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San Juan Hill, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Church of St. Paul the Apostle, located at the southwest corner of Columbus Avenue and 60th Street in Manhattan, was built in 1875-85. Commissioned by the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, commonly called the Paulist Fathers, it is an austere and imposing Medieval Revival style design, loosely based on Gothic and Romanesque sources. The Paulists trace their origins to 1858 when Isaac Hecker traveled to Rome and received permission from Pope Pius IX to organize an American society of missionary priests.
The following year, Archbishop John Hughes of New York asked Hecker’s group to establish a parish on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and a simple brick church was constructed. The new parish quickly outgrew this building and in the mid-1870s a new structure was planned by Jeremiah O’Rourke, a New Jersey architect with various Catholic churches to his credit. George Deshon, a Paulist priest who trained at West Point as a military engineer, took over the project by the early 1880s and probably simplified O’Rourke’s original design. The rock-faced grey granite stonework was salvaged from various structures in Manhattan, including sections of an embankment of the Croton Aqueduct that was originally on the Upper West side and the Croton Distributing Reservoir at 42nd Street, as well as Booth’s Theater, which stood at Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street until 1883.
When the church was dedicated in January 1885, however, it was far from complete. The towers had yet to attain their current height and few major decorative features had been installed, including the jamb statues that flank the entrances and the stained glass windows. The American muralist Lumen Martin Winter designed the impressive marble and mosaic bas-relief in the broad recess between the towers. Commissioned to celebrate the parish centenary in 1959, this colorful artwork depicts the “Conversion of Paul” on the road to Damascus. During the 1960s and 1970s, the parish struggled financially. With bankruptcy looming in 1973, a proposal to demolish the church and replace it with an apartment building was considered. In the mid-1980s, however, only the west portion of the site was sold, as well as various development rights in 1984 and 2000. At this time, a major restoration of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle was begun and has been ongoing.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
The Paulist Fathers
Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819-88) founded the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, commonly called the Paulist Fathers, in 1858. Born in New York City to Prussian immigrants, he converted to Catholicism in August 1844 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and became an ordained priest in London in 1849. Hecker served in the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, called the Redemptorists, and traveled widely as a missionary until his abrupt dismissal during an unauthorized visit to Rome in August 1857. A year later, with the support of four American-born Redemptorists - Fathers Francis Baker, George Deshon, Augustine F. Hewitt and Clarence Walworth - Pope Pius IX later granted Hecker permission to establish an independent society of missionary priests in the United States. Most of his early associates were born in the in this country and were recent converts to the faith.
Father Hecker returned to New York in 1858 and was elected superior of the Paulist Fathers, a position he held for three decades. He believed the Catholic Church should adapt to changing social conditions, using various means to communicate its religious message. Through public events and preaching, he hoped to attract non-Catholics to Catholicism. One writer would later describe the Paulists as “direct and popular in their methods, and do not shrink from the closest engagement with social, philosophical and religious problems of the day. They are not retrospective, but merge themselves in the struggle and duty of the present.” The Paulist Press, originally known as the Catholic Publication Society, was established in 1866. It published the Catholic World, a monthly magazine; The Young Catholic, an illustrated monthly for children; and inexpensive penny pamphlets. These varied and popular publications helped broaden the organization’s national reach and influence. An author in the Catholic World remarked: “There are cities and towns and villages of this vast continent in which the voices of the Paulists was never heard, and never may be heard; but their works from the press are there doing the Master’s work in their name.”
An Upper West Side Parish
Many Catholic immigrants settled in New York City during the first half of the 19th century, creating the city’s largest Christian denomination. Between 1840 and 1860, the number of Catholics reached 400,000 - mostly Irish immigrants. Under John Hughes, the city’s fourth Catholic bishop, 61 parishes were established, including the Congregation of the Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle, which originally served a large part of Manhattan’s west side, from 52nd Street to 110th Street. As additional parishes were formed, St. Paul’s would relinquish some of its territory. For instance, when the Parish of the Blessed Sacrament was established on West 71st Street in 1887, the northern boundary was redrawn to 65th Street.
In the late 1850s, construction of Central Park was just beginning and the blocks surrounding the site of the future church were mostly undeveloped. For a brief time, the Paulist Fathers rented a small frame house at 14 West 60th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, which temporarily functioned as a chapel and residence. Hecker soon began to solicit funds from city residents, as well as from members of the national clergy, to erect a church and convent. Leading donors included Father Joseph Early of Georgetown College in Washington D.C. and George V(alentine) Hecker (1818-1888), Father Hecker’s older brother and founder of Croton Flour Mills, for which the Heckers brand of flour is named. Thirty-two lots, bordered by Ninth Avenue, 59th Street and 60th Street, were purchased by the parish in 1859 for $40,000.n
An estimated 15,000 people attended the cornerstone ceremonies on June 20, 1859. Set back from Ninth Avenue and oriented towards 59th Street, the 3^-story brick building was completed in November 1859. It was described as “neat, firm and compact . . . constructed with regard to strength and durability rather than ostentation and mere outward show.” When the Church of St. Paul the Apostle was completed in 1885, this structure became the rectory. It was demolished in 1931 and replaced by the six-story Paulist Fathers Residence at 415-25 West 59th Street (Maginnis & Walsh, c. 1938, not part of the designation). A Sunday school was organized by the parish in 1864, followed by a children’s library in 1864 and an elementary school in 1886. A separate building for the school was erected at 124-30 West 60th Street in 1891. Designed by architect Henry C. Palmer, it was later used as a Mission House, providing shelter and services to the homeless. This building was demolished in the mid-1980s and the site is currently occupied by an apartment tower. A five- story convent was erected at 120-22 West 60th Street in c. 1949. Located to the west end of the church’s north aisle, this simple yellow brick building was designed by architect R. Marshall Christensen.
Construction of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle
In the early 1870s, the Paulist Fathers made plans to erect a much larger building at the corner of West 59th Street, facing Ninth (now Columbus) Avenue. Since acquiring the site, many changes had taken place in the immediate neighborhood. Roosevelt Hospital, established in 1871, now occupied the block to the south and the streets to the west contained various businesses, including a cattle yard and slaughterhouse. Furthermore, the Ninth Avenue elevated railway was being extended to the Upper West Side. Though it only reached 30th Street in 1873, by 1876 a station had opened at 59th Street, opposite where the church would stand. Noisy conditions were anticipated and some parish members wanted to halt construction and leave midtown Manhattan. Hecker, however, advised against “hasty decisions” and the Paulists chose to remain at this location.
Father Hecker wanted a monumental edifice, comparable to St. Patrick’s Cathedral (begun 1853, a designated New York City Landmark), which was nearing completion on Fifth Avenue, between 50th and 51st Streets, as well as to various churches he had visited in Europe. In 1874, he hired an unnamed French architect, based in Lyon, to design the building. Father Alfred Young (1831-1900), who was currently assistant superior general, was chosen to supervise the project. Young, however, criticized the preliminary scheme, saying it “might do for the mausoleum of some heathen jurisconsult, but most certainly would never be mistaken for a Catholic church.” This would be the first of many conflicts concerning the design of the church.
Young then invited architect Jeremiah O’Rourke (1833-1915), of Newark, New Jersey, to design the church “in the early plain Gothic style.” The Paulists maintained close ties to New Jersey’s Catholic community. Both Young and Baker attended Princeton University and upon the society’s founding in 1858, Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley of Newark invited them to establish a local parish. Though they did not accept his offer, Bayley’s successor, Bishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, would play an important role in the cornerstone and dedication ceremonies.
