We will be away from our computer for a week and during that week your assignment is to learn more about our 6 Island landmarks. I am sure you will find lots of information from these designation reports. I promise there will not be a quiz when I return.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021
THE 477th EDITION
THE LANDMARK
STRECKER MEMORIAL LABORATORY
DESIGNATION REPORT
NEW YORK LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION
1975
Strecker Memorial Laboratory
The small Romanesque Revival Strecker Memorial Laboratory is located at the southern end of Roosevelt Island, originally situated between the Smallpox Hospital and the now demolished Charity Hospital. Before Charity Hospital was demolished, the Laboratory provided an interesting contrast to both Hospitals in terms of scale and style. Designed by New York architects Frederick Clarke Withers & Walter Dickson, the building was constructed in 1892 and was administered under the direction of Charity (later City) Hospital to conduct pathological and bacteriological work. The building was the gift of the daughter of a Mr. Strecker, and as Dr. Charles G. Child Jr. wrote in his history of City Hospital (1904) it was “an illustration of what lasting good an intelligent woman can do to perpetuate the memory of a dear one.”
Pathological medicine made rapid advances during the 19th century, and laboratories such as this one reflect the increasingly scientific nature of its study and investigation. The first floor of Strecker Memorial Laboratory featured a room for the routine examination of specimens, an autopsy room, as well as a mortuary. On the second floor were rooms for more detailed research and experimentation. In 1905, the laboratory was remodeled, probably at the urging of the head pathologist Horst Oertel. Oertel was an emigrant to the United States and, as such, was well acquainted with the pioneering work in pathology being carried on in Europe at the time by prominent individuals such as Rudolf Virchow. The remodeling in 1905, which included the addition of a third story to the laboratory, provided facilities for histological examination as well as museum and library space.
In 1907, Oertel received an endowment provided by the Russell Sage Foundation, and thus the “Russell Sage Institute of Pathology” was first house in the Laboratory. When new facilities for this Institute were built, it relocated, while Strecker Memorial Laboratory continued to serve as the pathological center for City Hospital and the City Home (formerly Almshouse). Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901), the senior partner of the firm which designed the laboratory, was an Englishman trained in Great Britain, who came to the United States in 1852 at the invitation of the renowned American landscape architect, Alexander Jackson Downing. Unfortunately, Downing drowned that same year following the explosion off the steamboat Henry Clay. Withers then became associated with Calvert Vaux, Downing’s former partner. In 1857, Withers was one of the first individuals to be asked to join newly founded American Institute of Architects. Although he always retained this British citizenship, he volunteered for service in the Union Army in 1861. He returned home an invalid the following year, but soon recovered and resumed practice in New York City, joining Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead in a partnership which lasted until 1871. In 1888, he formed a partnership with Walter Dickson (1834-1903).
Together, as supervising architects for the Commission of Charities and Corrections, they designed several buildings on Roosevelt Island, among them Strecker Memorial Laboratory and three brick structures for the Almshouse. With his former partner Calvert Vaux, Withers had previously designed several buildings for the Commission of Charities and Correction, most notably the High Victorian Gothic Jefferson Market Courthouse, located in the Greenwich Village Historic District, which is the best known of Wither’s works found in New York City. Among his other New York commissions were three commercial buildings at 448 Broom Street in the Soho Cast Iron Historic District, the high altar, reredos, the robing room of Trinity Church, and the lich gate of the “Little Church Around the Corner” (Church of the Transfiguration). Primarily considered an ecclesiastical architect,
Withers published the influential book Church Architecture in 1873. The Chapel of the Good Shepherd constructed between 1888-1889 on Roosevelt Island clearly illustrates his conception of church architecture. Walter Dickson who had practiced architecture in Albany for many years before coming to New York, designed the Albany Post Office and the Albany City Prison which replaced the original “Tombs.” Strecker Memorial Laboratory, although small in size, is monumental in its overall effect. Essentially Romanesque Revival in style, similar in manner to the late work of Henry Hobson Richardson, suggested by the broad arched openings and the use of rough-faced stone-gray gneiss, quarried on the island and used for many of its institutional buildings. The use of contrasting orange brick for quoins, sting courses, and the arches gives the building a vivid polychromatic effect that is reminiscent of Wither’s earlier compositions in the Victorian Gothic style. As a result of the non-ecclesiastic building type as well as the change in the style from Gothic, which Withers generally favored, to Romanesque it can be surmised that Dickson was largely responsible for the design.
The type of Romanesque Revival architecture which H. H. Richardson (1838-1886) developed became very popular among American architects in the 1880’s and early 1890’s. Broad arches, rough stone facing, modest use of polychrome, and the asymmetrical massing of elements are all hallmarks of the style. It was widely used for domestic, public, and institutional buildings. Montgomery Schuyler, noted 19th century architectural critic felt that the Romanesque Revival offered a firm foundation of which to build the elements of a “true and living architecture, such as for four centuries the world has not seen.” (Architectural Record I (October-December 1891). The Strecker Memorial Laboratory is designed in a late version of the Romanesque revival, characteristic of its date.
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
1969 VIEW OF ABANDONED STRECKER LABORATORY
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
TWO LOSSES ON ROOSEVELT ISLAND: REVEREND OLIVER CHAPIN, THE VICAR FOR 35 YEARS.
WE ALSO MISS THE MAIN STREET WIRE AND THE IMPORTANT PLACE IT HAD IN OUR COMMUNITY
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)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
We will be away from our computer for a week and during that week your assignment is to learn more about our 6 Island landmarks. I am sure you will find lots of information from these designation reports. I promise there will not be a quiz when I return.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
THE 476th EDITION
THE LANDMARK
CHAPEL OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD
DESIGNATION REPORT NEW YORK LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION 1975
Chapel of the Good Shepherd
The Chapel of the Good Shepherd, fully restored and recently rededicated, stands at the heart of the great new apartment complex built by the New York State Urban Development Corporation. Now attractively surrounded by a paved plaza, this late Victorian Gothic chapel is well integrated with its taller neighbors through the use of stone and brick in harmonizing colors, while at the same time it contrasts effectively with them both in scale and style. Designed by the prominent architect Frederick Clarke Withers, the chapel was begun in June, 1888 and completed the following year. It was the gift of New York banker George N. Bliss to the New York Protestant Episcopal Mission Society and was intended for use by the inmates of the Almshouse (later called the New York City Home for the Aged and Infirm).
The Almshouse was one of numerous charitable institutions maintained on the island by the City in the 19th century. In 1828, the City had purchased Blackwell’s Island, as it was then known, from the Blackwell family which had owned it for well over a century. The island was considered an ideal site for institutional development — as the Rev. J. F. Richmond wrote in his New York and its Institutions: the island, “separated on either side from the great world by a deep crystal current, appears to have been divinely arranged as a home for the unfortunate and the suffering, and a place of quiet reformatory meditation for the vicious.” During the course of the 19th century the City constructed a penitentiary, a workhouse, and many specialized hospitals.
Built in 1846, using stone quarried on the island and convict labor, the Almshouse originally consisted of only two buildings, separately housing men and women. However, by the 1890’s over a dozen buildings stood on its grounds, including the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, a Hospital for the Incurables, and the old Blackwell House, which was used as the residence of the Warden. The almshouse was capable of caring for about two thousand of the City’s poor, and the chapel itself had a seating capacity of four hundred. It also had a large reading room, a robing room for the clergy, and a room for the use of the Mission Society workers in the basement.
