Esther Crain's Blog, page 33

The long search for a site to build Manhattan’s most glorious war memorial

The unveiling took place on Decoration Day in 1902. That late May morning began with a parade of thousands of “grizzled men,” as one Brooklyn newspaper called the old veterans.

The marchers made their way from Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, passing hastily constructed viewing stands filled with proud spectators, to a gentle bend at Riverside Drive and 89th Street.

There, on the park side of the Drive with the Hudson River visible through the treetops, Manhattan’s newest and grandest war memorial—the Soldiers and Sailors Monument—was dedicated to the men who fought for the Union. The daylong ceremony featured school kids, city dignitaries, and men who 40 years earlier served with courage and valor.

Decoration Day, 1902

More than 120 years later, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument continues to stand at Riverside Drive and 89th Street. Modeled after a Greek temple, it’s a 100-foot tall, Corinthian-columned memorial set in a plaza and surrounded by stone plinths engraved with the names of important generals and decisive battles.

Considering the monument’s beauty and significance (below image, still under construction in 1902), you’d never think that a frustrating battle of a different kind ensued back in the early 1890s: a long fight to find a place to build it.

The story begins in 1893, when New York City officially commissioned a memorial that would honor veterans of the War Between the States. With the war long over and the emotions surrounding it dulled with time, Gotham was in the grip of a wave of Civil War nostalgia. The time was right to honor the veterans.

Once a memorial was commissioned, a site had to be selected. Officials “proposed a triumphal arch at Grand Army Plaza, at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, one of New York’s most prominent open spaces,” wrote Christopher Gray in the New York. Times in 2002.

But not everyone wanted a monument on this prime corner of real estate. A newly formed group called the Fine Arts Federation campaigned against it, claiming that the entrance to Central Park “must be kept free from large and striking constructions,” according to an 1895 article in the New York Sun.

The Fine Arts Association proposed Riverside Drive and 72nd Street for the monument. Having a memorial at the very beginning of the Drive would make a fine bookend for Grant’s Tomb, they reasoned, which was going up at the other end at 122nd Street, per an 1896 New York Times piece.

For the next few years, more sites were suggested—but no one could agree on a location.

“More than 20 meetings were held in 1896 and 1897 to try to choose a site, and other solutions were proposed, among them the triangle between 22nd and 23rd Streets and Broadway and Fifth Avenue,” wrote Gray. “Naval officers did not like the Grand Army Plaza idea because it was not within sight of water, a matter of little importance to Army veterans, who preferred the Fifth Avenue location.”

Eventually, Fifth Avenue and 59th Street was out of the running. Then Sherman Square, Abingdon Square, Union Square, the Battery and the northeast corner of Central Park were all proposed, stated Gray.

By 1899, officials were also seriously considering Mount Tom, a rocky outcropping off 83rd Street in Riverside Park made famous by Edgar Allan Poe, who liked to sit there with the son of his landlord at the time, Tom Brennan. But developers constructing new houses across the Drive protested, as did people who didn’t approve of “building on top of a natural feature,” as Gray put it.

At the end of the year, however, the site for the monument was finally agreed upon: the prominence on Riverside Drive and 89th Street. Architects were commissioned, a design chosen, and ground broken in 1900.

The building of the monument had finally commenced. But actually, there was one final snag.

During construction, a wealthy widow named Elizabeth Clark—who lived in a fine colonial mansion across the Drive and was the daughter-in-law of —”got a temporary injunction against the monument, claiming in court papers that it would ‘interfere with the flow of light and air and obstruct the view’ and that it was ”unsightly and inartistic,'” wrote Gray.

“She lost the case in mid-1900, and work went ahead,” added Gray. Two years later, the completed monument—visible on land as well as by sea, to please both Army and Navy veterans—was a must-see site in Manhattan’s new center of wealth, Riverside Drive.

Now honoring veterans of all wars, it’s still a dignified beauty. But sadly, it’s deteriorating and behind fencing for several years now, its fate is unsure.

To find out more about the Soldiers and Sailors monument, sign up for Ephemeral New York’s Gilded Age Riverside Drive tour! Tours are currently scheduled for Sunday, June 4 and Sunday, June 25, both from 1-3 pm.