O’Rourke was born in Ireland; he studied architecture at the Government School of Design in Dublin and immigrated to the United States in 1850. He designed at least a dozen Catholic churches in New Jersey, including Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (1860) in Boonton, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (1864) in Camden, and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (begun 1899) in Newark. O’Rourke & Sons was also responsible for the rectory (1904) of St. Agnes’ Church at 143 East 43rd Street in Manhattan.
Sometime in 1876, O’Rourke submitted his plans to the New York Bureau of Buildings (NB 395-76). When the cornerstone ceremony was held with 20,000 people in attendance on June 4, 1876, the deep cellar had already been excavated and the new church was anticipated to become “a conspicuous object in the city’s landscape.” The parish, however, faced significant financial hurdles. With a debt of $75,000, the project was temporarily abandoned in late 1877. Though construction resumed sometime later, O’Rourke would resign by 1882 and was replaced by Father George Deshon (1823-1903), who trained at West Point Military Academy (1839-43) and later served as a professor, as well as an Ordnance Officer. The American Architect would later report:
Mr. O’Rourk [sic] drew up plans under the direction of Father Hecker and Father Deshon; but found himself in the awkward position of being instructed how to draw the plans on one side by the owner and having the owner also appear as chief of construction and superintendent of the work. His sphere of activity became more and more limited as time went on, until he finally was out altogether.
O’Rourke and Deshon shared increasing disagreements about engineering matters, resulting in a “lawsuit” that was settled through consultation with outside experts who determined that the 60-foot- wide truss that Deshon proposed for the nave was safe, making him both “architect in charge of construction and chief mechanic.” During construction, Deshon was said to have taken:
... a special interest in the matter of building; and a great deal had to be done in his time.
The great church in New York was, it may be said, really his work. He superintended every detail of its construction and would spend days upon the walls while they were going up, to make sure everything was done carefully and thoroughly.
Construction continued throughout 1883-84. By July 1884, the central stairs had been built and the barrel-vaulted ceiling in the sanctuary was being painted. Towards the end of the year, the building was opened to accommodate the annual November-December Paulist fair. This popular charity event lasted four weeks and raised approximately $35,000. On January 25, 1885, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, the church was dedicated.
Design
The Church of St. Paul of the Apostle is a Medieval Revival style design, loosely reflecting Gothic and possibly Romanesque sources. Father Joseph L. Malloy, a member of the parish, wrote in 1950:
More courage than mortar went into its foundations and Father Hecker was the guiding spirit whose appreciation of the architectural beauty of the great churches abroad and whose creative imagination were invaluable assets. He had recently returned from a trip to Europe where he had made an intensive study of the principal churches and basilicas, and he determined to build a large and beautiful church in which would be combined the art of the old world and the American genius of his own time.
The Basilica of Santa Croce (Florence, begun 1295) may have served as Hecker’s model. These buildings share similar dimensions, unusually wide naves, arcades with pointed profiles, and windows that are set high on the outer walls so that the chapels and nave are illuminated from above. While some observers saw the arrangement of the fenestration in spiritual terms, there was also a practical benefit. By eliminating the lower windows and building the stone walls “straight up” they hoped to diminish the “thunderous” sounds of passing elevated trains.
Hecker wanted a practical design, one that would satisfy the needs of a growing congregation. During a recent trip abroad, he wrote:
Why should we not have the same faith shaped into stone in our own land? But our wants differ from those which built these church [sic]. [Our] church [is] a preaching church. We can take style which best fits our wants, and adapt it to them, and not sacrifice our necessities to architecture.
Nevertheless, he believed that the church should have a distinctive character: “I did not mean to have an imitation, a servile copy of this or that, but a church that should tell in its own way something of the life and spirit of our work to coming generations.”
O’Rourke began to prepare the initial drawings in 1875. The original plan resembled a 13th century French or English Gothic church, with a recessed entrance flanked by towers of different height and design. While this slightly lopsided configuration loosely recalled Chartres Cathedral (1193-1250) in France, it also suggests the primary facade of St. George’s Church (1856, a designated New York City Landmark), a pioneering example of the Romanesque Revival style on Stuyvesant Square in midtown Manhattan.
The Church of St. Paul the Apostle was planned for a large congregation that was anticipated to grow. Measuring 284 by 121 feet, the central portal is 16 feet wide and 30 feet tall. The 260-foot long sanctuary has eight bays and can hold approximately 4,400 persons, about half seated. The Catholic World observed: “And this realizes to the full the idea of the Paulist Fathers, that their church shall be a parish and preaching church, wherein all can take direct part in divine worship, and many at one time hear the word of god.” On the lower level an additional chapel-auditorium with 18-foot ceilings was built, as well as a crypt, where some of the earliest Paulists are buried. At the time of completion, it was the second largest church in New York City, surpassed by only St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and later, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, begun 1889.
Contemporary architecture critic Marianna Griswold Van Rensselaer found the exterior “not remarkable” but praised the overall design because it:
. . . naturally follows the ancient plan, and yet is one of the most sensible and non- medieval structures we have produced . . . I can hardly say with what “style” one should rank this church. We may call it Gothic, if we will, since its openings are pointed, but it shows no window tracery and no Gothic decoration, and its broad wall-spaces remind us of very different fashions of construction. Whatever its “style,” its effect will certainly not be that of an imitated medievalism.
The New York Tribune characterized the design in practical and spiritual terms: “It is an original conception. It is just such a church as the Fathers wanted and not a pet plan of the architect. It is the deliberate growth of their aesthetic and religious conclusions.” The “doric severity and simplicity” was, likewise, interpreted as a critique of contemporary church design. The unnamed author asserted: the “meaning of St. Paul’s to-day, architecturally, lies in a vehement protest against the trumpery, voluptuous ideals now prevailing in fashionable church buildings.”
Materials
Salvaged materials played a significant role in construction of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle. While such strategies probably were intended to reduce costs, the idea of transforming materials with prosaic origins into ones with a divine purpose parallels the congregation’s reputation for attracting converts to Catholicism. The walls are “some 8 feet thick” and the original contract stipulated that the exterior surface be faced with red Connecticut granite. Instead, rock-faced grey granite stonework of varying size, set in a random ashlar pattern, was used. These blocks were acquired from a section of the Croton Aqueduct (1837-42) at what was known as Clendenning Valley, between 92nd and 113th Streets, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In the mid-1870s, new water pipes were being installed and the stone embankment was dismantled. On June 21, 1876 - two weeks after the church cornerstone was laid - the Commission of the Sinking Fund authorized the city comptroller to sell the granite by auction or sealed bid. According to the New York Tribune:
It was during the summer of 1875 - Father Deshon, Father Elliot and Father Rosencrans (son of General Rosencrans) were riding on an Eighth Avenue horse-car and came to a place where the abandoned aqueduct, pierced here and there for streets, loomed large in
the landscape. A remark from Father Rosencrans brought Father Deshon to the spot where the stone was examined and subsequently purchased with an estimated savings of some $22,000.