The general character of the use made of the island was reflected in its official renaming as Welfare Island in 1921. During the 20th century many of the institutional buildings on the island became inadequate and obsolete. Goldwater Memorial Hospital, the first modern hospital on the island, was opened in July 1939, and in the 1950s the old Metropolitan and City Hospitals on Welfare Island were relocated in new buildings in Manhattan and in Queens. The large Bird S. Coler Hospital and Home opened in 1952, replacing the function of the City Home which was subsequently closed. Ferry service to the island was discontinued in 1956 and the Chapel closed its door in 1958.
Redevelopment plans for Welfare Island — renamed Franklin Delano Roosevelt Island in 1973 — under the direction of the New York State Urban Development Corporation were begun in the late 1960s, and a survey of the existing structures was undertaken. On the basis of recommendations made by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and a report prepared by noted architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the Chapel of the Good Shepherd and several other buildings were included in a list of structures especially worthy of preservation. New York architect, Giorgio Cavaglieri, who earlier had adapted the old Astor Library to a new use as the Shakespeare Festival Theater and the Jefferson Market Courthouse to a library, carried out the handsome restoration of the chapel, which was reopened in October of 1975.
The chapel is a large one, reminiscent in style of English parish churches. Indeed, the architect, Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901, pictured to the left), was an Englishman trained in Great Britain, who came to the United States in 1852 at the invitation of the renowned American landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing. Unfortunately, Downing drowned that same year following the explosion of the steamboat Henry Clay. Withers then turned to Calvert Vaux, Downing’s former partner with whom he became associated. In 1857,
Withers was one of the first to be asked to join the newly founded American Institute of Architects. Although he always retained his British citizenship, he volunteered for service in the Union Army in 1861. He returned home an invalid the following year, but recovered, and resumed practice in New York City, joining Vaux along with Frederick Law Olmstead in a partnership that lasted until 1871. He continued to practice architecture, and in 1888 formed a partnership with Walter Dickson.
Together as supervising architects for the Board of Charities and Correction they designed several buildings on Roosevelt Island among them the Strecker Memorial Laboratory and three brick structures for the Almshouse. In 1897, Withers retired to his home in Yonkers, New York. While the High Victorian Gothic Jefferson Market Courthouse, located in the Greenwich Village Historic District, is the best known of Wither’s New York City works, he had many other New York commissions, among them the commercial building at 448 Broome Street in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District, the high altar and reredos in Trinity Church, the lich gate of the “Little Church Around the Corner” (Church of the Transfiguration), and the City Prison which replaced the original “Tombs.” Withers was primarily considered an ecclesiastical architect and published the influential book Church Architecture in 1873.
He was a strong advocate of the Gothic style for churches, and the Chapel of the Good Shepherd admirably illustrates his conceptions and ideas of what a church should be. In his book, Withers recommends the combining of different building materials for picturesque effect. The exterior of the chapel, constructed in a number of materials is richly textured and subtly polychromatic. The warm red brick of the walls, laid in a modified version of Flemish bond, is enlivened by the random interspersing of gray brick. Smooth brownstone windows and door enframements, quoins and ornamental detail contrast effectively with both the brick and rough-faced gray stone of the basement story. This gray stone, used for many of the institutional buildings on the island, is the “granite” (actually gray gneiss) which was quarried on the island since the 18th century.
The plan and massing of the chapel are simple and clear. Two projecting entrance porches, flanked by lampposts, lead to two ascending stairways within the deep narthex. Originally, one entrance was intended for the men of the Almshouse, the other for women. The stairways give access to a broad and spacious nave, five bays in depth, which terminates in the chancel and semicircular apse.
The bell tower features a broach spire, a type which was especially favored by Withers. It provides a strong and effective note of asymmetry. The bell of the tower, now displayed in the plaza, is five toned, since Withers found single toned bells “doleful and monotonous.”
The harmonizing red brick plaza surrounding the chapel and was designed by the architectural firm Johansen & Bhavnani. It provides a delightfully restful oasis enframed by tall apartment buildings. The architects carefully retained the old trees to the west of the church and provided benches on three sides. The decorative detail of the chapel is used sparingly but with sensitivity. The paired Gothic lancet windows between the buttresses on the flanks of the building are crowned by simple connecting drip moldings with foliate terminations. The large Gothic rose window of the entrance facade is set within a brownstone pointed arch enframement decorated with carved roundels. A third roundel appears near the apex of the gable. The original handsome stained-glass windows have geometric patterns except in the five windows of the apse which depict the four Evangelists, surrounding Christ, the Good Shepherd.
The relative austerity of the design of the chapel was probably considered the most suitable for a poorhouse chapel. Withers created a building of imposing simplicity and restraint which is both appropriate and picturesquely handsome. The chapel was commissioned by George M. Bliss (1816-1896), an important New York banker, who began his career in the dry goods business. Through successful speculation during the Civil War, he amassed a large fortune, and in 1869 he joined Levi P. Moron, later a Vice-President of the United States, in a banking business under the firm name of Morton, Bliss & Company.
In his later years he served as Treasurer of the Protestant Episcopal Mission Society which administered the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. Today the chapel serves a new and more general purpose, as a community center for the residents of the island’s new housing complex. It has also been rededicated to serve as an ecumenical place of worship.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY REV. OLIVER CHAPIN, THE FIRST
ISLAND HISTORIAN AND LONG TIME MINISTER
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
INMATES BEING WALKED IN FRONT OF ASYLUM
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
We will be away from our computer for a week and during that week your assignment is to learn more about our 6 Island landmarks. I am sure you will find lots of information from these designation reports. I promise there will not be a quiz when I return.
The Octagon, located a the northern end of Roosevelt Island, served as the administrative center and main entrance hall of the New York City Lunatic Asylum, one of the first institutions of its kind established in this country. Designs for the Asylum were prepared in 1834-35 by the noted New York architect, Alexander Jackson Davis, and the building was opened in 1839. His plans called for a much more elaborate scheme than was actually built by the City. The Octagon was to have been one of a pair within a great U-shaped complex, ordered around a central rectangular pavilion. As built, the single Octagon, from which two long wings extended, became the focal point of the building. Much admired in the 19th century for its architectural excellence, the Octagon now stands alone, the imposing geometric clarity and simplicity of its design fully revealed.
The City of New York purchased Blackwell’s Island, as Roosevelt Island was called in the 19th century, in 1828 with a view to institutional development; it was believed that the pleasant island surroundings would be conducive to both physical and mental rehabilitation. Construction of the Island Penitentiary began in 1829, and at the end of the following decade, the Lunatic Asylum was built. An Almshouse, Workhouse, and numerous charity hospitals were also built on Blackwell’s Island during the course of the century. The Lunatic Asylum was erected in response to the desperate need for proper accommodation of the insane. Previously, these cases had been assigned to a few overcrowded and poorly maintained wards in Bellevue Hospital. In the mid-19th century, the attitude towards the treatment and care of the insane underwent significant and progressive change. Recognition that they required medical assistance, not merely custodial restraint, led to the founding of such institutions as the New York City Lunatic Asylum. This change in attitude was, however, only gradual and is demonstrated by the fact that, in the early years of the Lunatic Asylum, patients were supervised by inmates from the Penitentiary under the direction of a small medical staff. The physicians in charge of the Asylum deplored this situation and in 1850 a suitable staff of orderlies and nurses was hired. Physical activity, labor, and entertainment were prescribed as therapeutic treatments for mental disturbances.
