Esther Crain's Blog, page 20

The forgotten painter who captured the contrasting landscapes of 1930 New York City

By the Depression year of 1930, New York City was increasingly becoming a city of highs and lows.

[“Sixth Avenue and Ziegfeld Theater”]

The highs were evident in Gotham’s skyline. Elegant residential towers lined the borders of Central Park and the city’s posher avenues. The Chrysler Building rose above 42nd Street, and the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center soon followed at different ends of Midtown.

At odds with these gleaming towers were the lows—the many low-rise blocks across Manhattan. Spread out between their new high-rise neighbors and congregated in poorer, more densely packed areas were tenement buildings, factories, and warehouses, some crumbling with age.

[“The Cavalry, Central Park”]

Someone who appears to have noticed this stark contrast in the cityscape was Médard Verburgh. A Belgian painter of sensitive, colorful portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, Verburgh’s work was to be exhibited at the prestigious Newhouse Galleries on East 57th Street in January 1930.

Though Verburgh seems to be an artist forgotten by the contemporary world, he had a presence in the first half of the 20th century. A critic writing in the New York Times described the Newhouse Galleries exhibit as one that “should not be missed by anyone interested in Belgian art—or, for that matter, in art more catholically considered.”

Verburgh, 44 years old at the time, presumably came to the city for the exhibit. He also apparently felt inspired enough by the physical landscape to paint it.

[“On the Rooftops of New York”]

Each of the four works in this post date to 1930, and all capture the city’s contrasts in vibrant colors and rough brushstrokes. The top image, “Sixth Avenue and Ziegfeld Theater,” juxtaposes office towers and smaller commercial and residential holdouts on a busy traffic artery of the then-modern city.

The Ziegfeld Theater, opened in 1929 at the corner of 54th Street, would be the whitish building on the left—though it doesn’t resemble the actual Ziegfeld Theater that occupied this site until it was demolished in 1966.

The second painting, “The Calvary, Central Park,” showcases the enormous apartment towers and office buildings of Central Park South looking like a fortification around the expansive pasture of the park and the equestrians riding inside it.

[“Le Metro Aerien”]

“On the Rooftops of New York,” the third painting, features tenement roof dwellers dancing and making music, a black cat curled up in the corner bearing witness to the sounds and steps. It’s an intimate and personal scene with the impersonal, impenetrable skyline in the background.

The final painting has a French title, “Le Metro Aerien”—or The Aerial Metro in English. Here Verburgh gives us the thickest brushstrokes with images of a brick-red warehouse or factory and an elevated train circling in front of it, and sketches of skyscrapers in the rear.

Exactly what neighborhood the painting is set in isn’t clear, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Verburgh presents another contrast of the old and new New York City—the energy and might of the old in comparison to the fortresslike facelessness of the 1930 skyscraper city.

Join Ephemeral New York on a time-traveling walking tour of Gilded Age Riverside Drive!

Which still-standing mansion built in 1907 has a mysterious basement tunnel leading to the Hudson River? Where is one of the few Beaux-Arts row houses that has its original wood-carved doors? Why is the Drive the only avenue in Manhattan that branches off into small carriage roads?

Which famous American writer came to a rock outcropping in Riverside Park every day to stare across the Hudson River? Who was the rich wife and mother so disturbed by tugboat horns on the riverfront that she formed a committee to suppress “unnecessary” noise?

Join Ephemeral New York on a time-traveling walking tour that answers these questions and delves into the backstory of the city’s most beautiful avenue!

Opened in 1880, Riverside Drive came into its heyday in the Gilded Age—but the tour will explore the long history of this western edge of Manhattan that was once isolated farmland and then one of the city’s mansion-lined millionaire miles.

Tours have sold out so far this spring, but tickets remain for two tours coming up on Sunday, May 5, Sunday May 12, and Sunday, June 2:

Sunday, May 5, 1-3:15 pm: get tickets at this link

Sunday, May 12, 1-3:30 pm: get tickets at this link

Sunday, June 2, 1-3:30 pm: get tickets at this link

The tours are fun, breezy, and filled with secrets and insights. Hope to see everyone there!

