding countryside. Historic markers describe the Revolutionary War and transformation of the land since then.
Washington’s Walk, along the southern side of the reservoir, was a defensive palisaded earthwork redoubt atop a schist outcrop. Old Fort Four Park, at the southwest corner of the reservoir, was the largest fortification in the area. It also had an extensive view and is now marked by a flagstaff and bronze tablet. A playground opened in 1934.
The story of the Jerome Park Racetrack, its rise, fall and rebirth as a reservoir and site for institutional buildings, tells the story of a certain point in time in Bronx’s history (and the city as a whole). The Bronx shifted from a land of Gilded Age estates, where the upper crust of American society would gather for leisure activities like horse racing and the racetrack was taken over to provide essential services for a growing city that had a need for clean water, outdoor space, and educational institutions.
Street level view West on 34th St looking up to the Second Ave El station over the 34th St Spur Second Ave station.
HELP US MOUNT THIS HISTORIC PLAQUE IN THE KIOSK
We have just acquired this wonderful plaque from the Elevator Storehouse Building. We need your help to pay for the mounting of this 130 pound bronze tablet in the kiosk
To donate online go to www.rihs.us, choose donations and select amount.
You can send us a check to: R.I.H.S., P.O. BOX 5, NY NY 10044
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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
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On June 23, 1909 The New York World reported, “The largest apartment house in the world is being built on a site covering the entire block bounded by Eighty-sixth and Eighth-seventh streets, Broadway and Amsterdam avenue…It will be known as the Belnord. It will house a community as large as that of many a town.”
The Belnord was rising at a time when many affluent families were giving up private homes for the conveniences of sumptuous apartments. On August 1, 1908 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted that The Belnord would not only be the largest, but “one of the highest grade apartment houses in the world.” The Belnord Realty Company had hired the architectural firm of Hiss & Weekes to design the leviathan structure that the New York World said “will contain 175 apartments, with 2,080 rooms, and the number of occupants, including servants will be 1,225.”
Completed in 1909, the 12-story brick and Indiana limestone Belnord was designed in the Italian Renaissance style. Notable was the large, landscaped courtyard, accessed by two arched carriage entrances on 86th Street (one for incoming and the other for outgoing vehicles), and a “footway entrance” on Broadway. Residents were not subject to public view in alighting from their carriages or cars. “All the entrances to the building proper open into the garden court,” said an advertisement. There were four entrances in the courtyard, one at each corner.
The court was accessed by two carriage entrances on 86th Street (bottom) and a pedestrian entrance on Broadway (left). Entrances into the building were at each interior corner. The Record & Guide, November 7, 1908 (copyright expired)
The smallest of the apartments contained seven rooms. Suites came with “two, three and four bath rooms and two or three servants’ rooms and baths, according to the size of the apartment,” said an advertisement. For those families needing extra servants rooms, those were available elsewhere in the building.
To ensure residents a good night’s sleep, almost all the bedrooms faced the courtyard. Management explained, “the width of the court is greater than that of the average city street, thereby securing more privacy, quiet and sunlight.”
Each apartment had windows on the street and the courtyard. from The World’s New York Apartment House Album, 1909 (copyright expired)
The New York Times noted on September 4, 1908, “A remarkable feature of the house will be its sub-courtyard, which will lie beneath the central court and will be lighted with skylights and gratings. No tradesmen’s wagons will be allowed to drive into and stand around in the main courtyard, but will drive down into the sub-courtyard by means of an inclined driveway from Eighty-seventy Street.”
from The World’s New York Apartment House Album, 1909 (copyright expired)
Residents would enjoy the latest in domestic amenities. “All kitchens and pantries are equipped with specially designed gas ranges, porcelain-lined refrigerators and sundry other modern devices…including a garbage receptacle built in the wall and ventilated,” said an advertisement. The built-in refrigerators were capable of producing “ample ice for table use.” Each apartment had a wall safe.