In 1890, the church towers were described as 94 feet tall. The New York Times later reported that 40 feet were going to be added, using stone from the Croton Aqueduct’s distributing reservoir at Fifth Avenue, between 40th and 42nd Streets. The reservoir was decommissioned in the 1890s and demolition began in 1899. The estimated cost of this phase of construction was $10,000 and money was raised through an appeal for subscriptions. Henry C. Palmer, architect of the church school, supervised the work. At present, the height of each tower is 114 feet - suggesting that these newspaper’s figures were exaggerated or that the addition was only partially completed.
Another example of architectural recycling involved the wide central stairs facing Columbus Avenue. When Booth’s Theatre (1869) at Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street closed in 1883, it was converted to a department store. As part of the renovation, some of the theater’s stonework was apparently removed by the contractor and sold to the church, which erected a pair of quarter-turn staircases that meet at a generous landing outside of the main (center) doors, as well as a broad single staircase that descends to the lower level.
The five metal-and-glass lighting fixtures that illuminate the three entrances were installed in mid-1960s. Each door has a single light, hung from the top of the arch, while the main doors are flanked by a pair of matching fixtures attached to the facade by elaborate metal brackets. These handsome fixtures were, again, not commissioned by the church but had been part of another building - the Savoy-Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue, between East 58th and 59th Streets. A late neoclassical work by the architectural firm of McKim Mead & White, this famous hotel welcomed guests from 1927 to 1965. The fixture above the main doors has straight sides and was probably hung inside the slender round arch that led from Fifth Avenue into the hotel lobby, while the rest, which narrow toward the base, flanked storefronts. During the 1966 demolition, they were acquired by Father Francis Xavier Ryan.
Church Decoration
St. Paul’s opened “with pomp and splendor” in January 1885. Nearly 4,000 people purchased $2 tickets to enter the building during ceremonies. Despite considerable fanfare, it was described by the New York Times and other newspapers as being “far from completion.” All of the stained glass was installed later and is partly visible from the exterior. The earliest windows are found in the chancel, directly behind the altar, and are part of the west facade. “Our Lady of the Angels,” at center, was donated by George Hecker, Isaac Hecker’s brother. Manufactured in London by Cox Sons, Buckley and Company, a firm specializing in ecclesiastical decorations, it was the first window unveiled, in May 1885.
A contemporary writer described the image of the Virgin as “equal to any done in our day, perhaps not surpassed by any window ever made.” Moreover, the New York Times claimed: “This is said to be the largest window in this country thus constructed. In fact, there are only three larger in the world, those in the cathedral at Milan.” To either side are single windows by the Franz Mayer studio of Munich, Germany, dating to 1888. Originally part of a group of four windows fabricated for the church by the same firm, these windows represent the archangels and were likely designed by Anton Blaim (b. 1855), who worked with Mayer from 1876 to 1891.
The outer windows in the chancel are by the noted American muralist and stained-glass designer John La Farge (1835-1910) who played a leading role in the church’s decorative program from 1884 to 1899. These vibrantly-colored windows complement the domed tabernacle on the high altar, designed by architect Stanford White in 1888-90. A 1950 guide to the interiors described the La Farge glass as “a work in color second to none in the world.” La Farge and Hecker developed a friendship in the 1850s.
He produced a portrait sketch of Hecker and later consulted on the floor plan. La Farge received many notable commissions during the late 19th century, contributing murals and stained glass to Trinity Church in Boston, as well as St. Thomas’ Church, the Church of the Ascension and the Judson Memorial Church, all in Manhattan. At the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, La Farge executed 14 clerestory windows, installed on both sides of the nave in 1888. Each 27 by 14 foot window is highly decorative, incorporating a jeweled-cross motif. He also was responsible for similar imagery in the five slender lancet windows at the center of the Columbus Avenue facade and the lunette above the center entrance, which depicts Byzantine-style columns and probably dates from the 1890s. Lancet windows were frequently used in 12th century Gothic churches. O’Rourke’s original design had five squat pointed arches with three lancet windows centered beneath a large rose window. In the final arrangement, the rose window was replaced by a row of five lancet windows set behind a screen of pointed arches supported by slender stone columns with composite (possibly unfinished) capitals.
Sculptural Features
Each of the side entrances that face Columbus Avenue are flanked by statues. Dating from before 1895, they may be attributed to Darius Colombani (1850-1900), an ecclesiastical designer, and the sculptor Giusseppi Morretti (1857-1935). Both artists immigrated to the United States from Italy in the 1880s and collaborated on various commissions for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. In 1893, they installed the Altar of St. Catharine of Genoa in the “first niche to the right of the chancel.”
The possibly unfinished shrine was described by the New York Herald as “one of the most magnificent in all New York.” A month later, the same newspaper reported that they were designing a dozen portraits of the apostles to decorate the columns that support the vaulting in the main apse. Although this project was not pursued, portraits of saints, each identified on the base, flank both entrances and are most likely by the same artists. The south (left) portal displays life-size stone representations of St. John, St. Teresa, St. Philip Nervi, St. Benedict, St. Clare, and St. Anthony of the Desert. The north portal (right) features St. Alphonsus, St. Catherine, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and St. Vincent Ferrer. The six bases that flank the main doors remain empty.
An 18-foot by 60-foot bas-relief fills the horizontal recess between the towers, directly above the center portal’s pointed arch. O’Rourke proposed a rose window above the main entrance, but Hecker requested changes that permitted the eventual insertion of this brightly-colored artwork in late 19 5 8. Designed by Lumen Martin Winter (1908-82), in consultation with the architect Howard Swenson (1903-81), it depicts St. Paul’s spiritual awakening (at right) during his journey from Jerusalem to Damascus in 31-36 A.D. At left, God floats above Jesus and Mary, who travel together in a four-wheeled chariot pulled by an ox and lion, representing the evangelists St. Luke and St. Mark. St. Matthew, taking the form of a winged angel, and St. John, represented by a flying eagle, accompany them, as well as the original four “doctors” of the western church: St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine and St. Gregory.
Lumen Martin Winter was a well-known American illustrator and muralist. Born in Kansas, he began his career in the 1930s working for the Works Progress Administration and later lived in Larchmont, New York. He received many religious and civic commissions, such as the tomb of Isaac Hecker, installed in the north aisle of the church in 1959, and a 1960s mural for the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Commissioned to mark the centennial of the founding of the Paulist Fathers, this 50-ton panel was fabricated in Pietrasanta, Italy, in June 1958 and dedicated in December 1958. By this time, the elevations must have been quite dirty and the New York Times said the bold colors would “brighten up an old church dingy with city grime.” The various figures were deeply carved in white Roman travertine marble that hardens over time, while the contrasting Venetian mosaic background, executed with 15 shades of blue and green, was chosen to evoke the colors of the Mediterranean sea, where Paul traveled as a missionary.
Recent History
The Church of St. Paul the Apostle has always merited the attention of New Yorkers. Situated on the corner of a prominent midtown avenue, this monumental edifice is difficult to overlook and many articles have been written about the congregation and its activities. The New York Tribune reported in 1885 that during the period of construction, “it was commonly supposed that a fortress was constructing there. It was a fortress in one sense - a spiritual one - for it was the home of the Paulist Fathers.” Such observations were probably inspired by the somewhat severe character of the rock-faced granite elevations, but also, possibly, because of George Deshon’s training as a military engineer.