The magnificent mantelpiece that greeted guests at the Vanderbilt mansion on 57th Street

Imagine being a first-time guest to one of Alice and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Gilded Age balls or dinner parties, held at their spectacular new mansion on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.

As you pass through the front doors of the house, completed in 1883, you’re received in view of this stunning ornate mantelpiece. At the time, it dominated the mansion’s entry hall, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It’s the kind of objet d’art one would expect from a Vanderbilt mansion. Sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who had been hired by artist John La Farge, the mantelpiece features “two classical caryatids, Amor (Love) and Pax (Peace), [which] support the expansive entablature with bowed heads and upraised arms,” noted the Met.

Elaborate carvings and floral motifs decorate the mantelpiece. Above it is a mosaic with Latin words across a woman’s head. Cornelius Vanderbilt himself chose the phrase, which translates into “the house at its threshold gives evidence of the master’s good will. Welcome to the guest who arrives; farewell and helpfulness to him who departs,” according to Wayne Craven, author of Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society.

The mantelpiece was commissioned by the Vanderbilts—and it outlasted them and their house as well. An 1890s renovation doubled the size of the mansion, and the mantelpiece with the caryatids was relegated to a family sitting room on the second floor, states Craven.

Not long after the expansion, Cornelius Vanderbilt (grandson of the Commodore) suffered a stroke, passing away in 1899. Alice stayed in the house with an army of servants, struggling to pay for the upkeep even with a multimillion dollar inheritance.

In the 1920s she moved out and put the house up for sale (below in 1907), correctly anticipating that the land it sat on was more valuable than the house, which would be torn down. In the house’s final weeks she managed to salvage some items from the interiors.

She donated a sculpture group to the Sherry-Netherland Hotel going up across Fifth Avenue. And to the Met she gave this mantelpiece, a lovely remnant of Gilded Age art and architecture and the kind of wealthy family palace New York will never see again.

[Third and fourth images: Wikipedia]

The mystery of the gilded glass booth outside Midtown’s St. Regis Hotel

It’s an eye-catching piece of street furniture: a booth made of glass, brass, and copper, with a door like a Romanesque arch and a capsule-shaped side compartments.

This unusual sidewalk booth can be found under the awning at the East 55th Street entrance of the St. Regis Hotel.

Built on Fifth Avenue in 1904 by John Jacob Astor IV (the only son of the infamous Mrs. Astor), the Beaux-Arts St. Regis has long been one of Manhattan’s most luxurious hotels, heralded as “the new shrine of the millionaire” shortly after it opened by the New York Times. (Below in 1907)

The purpose of this glass and metal booth seems clear—it’s an enclosed space for a doorman to wait for guests, something all hotels and attended apartment houses had and still have.

Architectural critics writing just after the hotel opened gave it the fancy name of “sentry box” rather than a doorman’s station—a hint that maybe it was more for security rather than assisting guests with heavy luggage.

But whatever it’s called, the design and shape intrigue me. A hotel as sumptuous and technologically advanced as the St. Regis—guests were pampered with air-cooled rooms and a private telephone in each suite—would definitely not build an ordinary-looking doorman booth. But what is it, exactly?

According to a doorman I spoke to (who said it’s been in front of the entrance since the hotel’s early days), it’s probably a Gilded Age–era elevator, or an exact replica of an elevator passengers would find circa 1904. This explanation is based on years of elevator-savvy passersby pointing out what it is and explaining the different parts, delighted to talk about their trade.

It does have kind of a Willa Wonka and the Great Glass Elevator vibe. Still, the question remains as to why the hotel placed a fancy elevator outside the entrance.

Was it to let potential guests know that the hotel was equipped with the latest in elevator mechanics? A clever way to repurpose one that broke down and couldn’t be used? It’s too heavy to be moved, the doorman told me, so it remains in place.

The St. Regis has another relic of a previous New York City, and I don’t mean the 1935 Maxfield Parrish mural at the King Cole Bar.