Domestic Engineering explained, “These refrigerators are attached to a refrigerating coil and do not use ice’ the refrigerator is built in the wall, thus giving enlarge space in the room.” December 25, 1909 (copyright expired)
The New York Times wrote, “The interior decorations of each apartment will be in the style of Louis XVI. The doors will be of solid mahogany. The floors will be of hard wood.” While there was a laundry on the roof with “individual tubs, ironing boards, and lines for each tenant,” wash tubs in the kitchens provided maids the convenience of doing quick small jobs.
Rents in The Belnord in 1909 started at $2,100 per year–or about $5,125 per month in today’s terms.
Among the initial tenants were John Jacob Taylor and his wife, the former Caroline Clarke. His grandfather, John Bloomingdale Taylor, had been the manager of John Jacob Astor’s estate. Born in 1845, The Yonkers Statesman said he “spent his early boyhood in New York City and Newport, and his early manhood in traveling around the world.” He lived on significant inherited wealth. “He never engaged in business,” said The Yonkers Statesman following Taylor’s death in his apartment on March 24, 1911.
The courtyard featured a fountain and manicured gardens. from The World’s New York Apartment House Album, 1909 (copyright expired)
Another early resident was playwright and lyricist Henry Martyn Blossom. He primarily worked with Victor Herbert, although he also collaborated with composers like Raymond Hitchcock and A. Baldwin Sloane, and wrote the lyrics for Montgomery and Stone’s successful The Slim Princess.
The early 1920’s saw two theater owners in The Belnord. Joseph “Joe” Leblang was a part owner of the George M. Cohan Theatre, the Sheridan Theatre, and the Broad Street Theatre in Newark.
Simultaneously, Walter Reade and his wife, the former Gertrude Blumberg, had an apartment. Known as the “showman of The Shore,” Reade owned six motion picture theaters in Asbury Park. His chain of theaters would eventually swell to 40.
A somewhat colorful tenant was Lillian N. Duke. She had married tobacco magnate James Buchanan Duke in 1904, but he quickly divorced her over infidelity. She received a $500,000 settlement, more than $15 million in today’s money. But her finances were seriously impacted when she trusted an unscrupulous broker, Alfred E. Lindsay. On March 2, 1922 The Morning Telegraph reported that Lillian had charged him with “grand larceny in the first degree,” saying he had “taken money ostensibly to invest.” She won the case and Lindsay was “sent to prison for swindling Mrs. Duke out of $325,000 in cash and $50,000 in jewelry,” said The New York Times.
It was a Pyrrhic victory. Lindsay had lost his freedom but Lillian had lost her fortune. She soon left The Belnord and moved to West 88th Street, where she died on October 25, 1925. In reporting her death, The New York Times mentioned, “Several days ago it was learned that she had been nearly destitute for months.”
By the 1930’s, grand Victorian apartment buildings had generally fallen from favor as wealthy New Yorkers moved to modern Art Deco style buildings. But The Belnord held its own. An advertisement in The New York Sun on June 17, 1930 boasted, “Everybody who ever lived in The Belnord likes it, and nearly everybody who ever lived there is still living there now!”
A view from 86th Street through the opulent carriage entrance into the courtyard. photo via thebelnord.com
But the third quarter of the century did see remarkable change. On November 16, 1980 The New York Times began an article saying, “At the Belnord, the wages of battle is more battle. And more battle. And more battle.” The disputes between the tenants and the landlord had started nearly a decade earlier. The article said, “the splendor that was the Belnord’s is mostly gone. Although Isaac Bashevis Singer and scores of other success stories live there now, much of the grace has been chased by the shrill battles pitting many of the 225 current residents against the owner, Lillian Seril.”
Amy Munetz recalled that when she moved into the building in August 1940, “the staff used to include full-time carpenters, electricians and laundry room attendants.” Now, she said, “we are down to about a dozen people for this huge place.”
Although the exterior of the building had been given landmark designation in June 1966, inside was another story. “The roof, the elevators and the electrical and plumbing systems are said to need major repairs. Chunks of ceiling in some apartments have collapsed and other apartments have leaks. The platform holding the garden is cracking, shifting and leaking and stalactites have formed in the basement,” said the article.