In 1893, King’s Handbook of New York City called it “one of the greatest Catholic Churches . . . forms one of the strongest fortresses of Catholicism in New York City.” Three decades later, Rider’s New York City, a guidebook, remarked that Deshon’s transformation of O’Rourke’s original Gothic design into a Roman basilica was “one of the most impressive specimens of this type in America.” The building would be recognized in 1957 as one of the “Landmarks of New York,” a program founded by the New York Community Trust to identify significant historic structures and a plaque was installed in the north entrance.
A public hearing was held to consider the Church of St. Paul the Apostle (8 Columbus Avenue: Block 1131, Lot 31) for designation as a New York City Landmark on June 14, 1966. At the time, there were two additional buildings on the site: 124-30 West 60th Street and 120-22 West 60th Street. During the 1960s the parish struggled financially and with bankruptcy looming a proposal was made in 1973 to demolish the building and sell 70% of the site for commercial development. A year later, this controversial strategy was approved by the parish council and the Paulist Father’s General Assembly “in order to increase effectiveness and make [the parish] financially viable.” Despite interest from at least one real estate developer, the project did not proceed. New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Hutxtable wrote in 1975: “One of the city’s most impressive architectural white elephants, St. Paul the Apostle on Ninth Avenue, with a galaxy of ecclesiastical arts, has been kept out of the hands of the developers only by the building recession.”
In 1984, Lot 31 was subdivided and the west section (approximately 115 feet in length), as well as some development rights above the church, were sold to a developer. At this time, the building at 124-30 West 60th Street was demolished. The lot (formerly 22, now condominiums), extends south to West 59th Street and is occupied by a 51-story apartment building (1986). The remaining development rights were sold in 2000.
The Church of St. Paul the Apostle was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. In circa 2000, the light-colored oak panel entrance doors on Columbus Avenue were replaced with complementary doors. Roof repairs and re-pointing of the upper level of each tower were completed in 2011. The mosaic bas-relief was also cleaned. Scaffolding and netting currently covers the north elevation, extending along West 60th Street. Repairs to the main roof and elevations are continuing.
Description
The Church of St. Paul the Apostle stands at the southwest corner of Columbus Avenue and West 60th Street. Faced with mostly grey and pink-tinted granite, the south tower adjoins and is partly obscured by the neighboring apartment building. At the northwest corner of the site, facing West 60th Street, is the former convent. This simple yellow brick building adjoins the west end of the north aisle but does not contribute to the architectural or historical character of the church.
Historic: Columbus Avenue facade: central bay, light-colored stone stairs to landing and main entrance, wood doors, stained-glass tympanum, entrance flanked by metal-and-glass lighting fixtures, five stained-glass windows set behind arcade; side tower bays, stairs to raised side entrances, stone statues flank side entrances, wood doors.
West 60th Street facade (hidden by scaffolding at time of designation): areaway, windows, roof.
South facade: this facade is mostly obscured by neighboring buildings except from a mid-block parking lot on West 59th Street where clerestory windows and roof are partly visible.
West facade (apse): visible above the adjoining yellow brick structure at 120 West 60th Street.
Alterations: Blue mosaic and white marble bas-relief installed in 1958; free-standing sculpture (artist not identified) near corner of Columbus Avenue and West 60th Street; lower section of south facade and south tower incorporated into (and hidden by) adjoining apartment tower.
- From the 2013 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Ordnance Survey is a partner in the CityVerve project, offering a geospatial framework. We helped visualise various use cases. This is a frame from an animation that showed how you might analyse parking trends in a city using a dashboard view.
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Andreas Schleicher, SDirector and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD's Secretary-General.
This image is not from a statistically significant sample size--although it is from a real analysis I did (aka, the figures are not made up).
After reading any comments before yours, write 1 comment about this photograph from one of the two areas below:
Composition & Framing - this is to do with how the photographer has arranged the various elements within the photograph including their viewpoint, angle and distance. It also takes into account perspective, use of space and line.
Message & Meaning - does the image have message for the viewer? Do you see a meaning behind the work? What do you think the purpose of the image is and how does it make you feel?
IFPRI Research Fellow, Danielle Resnick introduces the speakers at the even, Donor Approaches to Political Economy Analysis.
IFPRI hosted a policy seminar titled “Donor Approaches to Political Economy Analysis” on February 5, 2015. For more information, please visit: www.ifpri.org/event/donor-approaches-political-economy-an...
©IFPRI/Xinyuan Shang
Music for Healing or What You Need # 2
Gabie Strong, Christopher Reid Martin, Ted Byrnes
February 12, 10pm-midnight
(Following by:
Incubation, 1am-9am
Dream analysis, 9-11am)
Baik Art
Please join us Friday, February 12 for an evening with Gabie Strong, Christopher Reid Martin, and Ted Byrnes. Themes of catharsis and cleansing will lead into a sonic space to prepare us to dream and, ideally, to heal. Between 10pm-midnight, Gabie Strong, Christopher Reid Martin, and Ted Byrnes will activate the space of Baik Art. For an optimal experience, be prepared to lie down.
An intrepid group will spend the night following the performance in the ancient Greek tradition of ‘incubation’. Your dreams will be interpreted the following morning by a professional. Please email Matt Wardell at shonufwardell@hotmail.com to reserve your spot. BYOB (Bring Your Own Bedding). Details of the overnight stay will follow. Space is very limited!!
Gabie Strong is a California artist and musician exploring spatial constructions of degeneration, drone and decay as a means to improvise new arrangements of self-reflexive meaning. Strong uses sound performance, radio broadcasting, environmental installation, photography and video as mediums for experimentation.
Her work has been presented on Kchung TV at the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. 2014 biennial exhibition, Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, Knowledges at Mount Wilson Observatory, Pitzer Art Galleries, University Art Gallery UC Irvine, and LAXArt amongst others.
Strong has performed at MOCA, the wulf, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair, Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Human Resources, SASSAS, LACE, High Desert Test Sites, LACMA, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Jabberjaw, and with her all-female free-psych band Lady Noise for Dawn Kasper’s performances at the 2012 Whitney Biennial.
Strong’s work is an exploration of the affect of decay that is experienced from living in the spatial disorganization of the twenty-first century. This disorganization is the result of living in multiple non-places at once—both physical and virtual— where borders are both confining and permeable. I often collaborate with other artists, musicians and poets to create work that embodies the difference of lived experience.
Christopher Reid Martin is a multidisciplinary artist, currently residing in Los Angeles. He first began working with sound in Orange County in 2004, layering sounds from various field recordings of daily life which convey living truths and over processed instrumentation as the reactionary expression. These expressions came to birth the solo project known as of Shelter Death, as it has evolved into a project in which performance and sound interplay to make for a personal reactionary experience in a perpetually decaying world.
In 2010, Christopher had taken his creative endeavors into other avenues, releasing tracks under various formats under his shared Orange County based label Via Injection. Christopher's creative repertoire expanded when he began documenting his experience in countries outside the US, by taking field recordings, foreign radio recordings, and/or taking photographs. Photographs were either left unadulterated as they were taken or digitally manipulating and layered these with old scanned various schematics. This has lead to an ongoing body of work, which fuses reality in the form of photography, with corroded ideas in the form of chopped manipulated grids and manuals. Christopher has and continues to show work in a number of art shows and has performed live in a number of events in projects such as Bailouts, Via Injection, Shelter Death, and under his own name.
christopher-reid-martin.format.com/
Ted Byrnes is a drummer/percussionist living in Los Angeles. An alumnus of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, he comes from a jazz background and has since made his home in the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise.