[Second, third, and fourth images: New-York Historical Society; fifth image MCNY, F2011.33.90]

An unusual boot scraper in front of a Chelsea brownstone

Ephemeral New York readers know that this site has a fascination with boot scrapers—those iron blades on front stoops that allowed gentlemen to scrape the mud and dirt off their shoes before they entered a well-tended home.

New York City’s thousands of brownstones and townhouses often still have these sanitary necessities inside the wrought-iron railing or front-yard iron decorative fence. Sometimes they’re embellished; typically they are simple, functional, and meant to be discreet.

But while walking down a street of mid-19th century brownstones in Chelsea recently, I came across a boot scraper that wasn’t part of a fence or railing. It sat somewhat orphaned a bit away from the stoop and in front of a wrought-iron fence.

The boot scraper looked more weathered than the fence and stoop railing, and it doesn’t match either one the way most boot scraper do.

Could it predate the house it currently sits in front of and instead belong to an older home long vanished from Chelsea’s streetscape? I wish there was a way to know how long this boot scraper has been scraping the boots of New Yorkers.

Vintage subway signs that point the way to Queens

The richly colored tiles, the old-school lettering, the slender arrow that tells you exactly which way to go if you’re seriously confused—these features make coming across vintage subway signs such a treat.

But some vintage signs point the way with a little more detail. Case in point: the mosaic signs inside Brooklyn’s Greenpoint Avenue station on the G train, which opened in 1933.

The G train is the former IND crosstown line traveling through Brooklyn and Queens. If you’re headed deeper into Brooklyn, the sign is simple: It points the way to Brooklyn.

For Queens, however, it gives direction not to Queens itself but to Long Island City and Jamaica. Calling out these two locations on different ends of Queens County harkens back to a time when Queens was less a united borough like Brooklyn and Manhattan and more a collection of towns, each with its own identity.

It’s a small but charming experience to see these directionals and thank the subway gods that the MTA hasn’t done away with them in favor of the standardized black and white signs adorning most stations across the city.

Two Vanderbilt sisters, two eclectic Fifth Avenue mansions given as wedding gifts

For much of the Gilded Age, the spacious and tidy residential blocks on Fifth Avenue between 50th Street and Central Park South were New York City’s millionaire mile.

The members of one supremely rich and famous family in particular made their homes here: the Vanderbilts.

During the late 19th century, eight Vanderbilt-occupied mansions of varying sizes and styles lined this stretch of Fifth Avenue. For this the area earned the nickname “Vanderbilt Row”—or “Vanderbilt Alley,” as more cheeky city residents called it.

Though all were demolished by the end of the 1920s, some of these legendary houses remain well-known. There’s William H. Vanderbilt’s “Triple Palace,” a restrained brownstone single mansion and double mansion between 51st and 52nd Streets (below).

Here, this son of Commodore Vanderbilt lived with his wife, as well as his married adult daughters Emily and Margaret and their families.

Across 52nd Street was “petit chateau,” the French Renaissance spectacle built by William H.’s son William K., and his social-climbing wife, Alva. Spanning 58th to 59th Streets stood the 137-room Medieval-like mansion owned by son Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife, Alice.

But two other Vanderbilt mansions in between these palaces also loomed over Fifth Avenue, at the southwest corner a few doors up from St. Thomas Church. Yet these two adjoining houses, Numbers 680 and 684 Fifth Avenue (top photo), have been strangely forgotten.

Perhaps it’s because the two Vanderbilt sisters who resided here were not as socially prominent as sisters-in-law Alva and Alice. Or maybe it’s because each of these “townhouses,” as they were known, were architectural mishmashes without the handsome lines or French-inspired amazingness of the Vanderbilt dwellings surrounding them.

Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly (above, in an 1890 portrait by John Singer Sargent), the sixth of William H.’s nine children, resided at Number 684 with her husband, financial advisor Hamilton McKown Twombly. Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb (below), the eighth child in the family, took up residence at Number 680 with her spouse, Dr. William Seward Webb.

Both mansions were built in the mid-1880s. A New York Times piece says that Eliza’s mansion was a wedding gift from her father; Florence’s neighboring mansion was as well.

Both were also designed by John Snook, the architect responsible for the Vanderbilt Triple Palace as well as Commodore Vanderbilt’s 1871 Grand Central Depot. Snook’s style for the two mansions was certainly eclectic: a little Flemish with the stepped roofs, touches of French Renaissance in the turrets, and a bit of Queen Anne thrown in with the chimneys and bays.