The hostility between the tenants and landlord raged on for another 14 years. Then, on October 29, 1994 The New York Times journalist Shawn G. Kennedy reported, “Twenty years after angry tenants went to war with the owner of one of the Upper West Side’s grandest apartment buildings, a peace settlement was reached yesterday, ending one of the longest rent strikes in New York City’s history.”
Lillian Seril had thrown in the towel, selling The Belnord to Property Markets Group. “The new owners…have agreed to spend $5 million on new plumbing and electrical systems, a new security system and more staff members,” said the article. The owners inherited “hundreds of building code violations and state-imposed penalties.”
Interestingly, one of the tenants was Lillian Seril. She died in her 3,000-square-foot, $450 per month rent-controlled apartment at the age of 95 on June 24, 2004. In reporting her death, The New York Times mentioned that The Belnord had been “a center of the Upper West Side’s intellectual life, home over the years to figures like the Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Actors Studio founder Lee Strasberg and the actor Zero Mostel.” Other well-known residents include actors Matt Damon and Walter Matthau.
The much-improved Belnord was sold in 2015 to HFZ Capital Group, which announced plans to convert the building to condominiums. Architect Robert A. M. Stern was commissioned to remodel the apartments. And while carriages and touring cars no longer pass in and out of the majestic iron gates, the dignity of the grand apartment building has been recaptured. (Currently the Belnord is the set of the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building.”)
STEPHEN SCHWARTZMAN NYPL ON 5TH AVENUE AND 42 STREET. LAURA HUSSEY, HARA REISER, ARLENE BESSENOFF. CLARA BELLA & GLORIA HERMAN ALL GOT IT RIGHT!!!
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
A DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
Nineteenth century critics constructed an image of the artist as masculine, ignoring the fact that women were very much part of the bohemian subculture. In literary and pictorial representations, the figure of the “grisette” was consistently associated with the Latin Quarter.
The term refers to a group of independent young women who frequented Parisian cafés, posed as artist’s models, and provided additional sexual favors. The most enduring grisette is Mimi in Henri Murger’s “Scènes de la vie de Bohème,” the source for Puccini’s opera La bohème.
In New York, the bohemian scene at 647 Broadway seemed a male dominated affair too. Historians have given ample attention to Charles Pfaff, the Swiss-born owner of the establishment, and to Henry Clapp, the journalist who brought bohemianism to the attention of a wide readership.
The fact that Walt Whitman’s growing reputation was linked to his association with Broadway’s unruly band, obscured the presence of those who were left in his shadow. Yet, some of the strongest characters within the Pfaffian circle were women.
Pioneering Theatre
In November 1856 a new playhouse opened at 622/4 Broadway, between Bleecker and Houston Streets, called Laura Keene’s Theatre (later renamed the Olympic Theatre). Close to Pfaff’s basement, Keene and many of her actors and actresses made their way to his establishment after or in between performances.
Pfaff’s was one of the few of New York’s saloons that welcomed women. Laura Keene was born Mary Frances Moss in July 1826 in Winchester, Hampshire. She was seventeen when she married Henry Wellington Taylor, who claimed to be a nephew of the Duke of Wellington. The couple had two young daughters when Henry was arrested, convicted (crime unknown), and shipped to a penal colony in Australia. Mary had to earn her own living.
She joined a theater company. As acting was considered a suspect occupation, she had to re-invent herself. Leaving her daughters with her widowed mother, she changed her name to Laura Keene and made her debut in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s melodrama The Lady of Lyons in October 1851. She gained further experience working with Lucia Elizabeth [Madame] Vestris, a prominent figure in theatrical management, who became a role model.
In 1852 she accepted an offer from London-born James William Wallack to join his New York theater company. The latter had just assumed the management of Brougham’s Lyceum (renaming it Wallack’s Lyceum) on the west side of Broadway. It was a profitable move and she was soon able to send for her mother and two girls. She toured in the States, and in between acting duties traveled to Australia in the forlorn hope to trace her missing husband.