As such, the male patients of the Lunatic Asylum who were willing and able, worked in vegetable gardens or built sea walls in order to reclaim land, while female patients aided in housekeeping chores and worked as seamstresses. A library, for the most part the result of donations from publishing houses and private citizens, was formed, and weekly dances were held. At the recommendation of a resident physician, even a billiard table was purchased.
However, the Asylum was plagued with difficulties, primarily a result of over-crowding and financial inadequacies. In the early years the diet of the patients was inadequate and scurvy became a relatively common disease. Typhus and cholera epidemics afflicted the staff and patients alike in the 1860’s. When Charles Dickens visited in the United States in 1842, he was taken on a tour of the Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum where he much admired the architecture, calling the building “handsome” and the Octagon an especially “elegant” feature; but he further commented in his American Notes (1842): everything [at the Asylum] had a lounging, listless, madhouse air which was very painful.” Through the perseverance of the resident physicians and other concerned New Yorkers, conditions were gradually improved. Additional buildings were constructed to ease overcrowding and to separate violent patients from less serious cases. The facilities in general were made more pleasant and comfortable. By 1875, a contributor to Harper’s Weekly magazine was able to write, “Very few sane persons inhabit more healthy and convenient chambers.”
In 1894, it had been determined that municipal facilities could no longer adequately care for the great numbers of indigent insane. Ward’s Island also in the East River was consequently ceded to the State of New York, and all New York City mental patients were transferred to hospitals there. The Lunatic Asylum was renamed Metropolitan Hospital and became a general hospital with special emphasis on the treatment of tubercular patients. In the 1950’s the buildings on the Island were abandoned for new quarters in Manhattan. By the late 1960’s the Island redevelopment project of the New York State Urban Development Corporation, threatened the old Asylum with demolition. Fortunately it was decided, on the basis of recommendations made by the Landmarks Preservation Commission and a report prepared by the noted architectural historian, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, to preserve the central Octagon. Demolition of the two wings which projected at right angles to the south and west was completed in 1970, and temporary preservation measures were taken for the Octagon under the direction of the New York architect, Giorgio Cavaglieri, who also restored two other buildings on the island, the Blackwell House and Chapel of the Good Shepherd.
The Octagon has a complicated history of alteration and modification, which has been carefully traced by Jane B. Davies, an authority on the work of A. J. Davis. The original 1834-35 design by Davis was in what he termed the “Tuscan Style.” The Octagon was to have had a low-pitched hip roof with wide eaves and a central skylight. Construction of the Asylum had barely begun, however, when the City Council ordered work halted because of disagreements over the design. In 1837, work resumed, but Davis’ great U-shaped plan was reduced to a single octagon joined to a single east-west wing. The upper portion of the Octagon was altered to include a crenelated cupola and the architectural detail was changed to the Greek Revival style. Davis had intended the Octagon to house a kitchen, dining hall, day rooms, a laundry, and baths. It now became the administrative center and main entrance as well as the living quarters for the Resident Physician. This phase of construction was completed in 1839, under the supervision of two master-builders, as Davis was apparently no longer associated with the project. In 1847-48, a north-south wing was built repeating the style of the earlier east-west wing. Architect Joseph M. Dunn was commissioned in 1879 to alter the Asylum. He raised the wings one story in height and, to retain the visual prominence of the Octagon, added a dome-like convex mansard roof with Neo-Greco detail. To further enhance the Octagon, a new main entrance was constructed with a double staircase.
The Octagon, executed in the gray “granite” (actually gray gneiss) quarried on the Island in the 19th century, is a smooth-walled, crisply faceted structure, relying for its dramatic effect on the clarity of its geometry and the boldness of its silhouette. The fenestration is especially notable as the earliest surviving example of the “Davisean window”; paired windows appear at each floor, separated by heavy mullions and by simple stone transverse members, creating a very modern feeling of continuous verticality. A double staircase of stone that was originally covered by a wooden porch approaches the main entrance of the Octagon, at first floor level, and has heavy wing walls adorned by recessed panels. The walls of the building are free of any ornament and are crowned above the third floor by a simple projecting metal cornice with boldly scaled dentils and a paneled frieze beneath. At the center of the roof is the simple octagonal cupola surmounted by its dome-like octagonal roof. This tall, convex mansard roof is crowned by a heavy cornice and pierced by two tiers of dormer windows. The rectangular windows are enframed by Neo-Greco pilasters and pediments, and smaller dormers with oval windows appear above.
Exterior of the Octagon Tower showing front steps, before renovation.
The plan of the Octagon is composed of a central rotunda surrounded by four rooms, separated by corridors which radiate outward. The rotunda contains a spiral staircase constructed of cast iron with wood ionic columns encircling the high central stairwell- an especially beautiful space, described by Henry-Russell Hitchcock as one of the grandest interiors in the City.
Although the silhouette and proportions of the Octagon have been altered by the addition of Dunn’s mansard dome, the major credit for the design of the structure may be assigned to Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892), a native New Yorker and highly successful architect, who worked throughout the United States. In the early years of his career Davis was in partnership with the prominent architect Ithiel Town (1874-1844) with whom he designed the New York Customs House (now Federal Hall National Memorial), a designated New York City Landmark. During the period of his association with Town, Davis designed the Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum in addition to the state capitals of Indiana, North Carolina, Illinois, and Ohio, the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, and the Patent Office in Washington D.C. His commissions were, however not limited solely to public buildings; he was also responsible for numerous commercial buildings, churches and domestic structures, and was the author of two books Views of the Public Buildings in the City of New York (c.1830) and Rural Residences (1837). While Davis was a highly competent practitioner of the Greek Revival style (in his early twenties he made an intensive study of Greek detail), he was also well versed in many other styles, as his original “Tuscan” design for the Lunatic Asylum demonstrates.
The architectural historian, Talbot Hamlin, has praised Davis’ “consistent feeling for logical planning.” The original symmetrical plan made by Davis for the New York City Lunatic Asylum took into account efficient supervision of patients, ease of circulation, as well ample provision for good lighting and ventilation in the wards. Davis’ plan was a variant of the influential “panoptic plan,” which was centralized with radiating wings, developed in Great Britain by Jeremy Bentham (1742-1832), a philosopher and jurist interested in prison reform. While only a portion of Davis’ original proposal for the Lunatic Asylum was actually built, the plan still functioned very effectively. Davis’ New York City Asylum project was also significant in that it served as the prototype for his North Carolina Hospital for the Insane at Raleigh.
Dr. R.L. Parsons, Resident Physician of the Lunatic Asylum during the 1860’s, remarked in his annual report of 1865 that the Octagon “has a symmetry, a beauty and a grandeur even, that are to be admired.” These qualities are still in evidence, not only to the visitor to Roosevelt Island, but also from Manhattan where the picturesque silhouette of the Octagon is a prominent feature of the island’s skyline.