Look up above the 55th Street awning and you’ll see a copper sign that says “St. Regis Cab Call.” Old-time taxi signs can still be spotted on apartment buildings and hotels, but I’ve never seen this kind of sign before—which I think let cab drivers in a pre-Uber era know how many people at the hotel were waiting for a ride.

[Second image: MCNY, X2011.34.287]

Three New York City subway stops, three different design styles

How many ways are there to style a subway entrance sign? In New York City, dozens of designs and typefaces are used across the subway system—often with no rhyme or reason.

Take this gold and white sign on William Street. It’s for a side entrance/exit for the Fulton Street station, affixed to a 20th century office building called the Royal Building.

Its long tapered shape, the white block (a light?) at the top—I’ve never seen anything like it.

More than a few stops in Midtown style their subway signage with Art Deco lettering, like this subway sign on East 42nd Street. The design is sleek and modern, just like so many of the office towers on this crosstown thoroughfare.

The M above it is an unfortunate remnant from the late 1960s, when the MTA had the idea to unify all the different subway lines and rebrand them. The effort didn’t stick, but some of these Ms remain.

This last subway sign image comes from the East 23rd Street 6 train entrance, I believe. The typeface and tile feels classical, and the V instead of a U is a nice Roman touch.

Why this design for this stop? I don’t know—but I do know that all the variety of styles in the subway make traveling underground a little more interesting.

A cluster of delightful West Side row houses that look like one enormous mansion

Look up at the massive brick and mortar confection at the southeastern corner of West End Avenue and 102nd Street, and you might think you’re facing one wildly idiosyncratic Gilded Age mansion.

There’s the center tower with four stories of bay windows capped by a bell-shaped roof. On the West End Avenue side are chimneys, carved panels, stained glass, and windows of all styles. On the 102nd Street end, balconies, pedimented parapets and a stoop entrance animate this sleepy side street.

Because all these ornamental eccentricities are united in brownstone and fronted by a lacy iron fence, it seems like one house—specifically a surviving example of one of the mansions built in the late 19th century in the rapidly urbanizing West End of Manhattan (the Upper West Side of today).

But a closer look tells a different story. Rather than one mansion, this corner features four separate townhouses completed in 1893. As a group, it’s the “sole surviving example of a type of site planning used on several corner plots on West End Avenue in the early 1890s,” stated the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in 1990.

Number 858 is in the center, and numbers 854 and 856 face West End Avenue. Number 254 West 102nd Street is around the corner, unattached to its three sisters except by a thin band of brownstone above a path leading to the shared backyard (below left).

These clusters of fanciful row houses were a popular house style on the Upper West Side of the late 1800s, as the LPC pointed out. The style worked for builders, who wanted to maximize profits on the corner lots they purchased by putting up as many separate houses as possible.

Meanwhile, discerning middle- and upper middle class buyers were turning up their noses at the traditional brownstone row houses built in the 1860s and 1870s. Instead, they desired dwellings that rebelled against what was then considered boring, woefully out of date uniformity.

They also sought lots of light, an amenity traditional row houses didn’t offer. That might be why the architects decided to build one of the houses unattached—it afforded the opportunity for more back and side windows, plus a yard in the middle and Hudson River views from the top floors.

“Highly animated by recessed entrances and balconies, these lively Queen Anne/Romanesque Revival–style houses typify the eclectic residential architecture of West End Avenue in the 1890s,” wrote Barbara Diamonstein-Spielvogel in her book, The Landmarks of New York. (Below, two of the houses in 1910).

“By detailing each building individually, the architects also expressed a reaction against the uniform look of the city’s older Italianate row houses.”

Like so many other houses on West End Avenue, which like Riverside Drive was designated as a commerce-free residential thoroughfare, this group of houses was built on speculation.

The interiors featured several bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens with butler’s pantries, and front parlors with music rooms. “All the principal living and sleeping rooms have mantels, mirrors, and open fireplaces, with tiled hearths and onyx or marble facings,” wrote the Real Estate Record and Guide in an approving nod published in February 1893. (Below, in 1940)

Such an attractive cluster of row houses should have had no problem finding buyers. But with the city and nation in the grip of the Panic of 1893, the developers found themselves with few takers.