The exteriors of both homes were a confusing but wondrous jumble. Inside, both sisters and their families entertained and enjoyed the Gilded Age good life.

In 1892, the sisters held joint leap year dinner parties, followed by a dance in Eliza’s reception room. “The party, however, was not a large one, only about 100 invitations having been sent out,” the New York Times reported days later on January 24.

Eliza also held a cotillion at her home in 1895 for about 130 guests, again reported in the Times. In the early 1900s, she hosted small dances and dinners for her daughter Fredericka, introducing her into society.

But wealth and social standing didn’t insulate the sisters from tragedies. On New Year’s Day in 1896, Florence’s teenage daughter, Alice Twombly, died of pneumonia at her family country estate in Madison, New Jersey. The funeral was held on January 4 at the Fifth Avenue mansion, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Ten years later, Florence’s 18-year-old Harvard-bound son, Hamilton Jr., drowned in a New Hampshire lake while his parents and siblings were living in their summer home in Newport. Four years after the boy’s death, Hamilton Twombly, Sr. passed away—his death partly attributed to the devastating loss of his only son.

By now, Vanderbilt Row was changing, with commercial buildings encroaching on what had been an exclusively residential enclave. Number 680 was the first of the two neighbor mansions to go down. Put on the market in 1913, it was leased by John D. Rockefeller, whose own mansion was just up the block.

Rockefeller soon replaced the Webb house with a contemporary building (above, in 1927). Eliza and her husband moved permanently to their farm in Shelbourne, Vermont, where she passed away in 1936.

The Twombly mansion, cleaved from its once-adjoining neighbor, managed to stand until the 1920s. Rockefeller purchased that one as well, tearing it down and putting up a second modern building that perfectly matched the one next door.

Florence Twombly relocated in 1926 to a new, 70-room home at the new millionaire mile along Upper Fifth Avenue at 71st Street (above, in 1931). The last granddaughter of Commodore Vanderbilt and one of the final remaining family members who recall the Gilded Age glory days of Vanderbilt Row, she died at age 98 in 1952.

The sisters’ mansions, like all the others from Vanderbilt Row, are merely ghosts in the contemporary city.

[Top image: Wikipedia; second image: NYPL Digital Collection; third image: Wikipedia; fourth image: MCNY, 93.1.1.18038; fifth image: NYPL Digital Collection; sixth image: MCNY, X2010.7.2.14051]

A 1927 painting that captures the “rapid modernization” of Greenwich Village

If you’re an Edward Hopper fan, then you’re used to seeing his many paintings depicting the backyards, rooftops, and streets of Greenwich Village—especially around Washington Square, which Hopper could view out his studio window.

But his 1927 painting, titled simply “The City,” doesn’t look like Washington Square. It’s more of a mash-up of New York City building styles, from fanciful Second Empire residences to the monotony of low-rise, walkup rows.

The Whitney Museum, which has “The City” in its collection, calls it a “creative representation” of Washington Square Park, one that includes “The Row, Hopper’s own block of brick-faced rowhouses along the northeast edge of the park,” the museum states.

“This composite nods to both existing and imagined structures of diverse architectural styles—including Federal, Gilded Age, and modern, as represented by the skyscraper, lopped off on the far right.”

“The City captures the rapid modernization of Greenwich Village during this period, emphasizing the ever-changing and frequently ad-hoc nature of New York’s built environment.”

Art Deco mystery nudes on a Park Avenue apartment house

There’s a lot to admire about 940 Park Avenue, a limestone and brick prewar beauty at the corner of East 81st Street described as having “refined, slender lines” in a 1925 announcement of the building in the Real Estate Record and Builders Guide.

That description sounds feminine, and perhaps not coincidentally, a series of brass female nudes grace the ironwork at the building entrance.

One figure extends her arms in a brass circle against a second-floor iron juliet balcony. Three other brass nudes appear above the front door, seemingly playing music.

Specifically what they represent (the three graces, possibly, like these similar figures on East 57th Street?) and why they were placed there by architects George and Edward Blum remains a mystery.

But these symmetrical, streamlined Art Deco emblems appear to celebrate humanity and creativity. How lovely for residents to view them every day as they enter the building!

The scheme behind the way Astoria got its name

Some long-established New York City neighborhoods got their names from nearby natural landmarks; others took the moniker of an early landowner or the landowner’s hometown in England or Holland.