WEDNESDAY PHOTOS OF THE DAY INMATES OF THE ASYLUM BEING WALKED IN FRONT OF BUILDING
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
We will be away from our computer for a week and during that week your assignment is to learn more about our 6 Island landmarks. I am sure you will find lots of information from these designation reports. I promise there will not be a quiz when I return.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2021
The
474 th Edition
From the Archives
R.I. Landmarks Week
Today:
Blackwell House
FROM THE NYC LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION DESIGNATION REPORT, 1975
From the NYC Landmarks Preservation Designation Report – 1975
Blackwell House
This simple well-proportioned house, built for James Blackwell between 1796 and 1804, is the sole surviving building on Roosevelt Island which dates from the period when the island was still privately held property. The Blackwell family owned and farmed the island from the late 17th century until 1828, when it was sold to the City of New York. Blackwell’s Island, as it was long known, had been inherited by Mary Manningham Blackwell from her stepfather, Captain John Manning.
Captain Manning was granted a “patent” on the island by the British Governor Nicolls in 1668, a fortunate circumstance, since five years later, after mismanaging his command of New York’s Fort James during a Dutch attack, he was tried by court martial and publicly disgraced. Manning moved to his island retreat and evidently found solace there. Reverend Charles Wolley, writing in 1701, tells us that he had often gone to Manning’s Island to visit the Captain, “whose entertainment was commonly a bowl of rum-punch.”
In Dutch times the island was known as Varckens Eylandt, which translates to Hog Island. It was purchased from two Indian chiefs by Governor Wouter van Twiller in 1637 and was already being farmed by 1639 under land grants from the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company. Jan Alteras, Francois Fyn, Jonas Bronck and Laurens Duyts all farmed the island during the mid 17th century. The last of these by 1658, defaulted on his lease. But Duyt’s misconduct was far worse in the respects- he was banished from the province for “selling his wife into immoral slavery and for gross immoralities committed by himself.” Hog Island was confiscated by the British in 1667. During the Revolutionary War the island was occupied by the British and in 1782, when peace negotiations were in progress, American prisoners of war were quartered there.
James and Jacob Blackwell, who had inherited the island from their father Jacob, found themselves in financial straits after the Revolutionary War and attempted to sell the property. In an advertisement of 1784 James was able to boast that his 107 acre island, “was about four miles from the city,” included among other amenities, “two small Dwelling Houses, a Barn, Bake, and Fowl House, a Cyder Mill, a large orchard, stone quarries and running springs.” A buyer could not be found, but by 1796 James Blackwell’s financial condition must have improved since it was about this time that the Blackwell House was built.
With the purchase of Blackwell’s Island by the City, its agricultural use gave way to institutional development, beginning in 1829 with the erection of the penitentiary. The Blackwell House became the residential quarters for various institutional administrators. In the late 19th century the warden of the island’s Almshouse lived here. The house was abandoned during the 20th century and by the late 1960’s was in an advanced state of decay, its only hope for survival being complete restoration. The New York State Urban Development Corporation, as part of its redevelopment program for the island, instituted a survey of existing structures.
On the basis of recommendations made by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a survey by historian Loring McMillen in 1969, and a report prepared the same year by noted architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock, the Blackwell House was assessed worthy of preservation and restoration. The well known New York architect, Giorgio Cavaglieri, was commissioned to evaluate the buildings on the island and which were of special interest with a view to preserving them. In 1973, he carried out a complete and highly sympathetic restoration of Blackwell House.
This unpretentious clapboard farmhouse, built in the vernacular style of the late 18th century, now consists of a two-story main section and a one-story kitchen wing, constructed soon after the completion of the main building. A larger addition at the north, of later date, was razed during restoration and a root cellar entrance was constructed at the northeast corner of the main building. On the east, a spacious one story front porch has been restored and rests on the original stone foundations. A simple wood rail surrounds it, and the wood shingled roof rests elegantly on slim Ionic columns. This facade like that on the west, has two windows at each side of the simple central doorway, and five at the second story, all with six-over-six sash. A delicately scaled dentil course appears beneath the eaves of the gabled roof. Pairs of dormers project from this roof at the east and west. On the the west side, the doorway is sheltered by a simple pedimented portico, an addition in the Greek revival style.
The Blackwell House is one of the few farmhouses in New York dating from the years immediately after the Revolutionary War. Now utilized as a community center, it still rests on its original site, now a handsomely landscaped setting , which preserves much of the proper scale and relationship of the building to its surroundings.
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE ULTIMATE BEFORE PICTURE OF BLACKWELL HOUSE
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY ATRIUM OF MOTORGATE
JAY JACOBSON, JANET KING, ALEXIX VILLAFANE, GLORI HERMAN, LAURA HUSSEY, NANCY BROWN ALL GOT IT RIGHT!!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Source: NEW YORK CITY LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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
FROM THE ARCHIVES
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2021
THE 473rd EDITION
THE HISTORY OF THE
NEW YORK LICENSE
PLATE
from Untapped New York
There are more than eleven million vehicles registered in New York State, and New York City has about 12% of those (as of August 2021). Until 1901, these vehicles went unregistered, only identified by traits like their make, color and quality. Then-New York Governor Benjamin Odell, Jr. crafted a bill that required vehicle registration and the initials of the vehicle’s owner to be posted on the back of the vehicle. This bill, passed in 1901, would lead to the birth of the license plate.
Vintage car with a historic New York license plate on the set of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
The first license plates did not resemble those of today. In fact, they were merely initials made of various materials of different colors and sizes. Some painted the letters directly on their vehicle. The reason for this new regulation regarding vehicle identification was that in legal cases, the government often preferred those who still traveled behind a horse. Traffic laws also varied by county, making it difficult for vehicle owners to consistently abide by the law. With Odell’s new act, vehicular laws would at least be consistent across New York State, and drivers would be held responsible for their actions.
After the act was passed on April 25, 1901, those in New York, especially in the city, celebrated. The New York Times reported that by May 2, 17 people had already applied for licenses. As the number increased, law enforcement found it more difficult to identify vehicles because of replicate initials. Some also used fake initials or posted initials without registering with New York State.
Vintage car with a historic New York license plate on the set of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
In response. the New York State legislature passed a law that required each registered vehicle to have a number on its rear side. The legislature required the letters “NY” to appear next to the issued number as well. New York State decreed these homemade license plates to follow a black-and-white color scheme.
It was not until 1910 that New York State supplied vehicle owners with state-issued plates. However, these plates were only valid within New York State. If someone traveled frequently between two states, they would need a different license plate and issue number for each state.
The creatively designed license plates of today’s era did not show up until the 1980s. Until then, New York license plates simply consisted of the issued number on a bed of white, blue or gold. In 1986, New York State began issuing plates featuring a well-known symbol of New York City: the Statue of Liberty. Releasing the license plate shortly after the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty arriving in the United States, this simple and elegant plate would mark a change in vehicle history and commemorate New York City history simultaneously.
After two decades with this license plate, New York State decided to bring more symbols onto its license plate. The state placed Niagara Falls on the top left corner of the new license plate and the New York City skyline on the top right corner. Tied together by a silhouette of one of the three mountain ranges in New York City — the Adirondack Mountains, the Catskill Mountains, and part of the Appalachian Mountains — the updated New York license plate tied together the rural and urban aspects of New York.
New York began issuing this license plate in 2001.