Ted primarily works in ad hoc improvisational settings, but has standing improvisational groups including: a group with Ulrich Krieger, a duo with Jeff Parker, a duo with Chris Cooper (AQH), a duo with Nicholas Deyoe, a duo with John Wiese, a duo with Scott Cazan, a trio with Jacob Wick and Owen Stewart-Robertson, among others. Additionally, Ted has played in duo/trio/or ensemble settings with: Mazen Kerbaj, David Watson, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, Charlemagne Palestine, Alfred 23 Harth, Tim Perkis, Jaap Blonk, Torsten Muller, Kim Myhr, Jim Denley, Lloyd Honeybrook, Chris Schlarb, Mike Watt, Paul Masvidal, the LAFMS (including Smegma, Airway, Ace Farren Ford’s Artificial Art Ensemble, Rick and Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Tom Recchion, Vetza, etc), Sissy Spacek (the band), Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and more.
Ted has also collaborated with / worked for a variety of visual artists: he has accompanied a Doug Aitken “happening”, collaborated with Olivia Booth to play her glass artworks, collaborated with Dani Tull on a sound performance, performed with John Knuth and Bret Nicely at an installation in an empty pool, and has performed for FLUXUS artist Jeff Perkins on multiple occasions for his projector/light installations.
Currently, Ted is delving further into the possibilities and realities of solo drumset performance in addition to continuing to work with his existing projects.
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EYE-DEE-QUE (Something Like an Asclepeion)
Matt Wardell
January 9 - February 13, 2016
Baik Art presents EYE-DEE-QUE (Something Like an Asclepeion), a solo installation and series of events by Los Angeles artist Matt Wardell.
For the exhibition, Wardell will present an immersive environment of images and objects by channeling ‘something like’ an ancient Greek temple of healing. Using Baik Art’s unique architecture, viewers experience a literal (and perhaps figurative) katabasis (‘to go down’ as in a descent of some type), but more importantly, and ideally, a catharsis (‘cleansing’ or ‘purification’).
Numerous objects, found and constructed, engage with the verticality of Baik Art’s shaft-like space, surrounded by an installation of wall works including drawings, collages, and repurposed images. Several fabric sculptures fill the gallery functioning as apotropaic totems. These Guardian Figures suggest a ‘presence’, ideally something beyond the object.
Daytime and evening events will further activate the gallery a space for healing. Practitioners from a variety of fields will be on hand for consultation. Music for Healing or What You Need will present a sonic cleansing. Incubation and Dream Analysis will be an overnight event of guided sleep followed by dream analysis with a professional. Utilizing the healing properties of dog saliva, An Event for Wound Licking will be a participatory event pairing wounds with dogs. For the date and time of each event, please contact the artist at shonufwardell@hotmail.com.
In ancient Greece and Rome, an asclepeion was a healing temple, sacred to Asclepius, the Greek God of Medicine. These temples were places in which patients would visit to receive either treatment or some sort of healing, whether it was spiritual or physical. Epidaurus was the first place to worship Asclepius as a god, beginning sometime in the 5th century BCE.
Starting around 350 BCE, the cult of Asclepius became increasingly popular. Pilgrims flocked to asclepieia to be healed. They slept overnight (“incubation”) and reported their dreams to a priest the following day. He prescribed a cure, often a visit to the baths or a gymnasium. Since snakes were sacred to Asclepius, they were often used in healing rituals. Non-venomous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept.
Matt Wardell seeks to prolong a sense of wonder while placing the viewer in a lingering position of active assessment. He is interested in how we choose to live and in introducing work that facilitates these investigations. Wardell enjoys walking on fences, answering wrong numbers, and giving directions to places he does not know. Uncomfortable laughter, confusion, and irritation tend to be the byproducts of Wardell’s works.
Wardell has exhibited his work at venues throughout the United States and Mexico, including the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco (SFMOMA), Claremont Museum of Art in Claremont, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), REDCAT, PØST, Human Resources, Black Dragon Society, Mark Moore Gallery, and Commonwealth and Council, all in Los Angeles. Wardell is a founding member of the artist collective 10lb Ape.
Baik Art
2600 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, California 90034
310.842.3892
Music for Healing or What You Need # 2
Gabie Strong, Christopher Reid Martin, Ted Byrnes
February 12, 10pm-midnight
(Following by:
Incubation, 1am-9am
Dream analysis, 9-11am)
Baik Art
Please join us Friday, February 12 for an evening with Gabie Strong, Christopher Reid Martin, and Ted Byrnes. Themes of catharsis and cleansing will lead into a sonic space to prepare us to dream and, ideally, to heal. Between 10pm-midnight, Gabie Strong, Christopher Reid Martin, and Ted Byrnes will activate the space of Baik Art. For an optimal experience, be prepared to lie down.
An intrepid group will spend the night following the performance in the ancient Greek tradition of ‘incubation’. Your dreams will be interpreted the following morning by a professional. Please email Matt Wardell at shonufwardell@hotmail.com to reserve your spot. BYOB (Bring Your Own Bedding). Details of the overnight stay will follow. Space is very limited!!
Gabie Strong is a California artist and musician exploring spatial constructions of degeneration, drone and decay as a means to improvise new arrangements of self-reflexive meaning. Strong uses sound performance, radio broadcasting, environmental installation, photography and video as mediums for experimentation.
Her work has been presented on Kchung TV at the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. 2014 biennial exhibition, Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, Knowledges at Mount Wilson Observatory, Pitzer Art Galleries, University Art Gallery UC Irvine, and LAXArt amongst others.
Strong has performed at MOCA, the wulf, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair, Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Human Resources, SASSAS, LACE, High Desert Test Sites, LACMA, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Jabberjaw, and with her all-female free-psych band Lady Noise for Dawn Kasper’s performances at the 2012 Whitney Biennial.
Strong’s work is an exploration of the affect of decay that is experienced from living in the spatial disorganization of the twenty-first century. This disorganization is the result of living in multiple non-places at once—both physical and virtual— where borders are both confining and permeable. I often collaborate with other artists, musicians and poets to create work that embodies the difference of lived experience.
Christopher Reid Martin is a multidisciplinary artist, currently residing in Los Angeles. He first began working with sound in Orange County in 2004, layering sounds from various field recordings of daily life which convey living truths and over processed instrumentation as the reactionary expression. These expressions came to birth the solo project known as of Shelter Death, as it has evolved into a project in which performance and sound interplay to make for a personal reactionary experience in a perpetually decaying world.
In 2010, Christopher had taken his creative endeavors into other avenues, releasing tracks under various formats under his shared Orange County based label Via Injection. Christopher's creative repertoire expanded when he began documenting his experience in countries outside the US, by taking field recordings, foreign radio recordings, and/or taking photographs. Photographs were either left unadulterated as they were taken or digitally manipulating and layered these with old scanned various schematics. This has lead to an ongoing body of work, which fuses reality in the form of photography, with corroded ideas in the form of chopped manipulated grids and manuals. Christopher has and continues to show work in a number of art shows and has performed live in a number of events in projects such as Bailouts, Via Injection, Shelter Death, and under his own name.
christopher-reid-martin.format.com/
Ted Byrnes is a drummer/percussionist living in Los Angeles. An alumnus of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, he comes from a jazz background and has since made his home in the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise.