But the story behind the name Astoria, in Queens, is a little more about wheeling and dealing. It focuses on an ambitious 19th century developer who was hoping that New York’s richest man, John Jacob Astor, would invest thousands of dollars to help build the neighborhood if it carried Astor’s name.

First, a brief history of the East River enclave that would become Astoria. Colonized by the Dutch in the early 17th century, the area was occupied by William Hallett’s vast farm. Hallett lent his name to what was then called Hallett’s (also spelled Hallet’s or Halletts) Cove, which is marked on the 1873 map below.

“Over the next 100 years, Hallett and his descendants developed the area into a thriving farming community,” wrote Ilana Teitel in a piece on the website of the Old Astoria Neighborhood Association. “Early settlers transported grains, livestock, timber, and firewood across the river from Hallets Cove to the growing city of New Amsterdam.”

By the early 19th century, the Hallett family sold off much of their farmland. Wealthy Manhattanites replaced the farm fields with summer villas, turning Hallet’s Cove into a placid resort area for boating and breezy river strolls.

The slow pace of the area began to change with the arrival of Stephen Halsey in 1835. A fur trader, Halsey had big plans for Hallett’s Cove. His idea was to develop it into a modern town with houses, businesses, churches, and factories. But he needed money to get things going.

That’s where Astor (above) came in. “Halsey had connections to the biggest fur trader of the time, John Jacob Astor,” explained Teitel. “He proposed that Astor donate $2,000 towards the construction of a new Episcopal female seminary in exchange for naming the village after him.”

An 1896 article in the New York Times recalls a slightly different story, with Halsey proposing to Astor that he contribute $10,000 to $15,000. In return, Hallett’s Cove would bear his name.

What was Astor’s response to this idea, which he may have pondered across the East River in his Manhattan country estate house (appropriately named Hellgate, above) off today’s East 87th Street? Teitel wrote that Astor ponied up just $500.

Most sources point out that Astor never visited the enclave that would take his name. But the Times has it that Halsey brought Astor to Hallett’s Cove and showed him around.

“Shrewd old Astor looked about and found that the first church in Astoria was just struggling into existence—St. George’s Episcopal—so he contributed just $50 toward its erection,” stated the Times. “He got the honor of having the village named after him, the church got the $50, and the only unhappy people recorded were Mr. Halsey and his fellow village trustees.”

Even with so little of Astor’s cash, however, Astoria thrived—becoming a diverse residential suburb and manufacturing hub in the consolidated New York City on the 20th century (above, in 1915).

Halsey is also remembered; his name graces a junior high school across the borough in Rego Park. And Hallett’s Cove survives as Hallett’s Point, a luxury high rise.

[Top image: MCNY; MNY12251; second image: Beers map, 1873; third image: Wikipedia; fourth image: Househistree; fifth image: MCNY; M3Y44321]

New York’s oldest statue is in one of the city’s oldest parks

It took 10 years to raise the money to erect an official City of New York monument to George Washington. But with the funds finally secured in 1843, the first specifics were breathlessly reported in the pages of the New-York Tribune.

It would be a 425-foot granite pentagon-shaped structure, with a pinnacle at the top and space for a library, collections rooms, and an “astronomical observatory,” according to the Tribune.

Okay, so clearly this memorial to General Washington didn’t rise anywhere in Gotham. But 13 years later, during a dedication ceremony that attracted huge crowds on the streets and watching from windows and rooftops, a very different version was unveiled outside Union Square at Fourth Avenue and 14th Street.

This monument was a bronze equestrian statue of Washington by Henry Kirke Brown. The arresting statue came in at 29 feet high, including its granite pedestal, designed by Richard Upjohn, per the Brooklyn Eagle in an article on the day it was dedicated in 1856.

Portraying Washington on Evacuation Day, when he rode back into the city triumphantly with hundreds of other members of the Continental army following the departure of the British in November 1783, it ranks as the oldest statue in a New York City park today, per NYC Parks.

It made sense to bring the statue to Union Square, which at the time was surrounded by fine houses inhabited by elite New Yorkers and had only held park status for 17 years.

Union Square, known as Union Place (because it was the juncture of Broadway, then known as Bloomingdale Road, and the Bowery) until the 1820s, was originally a potter’s field before becoming a “public place” in the 1830s and then an official park in 1839—one of the few parks at the time.