On her return to the United States Laura met John Lutz (whom she married in 1860) who would take charge of the business side of her acting career. Back in New York, funds were raised and a specialist architect nominated to design a Broadway theater after Laura’s specifications. Keene’s Theatre soon made its mark. In November 1860, she premiered the extravaganza The Seven Sisters (with music by Thomas Baker) which ran for 253 performances, an astonishing total for the time.
Keene built a reputation as a fine actress and shrewd manager at a time when only men held this position. As her daughters grew up they also became involved in the theater business, either in management or supporting and/or singing roles.
Her name lives on in American historiography for another reason. Laura’s most famous production was the three-act farce Our American Cousin by English playwright Tom Taylor which had premiered on Broadway in 1858. At the end of the Civil War she was requested to produce a celebratory performance of the play on April 14th, 1865 in the presence of Abraham Lincoln.
Keene was in the wings awaiting her cue when the President was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth. She claimed to have held the Lincoln’s head and that her gown was soaked with his blood, although many suspect that the tale may have been a fabrication.
Queen of the Long Table
Ada Agnes McElhenney was born in 1834 on her family’s cotton plantation on Toogoodoo Creek in Charleston County. Having been orphaned at a young age, she grew up in the care of her maternal grandfather as part of an aristocratic South Carolina family.
Having escaped the life of a Southern belle and estate mistress at nineteen, she settled in Greenwich Village earning a living as a columnist. Using the pseudonym Ada Clare (after Charles Dickens’s orphan in Bleak House), she built up a following of readers with an interest in New York’s theater and demi-monde.
At the same time, Ada pursued a career as an actress although initially was limited success. She was then offered the opportunity to travel to Paris as correspondent for the successful Sunday newspaper The New York Atlas. Between November 1856 and January 1857, she published a series of lively and provocative reports from the Latin Quarter which were received with delight by her New York readership.
In one of those articles she revealed her passion for the New Orleans-born virtuoso pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the son of a Jewish businessman from London and a French Creole mother. Louis composed music portraying the songs and dances of Louisiana slaves which captured his Parisian audiences and satisfied the era’s craze for exotic cultures. Not long after her return to New York in the summer of 1858, Ada gave birth to a son out of wedlock. Aubrey was believed to be Gottschalk’s child.
She participated in New York’s literary life and wrote a weekly column in Henry Clapp’s Saturday Press in which she discussed topics from female emancipation to the status of American theater. From her home she ran the Sunday night West 42nd Street Coterie, a gathering of writers and actors.
She provoked public opinion by introducing herself and Aubrey as “Miss Ada Clare and Son.” She refused to accept the contemporary characterization of a ‘fallen’ woman. Instead, Clare presented herself as a proud and unapologetic single mother. More outrageously, she preached the doctrine of free love and adopted a bohemian lifestyle.
With utter contempt for convention and decorum, she was the perfect Pfaffian. The primary seat at Pfaff’s long table (offering space to some thirty people) was for reserved for Ada Clare, the Queen of Bohemia. To Walt Whitman, she represented the ideal of the modern woman: talented, intelligent, and emancipated.
Ada Clare moved to California in 1864. For some time she contributed articles to the Golden Era and penned a poorly received confessional novel, Only a Woman’s Heart (1866). In 1874, she returned to acting and went on a tour of cities in upstate New York. She died in Rochester in March that same year, stricken by rabies after she had been bitten by a theatrical agent’s dog.
Magic Menken
Adah Isaacs Menken was a poet and actress known for her sensual stage performances. Born Adelaide McCord in June 1835 near New Orleans probably into a Catholic family, Adah worked from an early age (her father had died young) as an actress in various theaters learning her trade. Aged twenty-one, she married the Jewish musician Alexander Menken in Texas. Her partner wished for a conventional relationship. While prepared to adopt the Jewish faith, she refused to give up acting. The marriage ended in divorce.