New York State soon after decided to return to the classic blue and gold of the original state-issued New York license plates. These plates featured the words “Empire State” to acknowledge the wealth and resources in New York. With an outline of the state in the center of the plate, the updated New York license plate was sophisticated and clean.
New York began issuing this license plate in 2010.
In 2019, a new decade approached along with the need for an updated New York license plate. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo claimed a new license plate was needed for better legibility on license plates for tolling, red-light cameras and other scanning devices, but others decried the measure as a way to increase state budget revenues. This time, the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles allowed New York residents to vote for one of five license plates designs (although some claimed the vote was rigged, as one of the designs included the Mario A. Cuomo Bridge named after the governor’s father). About 325,000 people participated in the vote. Winning by about 49 percent, the current New York license plate features Niagara Falls, a mountain range, the Statue of Liberty, the New York City skyline and a Long Island lighthouse. The word “EXCELSIOR” sits on the bottom of the plate, meaning “ever upward” in Latin. In 2021, New York State unveiled three NASCAR-themed license plates at Watkins Glen Racetrack.
Since Governor Odell passed the bill that mandated vehicle registration and identification, all 50 states have adopted the practice. When trying to see all 50 plates, passengers can try to find the variations of state license plates that have varied over the decades. Although Hawaii’s license plate has a rainbow, South Dakota’s license plate has Mount Rushmore, and Michigan’s plate features the Mackinac Bridge and a sunset, New York’s license plate stands out as one of the more creative forms of vehicle identification.
OUR LIGHTHOUSE IN ITS’ ORIGINAL FORM. THE TOWER WILL SOON BE RESTORED AND WILL THEN HAVE IT’S ORIGINAL ROUND POINTED TOP. JAY JACOBSON, ED LITCHER, HARA REISER, GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
Bella Druckman is a rising sophomore at Barnard College intending on majoring in English and Psychology. Hailing from Chicago, she betrays her hometown in her pizza preferences. When she is not exploring New York City, Bella can be found in her kitchen or writing her next article for The Columbia Daily Spectator, Her Campus, or Untapped New York.
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
SEPTEMBER 18-19, 2021
The 472nd Edition
Two mystery initials on a 125th Street building reveal a former department store
from Ephemeral New York
Sometimes the ghosts of New York City put clues about Gotham’s past right under your nose
That’s what happened on a recent walk down busy 125th Street, between Seventh and Lenox Avenues. On an empty building partially hidden behind scaffolding and a blue tarp are two letters, entwined like a logo: KC.
The initials can be seen from the sidewalk, and they pose the question: What’s KC?
Turns out these initials stand for Koch & Co., a once-heralded department store with its roots in the city’s Gilded Age, when mass consumerism was born and the idea of shopping for leisure took hold.
Henry C.F. Koch, an immigrant from Germany, founded his eponymous emporium with his father-in-law in 1860, according to Walter Grutchfield. Their first store opened at Carmine and Bleecker Streets, then made the jump the Sixth Avenue and 20th Street in 1875.
At the time, the Sixth Avenue location put Koch & Co. squarely in New York’s burgeoning Ladies Mile Shopping District, which roughly spanned Broadway to Sixth Avenue and 10th Street to 23rd Street.
Koch & Co.’s competition on Ladies Mile would have been B. Altman’s on Sixth and 19th Street, Hugh O’Neill & Co. on Sixth and 21st, and Macy’s at Sixth and 14th Street. These and other department stores sold everything from fashion to furniture to food to women who were free to browse and buy without being accompanied by male escort, as was the usual custom at the time.
In 1892, perhaps taking note of population shifts and the elevated railroads that opened uptown Manhattan to residential development, Koch relocated his store to a new building at 125th Street.
“At that time the street was residential in nature, and H. C. F. Koch & Co. were pioneers in leading the changes that converted 125th St. into a shopping street,” Grutchfield wrote.
Koch & Co. certainly got good press. In a New York Times article from 1893, a reporter wrote: “The great store of H.C.F. Koch Co. in One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, between Lenox and Seventh Avenues, is, par excellence, the emporium of the far uptown district, and consequently the announcement of its Fall opening is attracting thousands of buyers and seekers after the styles of the season.”
Still, it may have been hard at first to lure shoppers so far uptown, as this ad in The New York Times (above) from 1893 hints. Koch himself had moved to Lenox Avenue, and in 1900 he died, passing the business to his sons.
The department store continued until 1930, when it was bought out and closed. The stately building remains, with those CK initials and the name “Koch and Co” carved in stone high above the cornice.
Ephemeralnewyork | September 16, 2021 at 1:20 am | Tags: 125th Street history, 125th Street Old Photos, Department Store 125th Street, Department Stores in NYC, Koch & Co Department Store, Ladies Mile New York City | Categories: Defunct department stores, Fashion and shopping, Upper Manhattan | URL: https://wp.me/pec9m-9bg
EMERGENCY EXIT FROM E TRAIN LINE SOUTH OF STRECKER LABORATORY ANDY SPARBERG AND STEPHEN BLANK GOT IT!
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EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
JUDITH BERDY
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
Born in Lausanne, Switzerland,[1] Steinlen studied at the University of Lausanne before taking a job as a designer trainee at a textile mill in Mulhouse in eastern France. In his early twenties he was still developing his skills as a painter when he and his wife Emilie were encouraged by the painter François Bocion to move to the artistic community in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.[2] Once there, Steinlen was befriended by the painter Adolphe Willette who introduced him to the artistic crowd at Le Chat Noir that led to his commissions to do poster art for the cabaret owner/entertainer, Aristide Bruant and other commercial enterprises.
Café à Léon (1921)
In the early 1890s, Steinlen’s paintings of rural landscapes, flowers, and nudes were being shown at the Salon des Indépendants. His 1895 lithograph titled Les Chanteurs des Rues was the frontispiece to a work entitled Chansons de Montmartre published by Éditions Flammarion with sixteen original lithographs that illustrated the Belle Époque songs of Paul Delmet. Five of his posters were published in Les Maîtres de l’Affiche.
His permanent home, Montmartre and its environs, was a favorite subject throughout Steinlen’s life and he often painted scenes of some of the harsher aspects of life in the area. His daughter Colette was featured in much of his work.[3] In addition to paintings and drawings, he also did sculpture on a limited basis, most notably figures of cats that he had great affection for as seen in many of his paintings.[2] Steinlen included cats in many of his illustrations, and even published a book of his designs, “Dessins Sans Paroles Des Chats.”[4]
In “Compagnie Française des Chocolats et des Thès,” Steinlen includes his wife and daughter in the illustration.
Recumbent Cat
Steinlen became a regular contributor to Le Rire and Gil Blas magazines plus numerous other publications including L’Assiette au Beurre and Les Humouristes, a short-lived magazine he and a dozen other artists jointly founded in 1911.[5] Between 1883 and 1920, he produced hundreds of illustrations, a number of which were done under a pseudonym so as to avoid political problems because of their harsh criticisms of societal ills. His art influenced the work of other artists, including Pablo Picasso
Théophile Steinlen died in 1923 in Paris and was buried in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Montmartre. Today, his works can be found at many museums around the world including at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., United States. A stone monument by Pierre Vannier was created for Steinlen in 1936; it is located in Square Joël Le Tac in Paris.[7]
THE WELFARE ISLAND BRIDGE There was no Main Street when the bridge opened in 1957.