Number 856 was sold first, noted the LPC. Two years later, the remaining houses were sold to the investors, and architect/developers Ernest Schneider and Henry Herter took title to Number 858. That house sold in 1897, then the title reverted to Schneider and Herter in 1898. (Below, the row houses in 1893)

The others sold in the mid-1890s but seemed to change hands often. Number 254 West 102nd Street became a boarding house.

These days, the cluster of Gilded Age row houses are charming anachronisms on a West End Avenue long dominated by rows of prewar apartment houses. Each of the four, now all rental buildings, seems to be in decent shape. A few front entrances have been altered; some ornamentation has disappeared.

But as a surviving example of a type of housing once found on many corners of the Upper West Side, this group continues to delight passersby with its whimsical style and beguiling backstory.

[Fifth photo: NYPL Digital Collection; sixth photo: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; seventh photo: Real Estate Record & Guide]

What a breathtaking aerial view of Riverside Drive says about Manhattan in 1910

Riverside Drive was just 30 years old when this stunning birds-eye panorama of the Drive between about 110th and 123rd Street was taken, according to the Kermit Project, which posted the photo (via Shorpy.com) and some information about it.

Though it’s more than a century old, click into the photo to magnify the view—you’ll see that the landmarks of the Riverside Drive of today are already in place.

The dome and columns of Grant’s Tomb stand to the north, some elegant prewar apartment towers loom over low-rise dwelling houses (almost all of which will disappear in the ensuing decades), and the carriage road and traffic road are separated by a wide swath of Riverside Park.

But the enlarged view of the photo reveals some vestiges of the Riverside Drive of old. On the lower left are people riding horses—a reminder that Riverside Park once had a popular bridle path.

See that pier sticking out into the Hudson? It belonged to Columbia University. A larger pier juts out at 125th Street that served ferries going back and forth to New Jersey, according to the Kermit Project. No George Washington Bridge quite yet!

Is that an early form of scaffolding on the lower right side of the image? It blocks the front of a bow-fronted row house, which resembles 292 Riverside Drive, a C.P.H. Gilbert–designed house that still stands on Riverside between 101st and 102nd Street—putting this view south of 110th Street.

The theater ads on the lower left are a lot of fun, and a reminder that popular entertainment a century ago was no smarter than what we stream today.

Want to learn more about the history of Riverside Drive, especially the Drive in the Gilded Age—when this avenue rivaled Fifth Avenue as the city’s millionaire row? Join Ephemeral New York on an upcoming walking tour! Tour dates are as follows:

Sunday, April 14: A few tickets remain for The Gilded Age Mansions and Monuments of Riverside Drive, organized by Bowery Boys Walks.

Sunday, May 5: Sign up for Exploring the Mansions and Memorials of Riverside Drive, organized through the New York Adventure Club.

Sunday, May 12: Sign up for The Gilded Age Mansions and Monuments of Riverside Drive, organized by Bowery Boys Walks.

Hope to see everyone on these fun, insightful walks up one of New York’s most beautiful avenues!

[Photo via Shorpy]

The story of New York’s oldest Titanic memorial, unveiled exactly one year after the disaster

The R.M.S. Titanic went to its watery grave in the Atlantic Ocean on the morning of April 15, 1912. Few cities felt the tragedy as deeply as New York City.

At the end of its maiden voyage, the luxurious ship was set to dock at the White Star Line’s Pier 59, near today’s Chelsea Piers. Instead, 706 dazed survivors picked up by the R.M.S. Carpathia disembarked a few blocks away at Pier 54—greeted by a crowd of thousands desperate for news about the iceberg that sank the ship and the whereabouts of family members.

St. Vincent’s Hospital tended to survivors; Lower Manhattan hotels put them up as guests. The Women’s Relief Committee, a newly formed group made up of prominent society ladies, raised thousands of dollars for stranded passengers, especially those in steerage.

Influential and lesser-known residents went down with the ship, including Macy’s owner Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, and John Jacob Astor IV (the son of Mrs. Astor, the society leader). Their absence was felt immediately in a city stunned with grief.