In 1858 she settled in New York where she met prize fighter John Heenan, the Benicia Boy. Having married him, he turned out to be an abusive character. She lost his baby at birth and divorced him. Adah returned to the theater and became a minor celebrity on the Bowery circuit, appearing blackface in a minstrel show, and doing impersonations of the great actor Edwin Booth as Hamlet.
ons of the great actor Edwin Booth as Hamlet.
A friend of Ada Clare, Menken was one of those regulars at Pfaffs’s who openly ignored conventions of propriety. She rose quickly to notoriety. At a time when women were expected to be self-effacing, Menken smoked in public, cropped her hair, starred in provocative stage roles, and wrote poetry. Encouraged by Walt Whitman, she had poems published in the New York Sunday Mercury. She was a “New Woman” in the making.
Her role in the melodrama Mazeppa (based on Lord Byron’s poem) which opened in 1861 in Albany, NY, created a sensation. Dressed in a flesh-colored body stocking which gave the illusion that she was nude, she appeared strapped to a horse which “galloped” down a ramp towards the audience.
Having disposed of two husbands, she left New York in August 1863, heading for San Francisco where Mazeppa brought her a new enthusiastic following. During her stay in the city she went through another two failed marriages. Longing for wider adoration, she took Mazeppa to Paris where she had an affair Alexandre Dumas pére whose son threatened his father for being a senile Romeo. Menken then left for London where her act excited Charles Dickens, Walter Swinburne, and others.
Bohemianism had been a dazzling firework display, a short-lived spectacle. Soon after, dark skies returned. The world moved on, routinely and relentlessly. Menken’s health declined; her wealth was wasted. The wild flower wilted.
In 1867 she collected her poems in the volume Infelicia dedicated to Charles Dickens with the novelist’s permission. She gave her last London stage performance in May 1868 and returned to Paris, but the fast-living city had forgotten her. She faded away (most likely tuberculosis), forgotten and friendless. Her passing went unmarked. Thirty-three years old, she was buried in the Jewish section of the cemetery of Montparnasse.
Illustrations, from above: Deux grisettes by Constantin Guys (The Metropolitan Museum); Ada Clare during her Pfaff days; interior of Laura Keene’s New Theatre, Broadway, December 1856 (NYPL); the blood-stained sleeve cuff belonging to Keene (National Museum of American History, Washington); Adah Isaacs Menken in Mazeppa; Sensational Adah Menken in Mazeppa; and 1902 edition of Menken’s poems, published in Philadelphia by J.B. Lippincott.
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Today, we live in a veritable ferry-land. Ferries up and down the East River, ferries scuttling across the Hudson, ferries hauling tourists to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Staten Island ferries. This ferry-abundance replaced a long ferry-drought. Here’s the story:
Throughout much of New York history, ferries were key to economic and social growth. Ferry service from New Amsterdam to Breuckelen dates back to the 1630s. The first ferry to New Jersey was founded in 1661. Ferries along the Harlem River, between uptown Manhattan and the Bronx, started in 1667, and a ferry to Staten Island began in 1712.
In 1904, 147 ferryboats operated on New York City waters. Then a wave of bridge and tunnel construction pushed development far into Brooklyn and Queens, diverting density from the waterfront. These new communities and business districts required land-based connections that ferries could not provide. The old ferry network became obsolete and the City began taking over failing services. By the 1920s, New York had an extensive municipal ferry system, backed by public investment in vessels and terminals. But it was shortlived; most of the routes lost their riders and the municipal network fragmented. In the 1960s, ferryboats disappeared from the East River, severing the oldest link between the boroughs. The last cross-Hudson ferry between Hoboken and Battery Park City) hung on to 1967 when it ceased operations.