This was the original Welfare Island entrance and exit ramp. At that time, there was no Main Street. All traffic was one way on the peripheral roads. When you entered the island, you went north on the Manhattan side of the island toward Coler. If you wanted to go to Goldwater you had to make a turn on one of the cross island roads, go to the road on the Queens side of the island and travel south. In this photo you can also see the FDNY training site, which used to occupy the site on Welfare Island before it was moved to Randall’s Island. The large concrete globes in front of the Visitor’s Center came from the FDNY site.
#THANKS, ED LITCHER FOR THE ABOVE GLORIA HERMAN, NINA LUBLIN AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE GOT IT RIGHT!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
WIKIPEDIA
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Under neon billboards only the bones of Cyrus Eidlitz’s Italian Renaissance Times Building survive. photo by TastyPoutine
Until the last years of the 19th century New York’s newspapers were centered on Park Row, knicknamed “Newspaper Row,” in lower Manhattan. James Gordon Bennett, Jr. made a gutsy decision in 1893 to abandon the newspaper district and following the northward expansion of commerce. He leased the triangular plot of land at the intersection of Broadway and 6th Avenue, between 35th and 36th Streets—an oddly shaped piece of land that would become Herald Square. A decade later The New York Times would follow, going even further uptown. At the turn of the century Longacre Square was somewhat overlooked. The center of Manhattan’s carriage building industry, it was named after Long Acre in London—that city’s carriage center. But the nearby Grand Central train station on 42nd Street and the proposed Pennsylvania Station on 34th spelled doom for the old buildings of Longacre Square. Already theaters had begun moving here from the 23rd Street entertainment district.
In 1898 the Lyceum Theatre sat at the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway — photo by Byron Company, Valentine’s Manual of New York (copyright expired)
By August 4, 1902, when The New York Times made its surprising announcement, modern hotels and theaters had already begun to dot the urban landscape. Like The Herald, the newspaper had acquired a triangular-shaped plot. It was bounded by Broadway, West 42nd Street, and Seventh Avenue and The Times said it “will at once begin the erection thereon of a large modern steel-construction building, primarily for its own use.” The announcement named Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz, son of influential architect Leopold Eidlitz, as the architect. Most of the plot of land was taken up by the once upscale Pabst Hotel. Otto Strach, one of its architects, put the cost of the building at $225,000 and its interior decorative work at $60,000. The New-York Tribune said of it “The Pabst Hotel prided itself upon its bar and its rathskeller. No money was spared to make both attractive.” But the handsome hotel would have to make way for the 20th century.
In 1902 demolition of the Pabst Hotel began. New-York Tribune, December 7, 1902 (copyright expired)
On June 27, 1903 The Times published the first rendering of its intended building. An article explained to readers that the bulk of the newspaper’s activity would be subterranean—the press and stereotyping rooms, for instance. The newspaper offices would be on the ground floor, the composing room would be high above on the 16th floor, and the 15th floor would house the newspaper’s business offices. The majority of the upper building would be leased. The Times was quick to point out that the “detachment of the site” made possible windows on all sides; a tremendous marketing asset and, in the days before air conditioning and a considerable plus for tenants.
Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz first released the above sketch in 1902. Architects’ and Builders’ Magazine, March 1905 (copyright expired)
Eidlitz designed what would be the second tallest building in Manhattan and drew his inspiration from Giotto’s campanile in Florence. While the Pabst Hotel had faced 42nd Street, looking southward to the city, Adolph Ochs, publisher of The New York Times and Eidlitz realized that the future was to the north. The Times Building would turn its back to 42nd Street and look uptown. Its 375-foot tall tower would diminish the neighboring buildings, and its elaborate decoration would astound. Eidlitz created a five-story base of pink Milford granite above which were 13 floors of sand-blasted, cream colored terra cotta, followed by the impressive tower. As the building rose in 1903, The Times kept readers abreast, reporting on details like the nearly 16 foot ceiling in the main hall and the marble wainscoting. “The doors are to be made of red oak. In every detail of finishing the contractors are to exercise the greatest care in their selections, and their contracts call for the best quality and most advanced designs in every device or appurtenance upon which will depend the comfort of those who occupy the building,” said the newspaper on October 25 that year.
The lobby was clad in heavily veined marble — Architects’ and Builders’ Magazine, March 1905 (copyright expired)
Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz, who worked on the project with his partner Andrew C. McKenzie, proudly stated “And it is well worth noting that not a single piece of the stone in that building has ever touched Manhattan Island.” Early in 1904, as the Times Building neared completion, August Belmont made the suggestion that Longacre Square be renamed Times Square. On April 5 the Board of Alderman met and approved the name change. “There was not a single dissenting voice to the proposition,” reported The Times the following day.
The Times Building included a subway entrance which reflected the elaborate terra cotta treatment of the rest of the facade. The sign for the station is spelled out in electric lights–a foreshadowing of the Times Square to come. Architects’ and Builders’ Magazine, March 1905 (copyright expired) The Italian Renaissance style skyscraper (erroneously termed “Gothic” by The Times) opened in September to critical acclaim. Brooklyn Life newspaper said “The new Times Building across the river offers abundant evidence that if we must have skyscrapers they need not necessarily be ugly.”
The soaring building, second tallest in New York, dwarfed the surrounding structures — photograph George P. Hall & Son, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Three months later, on New Year’s Eve, marketing genius Adolph Ochs, set off fireworks from the top of the building. A crowd of about 200,000 people crammed into Times Square to watch. It was just the beginning of a New York tradition involving the Times Building and New Year’s Eve. At the time the problem of keeping one’s pocket watch accurately set was solved worldwide by the time ball. Tall poles which pierced large balls, usually made of copper, were erected on high buildings. Triggered by telegraph signals from an observatory—in New York they came from the U. S. Naval Observatory in Washington D.C.—the balls would drop precisely at noon. Businessmen with craned necks waited for that moment to reset their watched. In 1907 Ochs hatched another plan. He had the newspaper’s chief electrician, Walter F. Palmer, build a electrically-lit time ball that would drop from a flagpole atop the Times Building exactly at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Ochs could have had no inkling of what he had just begun. In 1912 people passing the Times Building miraculously were unscathed when a 150-pound coping stone fell from the 16th floor to the pavement below. “A dozen persons, most of them young girls on their way to lunch from the office buildings in the vicinity were endangered by the falling stone,” reported The Evening World on April 2. The newspaper (which preferred to ignore the renaming of the Square, now eight years old) related the panic of one near-victim. “One man was missed by not more than three feet. As the stone landed right behind him he pulled his hat down on his head and started up through Long Acre Square regardless of traffic. When last seen he was passing Forty-seventh street in the middle of Broadway and going strong.” Along with The New York Times, the building filled with offices like that of the Banking Department of the State of New York on the 6th Floor. In 1914 the department offered “building lots, houses and bungalows at prices which are conceded to be REAL BARGAINS.” Before its move to Hollywood, New York City was still the center of the motion picture industry, and the Advisory Board of Motion Picture Directors had its offices in the building. On July 24, 1918, with Europe embroiled in World War I, The Evening World reported that the Board “wants to produce some pictures which will help in all forms of war work.” James Vincent, Secretary of the Board, requested writers to send their plot ideas to him. “Mr. Vincent says he hopes the country’s best writers will help out along this line.” The ornate Times Building was the anchor of Times Square and visitors from the world over marveled at its noble triangular presence for decades. Inside thousands of employees would come and go; perhaps none of the non-writing personnel quite as remarkable as William White. White was a “husky mechanic who is helping to install new elevators,” according to The Times on September 7, 1947. A Bronx native he had held the job of elevator mechanic for about 12 years. But, as the newspaper said, “There’s no telling where a concert singer will turn up.” And this one turned up singing in a Times Building elevator shaft.