In response to so much tragedy, no time was wasted planning a monument to the lives lost—one that would function as not just a memorial but also as a guiding light for ships in New York Harbor.

“The Seaman’s Benefit Society has undertaken the task of collecting the funds for the erection of a permanent memorial to the men and women lost on the Titanic in the form of a lighthouse tower on the new Seaman’s Institute at the corner of Coenties Slip and South Street,” wrote the New York Times on April 23, 1912.

The lighthouse memorial, which would have a lantern gallery and a fixed green light viewable as far away as Sandy Hook, was to be topped by a time ball that dropped down a pole at noon, so seaman could set their chronometers (and Lower Manhattan dwellers could set their watches).

Though it honored everyone who went down with the ship, the memorial would be “in memory of the engineers who sent their stokers up while they went to certain death; the members of the heroic band who played while the water crept up to their instruments; and of the officers and crew who put duty above personal safety,” noted the Times.

“It will be given in memory of those in the steerage who perished without ever realizing their hopes of a new land, the America of endless possibilities.”

Putting the memorial on top of the new Seaman’s Institute was also a fitting choice. This organization, launched in 1834 as the Seaman’s Church Institute, helped take care of the thousands of sailors who came to New York City on the many vessels over the years that made shipping and trade a powerhouse of Gotham’s economy.

The cornerstone for the Institute’s new building went in the ground on the morning of the sinking of the Titanic. One year later, the completed building—featuring dormitory rooms, a bank, library, and chapel—hosted a dedication service for the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse perched on its roof.

The lighthouse, designed by Warren & Wetmore (the architects behind Grand Central Terminal) went into service that November, according to the South Street Seaport Museum.

For the next 55 years, as ship traffic decreased in New York Harbor and South Street’s fortunes turned, the Titanic memorial with its time ball stayed in service on the roof. In 1968, the Seaman’s Institute moved to a new headquarters on State Street. The top of the Titanic Memorial was given to the South Street Seaport Museum.

But it wasn’t until 1976 when the memorial lighthouse went up on a triangular corner at Pearl and Fulton Streets (now known as Titanic Memorial Park), held in place by a concrete podium. The time ball is also gone; it’s been replaced by an ornamental sphere.

Here it still stands, a memorial to a maritime disaster that hit the city hard and remains in the public imagination.

I’m not the only one who has noticed it could use some TLC. A group dedicated to restoring the monument has formed, according to a 2022 New York Times piece. But a costly restoration of a relic not many passersby notice remains uncertain.

[Second photo, NYPL, 1915; Third photo, MCNY, 88.1.1.2369; fourth photo, MCNY by Edmund Vincent Gillon; 2013.3.1.960]

Why this subway grate off East 52nd Street is the most famous grate in New York City

Some pedestrians try to avoid walking over subway grates, others march across these sidewalk ventilation openings without care.

However you handle them, subway grates are a fact of life in New York City, and underground mass transit couldn’t exist without them.

Metal, utilitarian, and usually filthy, they aren’t especially noteworthy. But one particular subway grate on the East Side is perhaps the most famous grate in Gotham.

This subway grate is on Lexington Avenue near 52nd Street. What makes it so celebrated? This is the grate a flirtatious Marilyn Monroe stood above during the filming of The Seven Year Itch—while wearing a white dress blown upward by a passing train.

Director Billy Wilder’s tale about a family man (played by Tom Ewell) on his own for the summer and tempted by his beautiful new upstairs neighbor (Monroe) began filming almost 70 years ago.

At one in the morning on September 15, 1954, Ewell and Monroe were set to film the subway grate scene; it was to follow after the couple walk out of the Trans-Lux Theater. They then stop at the grate in front of a jewelry store.

“Hearing an approaching subway train, Monroe stepped onto the grate, having her skirt blown high by the train passing underneath, saying ‘ooh do you feel the breeze from the subway, isn’t it delicious,'” stated Atlas Obscura, in a 2014 article.