Ted primarily works in ad hoc improvisational settings, but has standing improvisational groups including: a group with Ulrich Krieger, a duo with Jeff Parker, a duo with Chris Cooper (AQH), a duo with Nicholas Deyoe, a duo with John Wiese, a duo with Scott Cazan, a trio with Jacob Wick and Owen Stewart-Robertson, among others. Additionally, Ted has played in duo/trio/or ensemble settings with: Mazen Kerbaj, David Watson, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, Charlemagne Palestine, Alfred 23 Harth, Tim Perkis, Jaap Blonk, Torsten Muller, Kim Myhr, Jim Denley, Lloyd Honeybrook, Chris Schlarb, Mike Watt, Paul Masvidal, the LAFMS (including Smegma, Airway, Ace Farren Ford’s Artificial Art Ensemble, Rick and Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Tom Recchion, Vetza, etc), Sissy Spacek (the band), Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and more.
Ted has also collaborated with / worked for a variety of visual artists: he has accompanied a Doug Aitken “happening”, collaborated with Olivia Booth to play her glass artworks, collaborated with Dani Tull on a sound performance, performed with John Knuth and Bret Nicely at an installation in an empty pool, and has performed for FLUXUS artist Jeff Perkins on multiple occasions for his projector/light installations.
Currently, Ted is delving further into the possibilities and realities of solo drumset performance in addition to continuing to work with his existing projects.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EYE-DEE-QUE (Something Like an Asclepeion)
Matt Wardell
January 9 - February 13, 2016
Baik Art presents EYE-DEE-QUE (Something Like an Asclepeion), a solo installation and series of events by Los Angeles artist Matt Wardell.
For the exhibition, Wardell will present an immersive environment of images and objects by channeling ‘something like’ an ancient Greek temple of healing. Using Baik Art’s unique architecture, viewers experience a literal (and perhaps figurative) katabasis (‘to go down’ as in a descent of some type), but more importantly, and ideally, a catharsis (‘cleansing’ or ‘purification’).
Numerous objects, found and constructed, engage with the verticality of Baik Art’s shaft-like space, surrounded by an installation of wall works including drawings, collages, and repurposed images. Several fabric sculptures fill the gallery functioning as apotropaic totems. These Guardian Figures suggest a ‘presence’, ideally something beyond the object.
Daytime and evening events will further activate the gallery a space for healing. Practitioners from a variety of fields will be on hand for consultation. Music for Healing or What You Need will present a sonic cleansing. Incubation and Dream Analysis will be an overnight event of guided sleep followed by dream analysis with a professional. Utilizing the healing properties of dog saliva, An Event for Wound Licking will be a participatory event pairing wounds with dogs. For the date and time of each event, please contact the artist at shonufwardell@hotmail.com.
In ancient Greece and Rome, an asclepeion was a healing temple, sacred to Asclepius, the Greek God of Medicine. These temples were places in which patients would visit to receive either treatment or some sort of healing, whether it was spiritual or physical. Epidaurus was the first place to worship Asclepius as a god, beginning sometime in the 5th century BCE.
Starting around 350 BCE, the cult of Asclepius became increasingly popular. Pilgrims flocked to asclepieia to be healed. They slept overnight (“incubation”) and reported their dreams to a priest the following day. He prescribed a cure, often a visit to the baths or a gymnasium. Since snakes were sacred to Asclepius, they were often used in healing rituals. Non-venomous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept.
Matt Wardell seeks to prolong a sense of wonder while placing the viewer in a lingering position of active assessment. He is interested in how we choose to live and in introducing work that facilitates these investigations. Wardell enjoys walking on fences, answering wrong numbers, and giving directions to places he does not know. Uncomfortable laughter, confusion, and irritation tend to be the byproducts of Wardell’s works.
Wardell has exhibited his work at venues throughout the United States and Mexico, including the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco (SFMOMA), Claremont Museum of Art in Claremont, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), REDCAT, PØST, Human Resources, Black Dragon Society, Mark Moore Gallery, and Commonwealth and Council, all in Los Angeles. Wardell is a founding member of the artist collective 10lb Ape.
Baik Art
2600 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, California 90034
310.842.3892
Asbestos in non-friable form, such as asbestos-cement shingles, roofing, and board, is generally considered safe.
Chinatown, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Opened on November 2, 1903, the Chatham Square Branch of The New York Public Library is the third Camegie branch library built in New York City. It is one of twenty in Manhattan and one of sixty-seven in New York City, built when Andrew Carnegie donated $5.2 million in 1901 to establish a city-wide branch library system. The preeminent and nationally influential architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White designed the Chatham Square Branch. This bold library design was the firm's first of twelve Camegie libraries; the 1923 Fordham Branch was their last. The library's classically-inspired style, with its characteristic vertical plan, arched entrance offset to one side, carved stone ornament, including Ionic columns at the upper floors, and tall arched first floor and rectangular second and third floor windows providing abundant lighting to a simple interior, is characteristic of the urban Carnegie library type. The library has played a prominent role in the neighborhood for nearly one hundred years.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
History of Chatham Square'
Chatham Square was named after William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, who tried to prevent the war between England and America when he was in Parliament. In the eighteenth century the area was farmland, although it was just northeast of the City. The Bowery, running north from the square, was a former Indian path leading all the way to Harlem. The Collect Pond, a large fresh water pond that was used as the reservoir for eighteenth-century New York, lay just to the west. New Yorkers ice-skated on the pond and it was used for the first steamboat trials in 1796. The encroaching city caused the pond to become seriously polluted and it was filled in by 1813. By the early nineteenth century Chatham Square was a major junction, transportation hub and retail center, with a post office, theater, and numerous shops.
The library site on East Broadway, then known as Harman Street, was part of the Rutgers farm. In the late eighteenth century Colonel Henry Rutgers laid his farm out in lots and leased them out with building covenants calling for substantial brick buildings. This attracted merchants, professionals, and artisans such as shipwrights and sail makers.
By the mid-1800s Irish immigrants had moved into row houses converted to multiple dwellings. The merchants' houses along East Broadway became densely packed tenant-houses, precursors to tenements. Rear buildings were built in the yards of the houses, increasing the density. The notorious and dangerous Five Points slum was just a few blocks west of the library site, on the filled-in Collect Pond.
Italians settled in the area from the 1870s, when four-to-six-story tenements began to be built. These buildings filled the lots with courtyards to provide at least minimal light and air. Little Italy was established just to the west of the library site, around Mulberry Street. In 1894, when the city completed the demolition of the Five Points tenements a park was created on the Five Points site. At first named Mulberry Bend Park, by 1911 it was renamed after an Italian, Christopher Columbus. Jewish immigrants settled in the Lower East Side by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the Chatham Square area was primarily a Jewish neighborhood at the time the library was built. This period represented the height of immigration to the United States and the Lower East Side was exceptionally overcrowded, with very few parks, schools, libraries, and any other social welfare structures.
Today East Broadway is in the heart of Chinatown.
Large numbers of Chinese moved to the U.S. from the 1840s to work on the railroads and to prospect for gold, but few of the immigrants traveled to New York City in that period. In the 1870s they moved to New York after completion of the railroad and an outbreak of anti-Chinese violence in the West. Chinatown was established around Mott, Pell and Doyers Streets, at the northwest side of Chatham Square, and as early as the 1880s Chinese shops faced the Square. Chinese population growth slowed after 1882 when a series of laws were enacted that restricted immigration. Chinatown grew slowly in that period but developed complex organizations, dominated by the mutual aid societies. The area served Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants throughout the Metropolitan area. By the 1890s Chinatown was a tourist attraction and it was featured in the 1892 King's Handbook to New York City.