The Irish tenor had been discovered in 1944 on the “Major Bowes Amateur Hour.” Now on October 3, a month after The Times article, he was slated to give a concert in the Carnegie Recital Hall. In 1928 The Times installed its famous “zipper” headliner around the building. The innovative outdoor message board announced breaking news to the passersby with moving headlines. It was one more seed that blossomed into Times Square tradition. The New York Times moved into its new headquarters a block to the west in 1961. The building was purchased by Douglas Leigh and renamed the Allied Chemical Building. He was already famous for his iconic Times Square billboards like the smoking Camel cigarette sign. Leigh commissioned the architectural firm of Smith, Smith, Haines, Lundberg & Waehler to modernize the Edwardian structure. And modernize they did. The firm peeled off the ornate terra cotta and granite façade, replacing it with concrete panels interspersed with flat marble slabs. But the 60s Modern design would eventually be lost to view as well. In March 1995 Lehman Brothers purchased the property for $27.5 million. The financial services firm felt that the rent-producing potential of the building’s exterior outweighed that of the interior. A grid frame was installed over the entire structure to support advertising. Only the ground floor was kept as leasable space. One Times Square was sold in 1997 to the Jamestown Group for $117 million. Today the pie-shaped former Times Building is cocooned in neon advertising. The interior offices and hallways–where New York Times reporters scurried about and where motion picture executives read over war-time screen plays—are dark and deserted. There may be nothing left of Cyrus Eidlitz’s Italian Renaissance skyscraper; but One Times Square lives on in its electric message board and its New Year’s Eve ball drop—ideas of Adolph Ochs more than a century earlier.
ED LITCHER, ALIS VILLAFANE, GLORA HERMAN, NANCY BROWN ALL GOT I RIGHT.
P.S. THIS WEST SIDE OF THE NEW SOUTHPOINT PARK PROJECT IS MUCH MORE SUCCESSFUL AND WELL DONE THAN THE EAST SIDE.
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
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
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Among the many hundreds of steamboats plying the Hudson River when that waterway served as a primary method of moving people and freight, a few stand out as unusual. The most remarkable of these is perhaps the railroad transports, used to ferry railroad cars.
Also known as train ferries, or car ferries (not to be confused with auto ferries), they were fitted with railway tracks and doors at each end to allow for loading and unloading.
The first train ferries were established in the 1830s in Scotland over the Forth and Clyde Canal, and just a few years later in 1836 the Susquehanna began hauling railroad cars between Havre de Grace and Perryville, in Maryland. The first modern train ferries, with roll-on/roll-off capability for easy transfer of cars, were established in the U.S. in the 1850s. Coming into more widespread use after the Civil War, they were specialty steamers often used in conjunction commuter and long-distance passenger trains.
On the Hudson River, most rail-car ferries for freight were actually car floats, un-powered barges moved by tugboat on the river. There were nearly 20 companies operating car floats around the city of New York in the early 20th century. They operated more than 300 at their peak. The New York Central’s 69th Street Transfer Bridge at Gantry Plaza State Park is a relic of the car float era.
Self-powered train ferries were rarer. In 1876, the Maryland was established between Jersey City and Mott Haven (the Bronx). Two tracks were located on the main deck and onto these were brought drawing room, sleeping and ordinary passenger cars along with baggage, freight, express and mail cars.
Hudson River steamboat historian A. Fred Saunders located a self-powered train ferry operated for a short time at Newburgh, also named Maryland. This boat was smaller than its earlier namesake, but operated in much the same way. A steel hulled side-wheeler built in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1890 for the New England Transfer Co. (part of the New York & New England Railroad), it was sold in 1913 and subsequently used as a dredge.
Another self-powered train ferry had an even shorter stint on the Hudson according to Saunders, whose extensively researched scrapbooks detailing Hudson River steamboats are available online. The Ferdinando Gorges was a steel side-wheeler built at the Bath Iron Works in Maine for the Maine Central Railroad in 1909 with three railroad tracks on the main deck. It ran across the Kennebec River between Bath and Woolwich, but was sold to New Jersey Steamboat Company in 1927, which operated the Peoples Line of night boats known as the Hudson River Night Line. There it was renamed Pioneer, one end was enclosed with doors, and Saunders reports it carried automobiles between New York and Albany (although Troy was also painted on its wheel box).
The Pioneer was sold in 1931 to the Peninsular Ferry Company and used as the first automobile ferry across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay between Cape Charles and Little Creek. It was purchased by the American Barge Line in 1935, converted to diesel, and operated by them until at least 1943.
The only remaining train ferry on the Hudson is an un-powered car float operation in Upper New York Bay between Jersey City and Brooklyn. Since service ended across what is now the Walkway Over The Hudson at Poughkeepsie in 1974, it’s the only freight rail crossing of the Hudson River below Selkirk, a situation that creates what’s known as the Selkirk Hurdle.
(Another freight railroad bridge across the Hudson near Mechanicville is a testament to that community’s long standing position as a major rail hub, established when the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad laid a track there in 1835 that intersected with the Champlain Canal.)
Take a look at more photos of train car ferries and floats here.
THE WOODEN ESCALATOR AT MACY’S ED LITCHER, ALEXIS VILLAFANE AND HARA REISER GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Illustrations, from above: the Pioneer; Loading trains on the ferry S.S. Chief Wawatam in Mackinaw, Michigan (used extensively by the New York Central); and two views of the Maryland (photos courtesy A. Fred Saunders scrapbook Catskill Public Library).
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Jackson Heights in the early 20th century was largely rural. Jackson Heights Beautification Group
Garden City Movement: Queens 2
What do Jackson Heights, Forest Hills, Sunnyside and Residence Park, New Rochelle all have in common? They (and a other communities) all reflected the Garden City Movement, a form of urban planning in which self-contained communities contain equal areas of residences, industry, and agriculture, surrounded by “greenbelts.” Ebenezer Howard, a Londoner, dreamed up the idea in 1898. In these Garden Cities, residents would live in harmony with nature and be free from urban stress. Jackson Heights in the early 20th century was largely rural. Jackson Heights Beautification Group
The Garden City Movement
To Howard, the Garden City movement was the solution to the problem of crowded cities that harmed the health and well-being of their citizens. The “Master-Key was to restore the people to the land—that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it… [and create] a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty….”
Howard’s highly detailed (and rather weirdly) planned Garden City would house 32,000 people on a site of 9,000 acres. The Garden City was not planned as a commuter community. It would be self-sufficient and when it reached full population, another Garden City would be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster of several garden cities as satellites of a central city of 58,000 people, linked by road and rail. What is remarkable about the Garden City movement is that something so odd and utopian could become so successful and have a lasting impact. Earlier utopian experiments were dreamed up by fringe idealists and went belly-up quickly. The Garden City movement, while it too disappeared, still left a lasting legacy in urban planning. In Queens.