“Fort Amsterdam about 1650”, NYPL Digital Collections
A little history
It all goes back to the Dutch – of course. The story is that in the early 1630s, Cornelius Dircksen, a farmer and owner of real estate at Peck Slip ran an informal ferry service to Breuckelen. If someone wanted to cross, they just had to blow on a horn hanging from a tree and Cornelius would do the deed. His landing on the Breuckelen side would become, of course, the future dock of the Fulton Ferry
Robert Fulton created the first steam ferry service across the East River in. In the early 1800s, and other Brooklyn businessmen competed for profitable routes to Lower Manhattan. By 1853, the Union Ferry Company of Brooklyn, the successor to Fulton’s business, consolidated control over the Brooklyn ferry business with 7 routes from Fulton Ferry to Hamilton Avenue and 40,000,000 annual passengers. And Brooklyn was home to the largest ferry company in the world. At the time the Brooklyn Bridge opened, there were at least 12 ferry routes in operation between Manhattan and Brooklyn, using 10 different ferry terminals in Brooklyn and 11 in Manhattan.
A ticket from the 1814 Fulton Ferry steamboat. The ferries carried both people and horse-drawn carriages and wagons. There were three cabins on the modern ferries of 1900. On the main deck, a cabin was provided for each sex. Most likely it wasn’t modesty that necessitated providing a women’s cabin, but rather the appetite for cigar smoking among men. It was taken as a given that women didn’t smoke. But if by chance a woman did, she could go to the unisex upper-deck cabin. Between the two main-deck cabins, an open area ran the length of the ferry. This is where horse-drawn vehicles made the voyage.
In the ferry-abundant second half of the 19th century, ferries streamed across the Hudson as well. Ferries moved people (passengers arriving by rail lines at their New Jersey Hudson River terminus and everyday commuters) and goods (from the same railroads). At one time, twenty passenger docks existed on the Manhattan side of the river.
In 1908, NYC ferryboats reported a total of 201,300,000 passenger rides. The ferry system was at its peak.
Ferries on the Hudson, ferries to Brooklyn. What about the rest of the East River?
This is the less told story. As settlements on what became Queens grew, so did ferry services, but ferries were never as dense as between Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Early settlers transported grains, livestock, timber, and firewood across the river from Hallets Cove to New Amsterdam. The first passenger boats began operating in the 1700s from Hallets Cove to Hornes Hook—present-day 86th street—in Manhattan.
The Astoria Ferry
Peter Fitzsimmons began the first regular ferry service between Astoria and Manhattan in 1782. A fleet of row boats and sail boats would depart, at predetermined intervals, from a dock at Hallets Cove not far from what is now Socrates Sculpture Park. The fare was one shilling per person. When Stephen Halsey arrived in 1835, an overhaul of the ferry system was part of the sweeping changes he brought to Astoria. Halsey bought the ferry service, constructed new wharves at the foot of Astoria Boulevard on Hallets Point, and upgraded the boats being used to ship people to and from Manhattan. Soon, Astoria would become a refuge for wealthy New Yorkers’ “country” homes and a stop on the fast ferry route from South Street Seaport to Harlem, another center for New Yorkers of money.
In 1936, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia arranged to end the then city-operated ferry and transfer the land to the Triborough Authority to build a new approach to the Triborough Bridge. La Guardia finalized the plans for the turnover on July 15 but gave the ferry an additional sixty days to wind down operations while ferry riders found alternative ways across the East River. However, Robert Moses, who headed the Triborough Authority, didn’t want to wait that long. Long story short, on July 21, as the ferry Rockaway had pulled away from the terminal, Moses directed his contractor to tear the dock apart – even though passengers were waiting on the Manhattan side to return. At the last minute, La Guardia was able to get the police to stop the contractors from destroying the rest of the dock. That night, the city hastily rebuilt the damaged dock and ferry house. By morning, the Rockaway was back in service. But the Astoria ferry was over.
The Greenpoint Ferry
The first Greenpoint ferry dates from the 1830’s. The ferry was started by a Greenpoint carpenter, Alpheus Rollins. Neziah Bliss later established regular ferry service to Manhattan from Greenpoint around 1850, which is one of many changes that allowed for Greenpoint to become part of the City of Brooklyn in 1855. Bliss sold the ferry off to Sheppard Knapp, and the Knapp family ran the local ferry for many years.