Chinese immigration expanded slowly after World War II when some of the restrictive laws were lifted and Chinese were granted the right to become citizens. The Chinese population grew rapidly after 1965 with further easing of restrictions on immigration according to race. In 1965 the core of Chinatown covered seven blocks and was bounded on the east by the Bowery. By the late 1970s the Chinatown core expanded in the across Bowery to encompass East Broadway as well as a number of other streets to the east and north. The Chatham Square library today primarily serves a Chinese American and immigrant population.
History of Manhattan Libraries
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries libraries in New York City were private, institutional, or subscription. The New York Society Library, a subscription library where users paid a membership fee, was established in 1754, and Columbia University opened a library by 1757. Both were destroyed during the Revolutionary War but were rebuilt, and by 1876 Columbia had one of the largest collections in the country. Reading rooms, operated as businesses or by non-profit organizations, made books available to the public, and bookseller Garrett Noel opened the earliest-known reading room in 1763.
Institutions including The New-York Historical Society, the Cooper Union, and Union Theological Seminary opened libraries in the first half of the nineteenth century. New York State legislation enabling City support of libraries was passed in the 1830s, but libraries were privately supported for most of the nineteenth century. The Astor Library, the City's first free public reference library, incorporated
in 1849. The Lenox Library, a private collection of rare and reference books, incorporated in 1870. By 1876 there were about ninety various libraries and collections in New York City.
The earliest branch library system was the private New York Free Circulating Library, established in 1878 to provide education and self-help for the poor. Support came from Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt and other wealthy New Yorkers, and from public funds beginning in 1887. There were eleven branches by 1901. The smaller Aguilar Free Library Society was started in 1886 to foster the "free circulation of carefully selected literature, in the homes of the people of this City, with distributing branches in localities where the Jewish population was dense."3 The organization, later associated with the Educational Alliance, was named after Grace Aguilar. an English novelist and Sephardic Jew. There were four branches by 1901, including one at 197 East Broadway, a few blocks north of the present Chatham Square Branch.
The New York Public Library and Andrew Carnegie
The New York Public Library was established in 1895 as a private corporation, which received limited public funds. Formed initially by the merger of the Astor and Lenox Libraries and the Tilden Trust, it was primarily concerned with building a major reference library on the site of the old Croton Reservoir at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The consolidation of New York City in 1898 inspired the growth and unification of the library institutions in the City, including The New York Public Library.
New York was one of the largest cities in the world with a population of three million in 1898 and growing rapidly. It trailed behind other cities in public library support, ranking ninth in per capita spending.5 A public branch library system was established in 1901 when the New York Free Circulating Library merged with The New York Public Library. Most of the small independent lending libraries, such as the Aguilar, Webster, Kingsbridge, and Tottenville, joined The New York Public Library, increasing the size of the still inadequate branch network. The promise of a large grant from Andrew Carnegie in 1901 spurred these library mergers. The New York Public Library is still organized into the separate reference and branch systems that were created during this consolidation.
Andrew Carnegie and John Shaw Billings, Director of The New York Public Library, strongly supported the amalgamation of all of the library systems, including the Brooklyn and Queens libraries, which ultimately chose to remain independent. Today, New York City still has three separate library corporations,
The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and The Queens Borough Public Library.
In 1901, when the library institutions were large and cohesive enough to suit him, Andrew Carnegie donated $5.2 million to New York City to build a system of branch libraries in all five boroughs. The grant was divided among the three library systems, with The New York Public Library receiving $3.36 million, and Brooklyn and Queens allocated $1.6 million and $240,000 respectively. The grant bought sixty-seven libraries in all five boroughs, two more than originally envisioned.6 In a 1901 letter to John Shaw Billings, Carnegie said that:
Sixty-five libraries at one stroke probably breaks the record, but this is the day of big operations and New York is soon to be the biggest of Cities.
Andrew Carnegie rose from poverty to become one of the wealthiest men in the United States after he sold his steel business to J.P. Morgan in 1901. He began donating to libraries in 1881, but with the grant to New York City he started the vast, worldwide operation which made him unique in the world of philanthropy.
Andrew Carnegie based his donations on a philosophy of giving he developed in the 1870s and 1880s. He believed that the wealthy should live modestly and, while still living, give away their funds for the good of humanity. He considered seven areas worthy of his philanthropy: universities, libraries, medical centers, parks, meeting and concert halls, public baths, and churches. Like other wealthy New Yorkers involved in the social reform movement, he understood the problems facing New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century: the overcrowding from massive immigration, poverty, lack of education, and absence of such facilities as baths, playgrounds and libraries. Andrew Carnegie gave away about 90 per cent of his wealth by the time he died in 1911. More than 2,500 Carnegie libraries were built worldwide and over 1,680 in the United States. The library program ended in 1917 but the Carnegie Corporation and twenty other foundations and funds have carried on his aspirations.
The inventor of cost accounting, Carnegie gave away his money with great efficiency. His grant provided for the construction of the buildings, but New York City had to contribute the cost of the land as well as the books, the upkeep and the operation of the libraries in perpetuity. The acquisition of sites alone cost The New York Public Library over $1.6 million, just under half the cost of the buildings.
In 1901, The New York Public Library Board Executive Committee appointed a temporary architects' advisory committee consisting of Charles F. McKim of the firm McKim, Mead & White, John M. Carrere of Carrere & Hastings, and Walter Cook of Babb, Cook & Willard, to advise them on how to proceed with construction. The committee advised that the branches be uniform and recognizable in materials, style, plan, and scale and that different site requirements would provide variety. They recommended forming a committee of two to five architectural firms who would design the buildings in cooperation with each other. Andrew Camegie objected to the lack of competition in this system but was ultimately convinced that it would be faster and cheaper and would produce a more unified collection. The advisors, McKim, Carrere, and Cook, were fortuitously selected for the permanent committee, and their firms designed most of The New York Public Library Camegie branches.
The architects consulted with the librarians on planning and design, an innovation recently adopted in library design.
McKim. Mead & White
McKim, Mead & White is among the best known and influential of American architecture firms. Charles Follen McKim and William Rutherford Mead began working together in 1872 with William Bigelow, forming the partnership McKim, Mead & Bigelow by 1877. Bigelow left the firm in 1879 and Stanford White replaced him, creating the partnership of McKim, Mead & White. The three men shared early training experience: all had studied in Europe, with McKim attending the Ecole des Beaux Arts, McKim and Mead had formal academic training and had apprenticed with New York architect Russell Sturgis; McKim and White had worked for H.H. Richardson. The three-man partnership ended when Stanford White was murdered by Harry K. Thaw in 1906. Charles McKim, in poor health since a bicycle accident in 1895 and devastated by the loss of his friend as well as the bad publicity, retired in 1907. William Mead stayed on until 1919, but spent most of his time traveling.
The talented and experienced junior partners continued the firm's work, with name changes to reflect new partners, until the 1990s. The prolific firm executed nearly 1,000 commissions between 1879 and 1919, the year William Mead retired.
The firm was best known for its classically inspired designs, although the early work was in the more romantic Shingle style. The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago was a turning point for the firm; Charles McKim held a key role in its planning and design.