Howard’s diagram of autonomous Garden Cities surrounded by countryside, orbiting around a central city
Queens? Yes, Edward A. MacDougall, founder of the Queensboro Corporation (in August 1909), worked with Howard to create the first Garden City community in the United States. The Corporation would develop what was then Trains Meadow. MacDougall renamed the area Jackson Heights, after Jackson Avenue (now Northern Boulevard), the main east-west road at the time. Though the land was not especially known for its elevation, the addition of the term “Heights” echoed the prestige of the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights and indicated that Jackson Heights was meant to be an exclusive neighborhood.
Jackson Heights in the 1920s, Jackson Heights Beautification Group
In contrast to traditional suburbs of single-family houses, the Queensboro Corporation built upscale apartment buildings distinguished by shared garden spaces. Laurel Court became the nation’s first Garden City apartment, completed in 1918. This was followed in 1919 by the construction of the Linden Court. The two sets of buildings each, separated by a gated garden, included parking spaces with single-story garages, the first Jackson Heights development to do so; a layout that provided light and ventilation to the apartments, as well as fostered a sense of belonging to a community. With abundant land available, all unused space was used for parks and gardens, or for recreational areas that included a golf course.
Linden Court 37-22 85th Street 32 Jackson Heights Queens NY – Linecity – NYC Apartment Rentals and Sales https://www.linecity.com/listing/2163116/Linden-Court-37-22-85th-Street-Jackson-Heights-Queens-NY-Sale
Target customers were middle class New Yorkers who could afford to live in the suburbs. High quality apartments had ornate exteriors and fireplaces, parquet floors, sun rooms and built-in bathtubs with showers.
They were exclusive: A US HUD study of Jackson Heights says that the neighborhood “was envisioned as an exclusive suburb for a native, White, middle-class fleeing a city that was not only crowded, but increasingly culturally diverse. Initially advertised as a ‘restricted residential community,’ Jackson Heights’ early developers specifically barred both Jews and Blacks, by custom and restrictive covenants.”
Jackson Heights could be reached by streetcar and ferry from Manhattan, though this was a lengthy process. While the Queensboro Corporation was influenced by the Garden City Movement, it was still committed to increasing the number of residents many of whom would be commuters. With the arrival of the subway, the planners sought to blend Howard’s Garden City ideals with the needs of an urban neighborhood that was quickly becoming a commuter hub. Inevitably, the influence of the Garden City Movement decreased. In the 1920s, Jackson Heights grew rapidly. In 1923, only 3,800 residents lived there; by 1930, its population was 44,500.
For Edward MacDougall, it was an incredible success, but it wasn’t just the architecture that drew people to Queens. In 1919, the Corporation began pushing another innovation by converting nearly all its apartment buildings from rentals to co-ops. The corporation promised current tenants “the opportunity to buy their apartments for $500 down and mortgage payments of about $52 a month.” The Queensboro Corporation stayed on as the managing agent.
The further expansion of Jackson Heights was hit hard by the 1929 crash. During the 1930s, the golf course was leveled, and, in its place, only one new major building complex, Dunolly Gardens, was built. The opening of Dunolly Gardens was a sign that Jackson Heights was still a desirable neighborhood, but it also marked the beginning of the end of MacDougall’s vision of Jackson Heights.
The population was changing. Some new residents were gay, and, says the HUD report, “with little public notice, Jackson Heights developed into a gay haven—a remarkable contrast to the intolerance toward ethnic and racial minorities in the area.” In the 1940s, restrictive covenants that barred people by race or religion were struck down as illegal, and the Jewish population of Jackson Heights slowly began to rise. However, as the HUD report also points out, black residents had a hard time renting or buying in the area until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, and, indeed, the percentage of African Americans in the neighborhood’s population remains low.
Meanwhile, the wholesale rewriting of America’s immigration laws in 1965 meant that many South and Central American immigrants began to reach New York City in the late 1960s, along with South Asian and Chinese immigrants. By 1990, the demographics of the area had shifted such that no group was the majority, and while the sizes of each demographic continue to change, that remains true to this day.
This shift in Jackson Heights’ ethnic makeup stands as a rebuke to MacDougall’s original idea for a whites-only enclave. A century ago, a neighborhood with such massive diversity—halal butchers down the street from Indian restaurants that buy fresh produce from the same vendors as the nearby Peruvian diners—would have seemed like an unlikely place to foster a strong sense of community.
But, still, while Edward MacDougall may have envisioned a Garden City in his own image—white, Protestant, and middle class—he built a neighborhood that was able to transform into something more economically and culturally diverse without losing its innate sense of place.
Sunnyside Gardens, built from 1924-1928, was another community influenced by the English Garden City movement. Called by some America’s first successful experiment with garden-city design, it is now a National Register Historic District. Sunnyside Gardens is a 77-acre planned community led by a group including Clarence Stein, urban planner Louis Mumford (one of the Garden’s first residents) and then-schoolteacher and future first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to provide affordable working-class housing. Designed “for living not for selling”, the project sought to show civic leaders they could solve social problems and beautify the city, while making a small profit.
The novel design of the Gardens included large areas of open space. Construction costs were minimized, allowing those with limited means the opportunity to afford their own homes. Rows of one- to three-family private houses with co-op and rental apartment buildings were mixed together and arranged around common gardens, with stores and garages placed around the edges of the neighborhood. Just about every interior window in the Gardens offers a view of a landscaped commons.
Artists and writers were also attracted to Sunnyside Gardens. In its early years, it was sometimes referred to as the ‘Greenwich Village annex’. Residents included painter Raphael Soyer, singer Perry Como and actress Judy Holliday. Crooner Rudy Vallee, NYPD Blue actress Justine Miceli, “Rhoda’s mom” Nancy Walker, and tough-guy actor James Caan also lived in Sunnyside.
Much more to write about. (I love Station Square in Forest Hills.) But space and (your) time are limited.
The Al Weinstein Tree at the Tram Plaza NINA LUBLIN AND ED LITCHER GOT IT RIGHT.
FROM THOM HEYER
Dear Judy– I’m so sorry to hear about how 9/11 was “officially” commemorated on the Island, but glad to hear it was acknowledged in a heartfelt way later that day. Sept. 11, 2001 was a horrible day for any New Yorker who lived through or lost someone on that horrible day. Stephen & I have vivid memories of that day because we were still living in Chelsea’s Flower District at the time. Our friend Erika lost her husband John that day after only working at his new job for a week. He was “Person #3” registered as “missing” at the Armory that day as we went with her to register there with hundreds of other New Yorkers. Union Square quickly became the place of candles, shrines & pictures asking “Have you seen this person?” We tried to give blood that day at St. Vincent’s when it was still a hospital & not luxury apartments. We were turned away because they did not need blood donations–no one had been brought to the hospital because no one had survived….. John’s memorial was held at our apt. & packed with people shoulder-to-shoulder who didn’t know where to go with their grief…… On Sept. 11, 2002, there was an unofficial memorial at Union Square commemorating the one year anniversary of that horrible day. Everything had changed, including people’s hearts. Our country was at war. People seemed defensive & argumentative in the park that day. We had turned a corner in our psyche & not for the better that day. I’m sorry I didn’t know about the gatherings until after-the-fact on Saturday. Thank you for the photos & thank you & the others who were present that day to pay your respects….. All the best: Thom
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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