On September 25, 1921, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that, after many years of running in the red, “the City of New York took over the ferry thanks in large part to the non-stop badgering of Alderman Pete McGuinness who so often berated Mayor Hylan that Hyland told him that the city would take over the ferry if Pete would only shut up. Amazingly, McGuinness did and the city began to run the ferry.” On February 12, 1933, the Greenpoint Ferry made its final run. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle tells us “Starting this morning, the East River Ferry is no more…” It would be part of a reorganized city ferry service. “The good thing about the new city-subsidized service,” the Daily Eagle stated, “is that fares are being slashed to $2.75 for a one-way ticket (formerly up to $6).” But it was gone.
The 34th Street Ferry
The ferry terminals at 34th St and James Slip both connecting with Long Island City at Hunters Point opened in 1858. When the Long Island Railroad moved from Brooklyn to Hunters Point, the ferry was linked to the LIRR. It closed down on in March 1925, after 67 years of East River crossings. The New York Times piece on the closing (March 4, 1925) focuses on the ferry skipper: “’Too slow for New York today,’ soliloquized Skipper Schow. ‘The ferryboats that were good enough for the late Theodore Roosevelt, Russell Sage, Charles Dana, August Belmont, William Whitney and William Vanderbilt, as they went to and fro between Manhattan and their Long Island homes, won’t do for the army of wage-earners riding nowadays from home to their work and back again. ‘T.R.’ and all the rest of them were satisfied with our speed then, but now even the hearse drivers complain when funerals cross the river.”
The Municipal Ferry Service
What about the Municipal Ferry Service? In 1905, the City of New York began a “progressive takeover of the ferry system” when it acquired the ferry route running between Whitehall Street (Manhattan) and Saint George (Staten Island) from the Staten Island Rapid Transit. By 1925, the New York City municipal ferry system had reached its pinnacle as it operated over a dozen routes that provided ferry service to all five boroughs and New Jersey. But the times had moved on. More bridges, better steel rail transportation and much greater use of automobiles doomed the project. Twenty years later, only one municipally-operated ferry route remained, the same route that it started with in 1905, the Staten Island Ferry.
So the ferry drought – except, as most of us saw as kids, the venerable Staten Island Ferry. And, now, ferry supreme. And our own dock.
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Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
Stephen L. Meyers, Manhattan’s Lost Streetcars The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 25, 1921
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In November 1856 a new playhouse opened at 622/4 Broadway, between Bleecker and Houston Streets, called Laura Keene’s Theatre (later renamed the Olympic Theatre). Close to Pfaff’s basement, Keene and many of her actors and actresses made their way to his establishment after or in between performances.
Adah Isaacs Menken was a poet and actress known for her sensual stage performances. Born Adelaide McCord in June 1835 near New Orleans probably into a Catholic family, Adah worked from an early age (her father had died young) as an actress in various theaters learning her trade. Aged twenty-one, she married the Jewish musician Alexander Menken in Texas. Her partner wished for a conventional relationship. While prepared to adopt the Jewish faith, she refused to give up acting. The marriage ended in divorce.
A friend of Ada Clare, Menken was one of those regulars at Pfaffs’s who openly ignored conventions of propriety. She rose quickly to notoriety. At a time when women were expected to be self-effacing, Menken smoked in public, cropped her hair, starred in provocative stage roles, and wrote poetry. Encouraged by Walt Whitman, she had poems published in the New York Sunday Mercury. She was a “New Woman” in the making.
Having disposed of two husbands, she left New York in August 1863, heading for San Francisco where Mazeppa brought her a new enthusiastic following. During her stay in the city she went through another two failed marriages. Longing for wider adoration, she took Mazeppa to Paris where she had an affair Alexandre Dumas pére whose son threatened his father for being a senile Romeo. Menken then left for London where her act excited Charles Dickens, Walter Swinburne, and others.