The theater district would come to Union Square in the 1860s and 1870s, followed by commerce in the 1880s. But at the time the statue was unveiled, this was an elite area worthy of a sculptural memorial to Washington.

Illustrators created images of the statue, and photographers followed suit, giving contemporary audiences a detailed idea of how peaceful today’s raucous Union Square looked before and after the Civil War. (The first photo in this post dates to 1870; the illustrations appear to be earlier.)

One thing that eventually changed is the placement of Washington’s statue. By 1930, during a renovation of Union Square Park, the statue was moved inside the southern end of the park.

A renovation in the 1980s gave Washington a new sword and stirrup, replacement the originals, which had been taken by vandals.

Brown’s George Washington statue has fared better than his bronze Lincoln, which he completed in 1870 and also graced Union Square. Critical disdain and a lack of respect by park goers (or park workers) toppled it.

[Top image: Wikipedia]

19th century architectural remnants hiding in today’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

Every week, thousands of people come to see the millions of artifacts on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the city’s treasures for indoor art viewing and outside people watching.

But hidden inside this majestic museum building and its many additions fronting Fifth Avenue from 79th to 84th Streets are some fascinating architectural artifacts. They’re not officially on exhibit, nor do they come with captions explaining their origins.

These are the remnants of the museum’s first incarnation as a much smaller Romanesque- and Gothic-style structure dating back to 1879—nine years after a group of citizens decided Gotham needed a world-class art museum, then put plans in place to make it happen.

The museum’s original facade, seen in this 1880 photo at top, is one such architectural fragment. This first museum building was designed by Calvert Vaux, co-creator of Central Park, and Jacob Wray Mould, the man behind many of Central Park’s buildings and features.

Blocked from view in the early 1900s—apparently when Richard Morris Hunt’s Beaux-Arts limestone design was constructed in front of it and became the museum’s Neo-classical entrance (above, 1905)—the southern side of the old facade is now visible in the Robert Lehman Wing.

A small piece of the original facade, in the form of a “banded-granite pointed arch,” per a 2010 museum post, can be viewed near the top of the grand staircase on the second floor beside the Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery.

These Victorian Gothic staircases (note the gorgeous florals on the staircase column!) are also survivors inside the contemporary museum. Originally part of the 1879 building, they were restored in 1995, according to the 2010 post. (During my visit, they were also blocked off to visitors.)

Recognize these brick arches under the grand staircase (below)? They make for a wonderfully evocative exhibit space for Byzantine art. But they used to be part of Richard Morris Hunt’s 1902 entrance pavilion, per a second museum post from 2010.

If you were a museum visitor after 1888, you would be greeted by a new southern wing (below postcard), designed by architect Theodore Weston. With its three enormous arched windows framed by limestone and red brick, Weston’s wing complemented Vaux and Mould’s original building.

Eventually, as the museum continued to expand, the facade of Weston’s wing became an interior wall. Where can you view it today? Head to the Carroll and Milton Petrie Sculpture Court, where its beauty is on full display.

It’s worth noting that the Met’s collection contains several artifacts from New York City’s architectural past. The facade of an 1822 bank building on Wall Street forms one wall of Charles Englehard Court. A column from LaGrange Terrace, aka Colonnade Row on Lafayette Street, is also on view in the American Wing, per a 2021 museum post.

The Gilded Age interior of the Arabella Worsham/Laura and John D. Rockefeller house, formerly at 4 West 54th Street, is also on exhibit.

But for additional glimpses of the original museum hiding inside the contemporary Metropolitan Museum of Art, don’t look for caption cards—just keep your eyes peeled.

[Top image: MCNY, X2010.11.4938; third image: NYPL]

A century-old West Village restaurant that’s kept its old-school phone number

Gene’s Restaurant, on Sixth Avenue just inside 11th Street, has been in business since 1919, serving Italian food to Village locals who rave about the warmth and unpretentious atmosphere.

But just as wonderful as the menu is the two-letter phone exchange on an ad hanging in the front window: OR-52048. These two-letter prefixes have been phasing out since the 1960s. It’s rare to find one—especially for a business still operating.

OR, what could it stand for? Gene’s seems too far from the Lower East Side for it to stand for Orchard, as in Orchard Street. Perhaps the two-letter prefix came from a local landmark lost to the ages.