But the filming of that scene early in the morning? It was actually a publicity stunt. “Leaking the time and location of the event to the press, somewhere between 3-5,000 spectators showed up to catch a glimpse of Marilyn’s legs,” continued Atlas Obscura.  

After three hours and 14 takes at the subway grate, the scene still wasn’t wrapped, thanks to all the noise from the crowd. As a result, the scene that ended up in the film was actually done on a set in Hollywood, reported The Guardian.

Okay, so the actual subway grate embedded in the sidewalk didn’t make it into the movie. But the recreated scene in California is supposed to be the grate on Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street—where the jewelry store and Trans-Lux Theater have long since disappeared and a charmless office tower reigns.

[Second image: TMC]

This forgotten Uptown apartment house is almost as old as the Dakota

You’re forgiven if you’ve walked down East 106th Street and missed this seen-better-days former apartment residence on the unlovely corner of Third Avenue.

Stained and grimy, the facade is the color of cardboard with mustard trim. What might have been a grand picture window on Third Avenue has long since been blocked up and is now above the wraparound awning of a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

On the 106th Street side, another entrance is filled in and marred by graffiti. The only remaining door is marked “176” near the building’s red brick, non-adjacent tenement neighbor.

Now imagine how lovely this slender structure must have been when it was finished in 1887, three years after the Dakota on West 72nd Street and in the height of the Gilded Age.

Five stories high, the building features bay windows, Romanesque arches, caryatids, grotesque faces, floral motifs, geometric designs, and one top-floor balcony window framed by columns looking out high above the corner.

All of the design motifs and ornamentation on such a stately building give it some playfulness. (Or turn it into a hot mess, depending on your architectural tastes.) It makes me wonder who built it, who lived there in its glory days, and what else is known about 1922 Third Avenue’s backstory.

The story begins in November 1886. That’s when the Real Estate Record & Guide announced that architect F.A. Minuth, whose work focused mostly on residences and lofts, has completed plans for a “five-story and basement yellow brick and terra cotta with stone trimmings” apartment house and store.

The basement, first floor, and second story “will be reserved for stores and business purposes, the upper part will be arranged for three families on each floor and have private halls and all improvements.” The cost was estimated at $22,000.

The builder was a man named Martin Disken—hence the building’s name carved into the center top, “The Disken.”

An Irish immigrant turned Brooklyn (Rutland Road) resident, Disken is described in his 1924 Brooklyn Eagle obituary as a building contractor. When he filed for bankruptcy in 1899, however, the notice in the New York Times called him a “builder and plasterer” residing on 129th Street “with known liabilities and no assets.”

It’s probably safe to say that by 1899, Disken no long owned his eponymous apartment house. It might also be assumed that by that time, the building’s fortunes were turning.

By the turn of the century, the rapid development of uptown Manhattan was not quite the sure thing real estate investors and speculators thought when they rushed to put up houses on Harlem streets that were open fields just a decade earlier.

Sure enough, a real estate crash in the early 1900s kept middle- and upper-class families away from Harlem’s many new brownstones and apartment residences.

Also preventing The Disken from being the next Dakota or Osborne was the constant rumble of the Third Avenue Elevated. East 106th Street was a crosstown street, so the El stopped outside that second-floor window. Families would not accept that kind of intrusion if they could help it.

The next owner of 1922 Third Avenue, Isaac Fiedenheit, who bought it in 1891 per the New York Herald, likely saw the Disken’s upper class families move to better neighborhoods—as the area transformed into a working class shopping neighborhood on the border of Italian Harlem.

In 1921, Jesse Adler, the owner of a shoe store chain that occupied the ground floor space since 1906 bought the building. The Herald reported that it was now worth $100,000 and “above the ground floor are four lofts.”

How long Adler’s remained opened isn’t clear (photo above is from 1940), but by the 1980s the commercial space was taken over by The Wiz.

Is the Disken an apartment building again? It’s hard to know what’s happening on those upper floors. The facade is dingy and forlorn; the windows free of curtains or other homey touches.

But for a brief time more than a century ago, this unusual building (and its earliest residents) gave the corner a sense of Gilded Age elegance.

[Fifth photo: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]