The exposition captured the public's imagination with its depiction of a brilliant white classical city lit by electric lights. McKim, Mead & White was a leading advocate of the new classical style, which swept the country in the early twentieth century. By the time the Camegie libraries were built in New York City and in the cities and towns across the country, there was no question that they would be classical in style.
Several of New York City's important designated landmarks are early examples of the firm's free classical style: the Villard Houses , an early Italian Renaissance-inspired design; Judson Memorial Church, Tower and Hall ; King Model Houses ; the Brooklyn Museum , and the Former Bowery Savings Bank . The firm was socially prominent and designed houses for the wealthy as well as their clubs, including the Century Association , the Harvard Club , and the University Club , all designated New York City landmarks."
The firm designed four important library buildings at the turn of the twentieth century. McKim designed the Boston Public Library in 1887-1895, one of the first of the new wave of classical public buildings at the end of the nineteenth century. The firm designed two monumental university libraries in New York City, the Low Memorial Library at Columbia University and the Gould Memorial Library at the former New York University Uptown Campus. Charles McKim's elegant J. Pierpont Morgan Library is considered one of his finest designs. The Low, Gould and Morgan libraries are designated New York City landmarks.
Charles McKim was responsible for the design of the firm's twelve Camegie branch libraries, assisted by William Mitchell Kendall who entered the firm in 1882 and became a partner in 1906. His Camegie libraries are the most formal of the collection, faced in stone with lavish use of classical ornament. While keeping to the architects' committee's design guidelines, they have the most variation in the design of their facades. Five McKim Mead & White Camegie libraries are designated New York City landmarks: Chatham Square, Hamilton Grange, 115th Street, Schomburg, and Tompkins Square.
Design of the New York Public Library, Chatham Square Branch
The New York City Camegie branch libraries share many design characteristics and are clearly recognizable as Camegie libraries. They were designed to stand out as separate and distinct
structures, an innovation in 1901 when most of the branch libraries were located in other buildings. They are classical in style, a simplified version of the Beaux-Arts model, similar to most public buildings designed in this period. They are clad in limestone, or in brick with limestone trim. There are two distinct types, the urban and the suburban. The urban branch, vertically oriented and sited on mid-block, was located in densely populated Manhattan and sections of the Bronx. The freestanding suburban branches were built on comer sites in the less densely built-up areas of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens. Chatham Square embodies the major characteristics of the urban branches. It is located in mid-block, in a densely built and populated pan of the City. The masonry building with a limestone facade is three stories high and three bays wide, with large arched and rectangular windows. This mix of arched and rectangular windows, a Renaissance Revival style trait, is characteristic of McKim, Mead & White branch libraries and is used at the Woodstock, Harlem, 115th, 125th Street and Tompkins Square Branches.
The scale of the windows and oversize Ionic columns contributes to the monumental appearance of the facade. The composition of arched ground floor openings with columns separating rectangular windows on the upper floors resembles the Yorkville Branch , the first Carnegie library built, and the Riverside Branch . Although McKim, Mead & White followed their own design path, these three libraries illustrate the influence the Carnegie architects had on each other's designs. McKim, Mead & White used upper floor columns for the Schomburg Branch , but added rectangular ground floor openings and a monumental arched window on the upper two stories.
Chatham Square is faced in limestone with rustication at the ground floor. McKim, Mead & White frequently used rusticated limestone for drama and their 115th Street Branch is extra vagantiy faced in the material. The 125th Street and Hamilton Grange Branches also have opulent rusticated limestone facades. The Tompkins Square Branch , on the other hand, has a restrained, primarily smooth limestone facade that more closely resembles the designs by Carrere & Hastings and Babb, Cook, and Willard. Limestone facing, rusticated or smooth, is a characteristic of Manhattan Camegies.
The plans of the Carnegie libraries were drawn up in collaboration with the architects' committee and the librarians. The librarians met with the committee at the beginning of the process and commented on the final
plans. The libraries featured side entrances and stairs, a concession to the librarians. While the architects preferred classical center entrances, the side entrances and elevated first floors provided for spacious, light-filled reading rooms. A prominent circulation desk afforded control of the entire reading room by a single librarian. There were accessible stacks, an innovation in the early twentieth century; nineteenth century library book stacks were off limits to everyone except the librarians.
The Chatham Square Branch follows this scheme, with a rectangular layout, rooms filled with natural light, and circulation and reading rooms on the first three floors. When the library opened, there were plaster casts of classical sculpture in the children's first floor reading room, a gift in memory of Miss Emily Binsse, who drowned at sea.12 The adults' circulating room was on the second floor, the adults' reading room was on the third floor, and an assembly room was located in the basement. The books were placed on freestanding shelves accessible to the public. As was typical, a custodian's apartment was on the fourth floor and a custodian lived in the building until 1969.
Construction & Subsequent History
The New York Public Library selected the sites for the Carnegie libraries with approval from the City. Because every community wanted a Carnegie library, site selection was the only part of the smooth-running building process where there was any contention. The Carnegie branches were intended to stand out in their communities, to be centrally located and, if possible, to be near schools and other civic structures. John S. Billings stated this position in 1901:
Every one of these buildings ought to be of one distinctive and uniform type, so that the most ignorant child going through the streets of the City will at once know as Carnegie Library when he or she sees it.li In Manhattan, The New York Public Library Executive Committee hired New York attorney Alanson T. Briggs to propose the sites and act as agent for the library. After identifying densely populated neighborhoods, he looked for centrally located sites in these neighborhoods. George L. Rives, Secretary of The New York Public Library, described the philosophy behind site selection in 1901:
The Trustees are of the opinion that in establishing branch libraries it is of great importance to establish them, as far as possible, in conspicuous positions on well frequented streets. In some measure the
same principles should be applied that would govern in the selection of a site for a retail store. The fact that a branch library is constantly before the eyes of the neighboring residents so that all are familiar with its location will undoubtedly tend to increase its usefulness.14
Chatham Square was the first of four Camegie branches built on the Lower East Side below Houston Street, a densely populated immigrant neighborhood. The predecessor of the Chatham Square Branch was a storefront at 22 East Broadway, across the street from the present library. In the four years of its existence, it circulated as many as one thousand volumes a day.15 The City bought the library site in 1902 from Mr. and Mrs. Herman Gersten for $63,000. The brick building on the site was torn down. The new building and equipment cost $83,184, for a total of $146,184.16 The brick walls are faced with Bedford, Indiana limestone. The structure is steel and cast-iron.17 The builder was Michael Reid & Company, which built all but two of the McKim, Mead & White Camegie branches and worked with the architects on other projects as well.
The Chatham Square Branch library opened on November 2, 1903. It was the second Camegie branch opened in Manhattan and the third in the city. The opening ceremony was held in the library's assembly room and was attended by residents of the neighborhood. Speakers included Manhattan Borough President Jacob Cantor, Arthur Bostwick, Chairman of the Circulating Department, and Samuel Greenbaum, library trustee. Mr. Bostwick spoke about the reading preferences of the community, stating that there was less fiction and twice as many scientific books than in any other branch library. Mr. Greenbaum spoke about the first public library of 200 years ago. John S. Billings, President of the New York Public Library, attended with library friends Samuel P. Avery, John L. Cadwalader, William W. Appleton, and E. W. Gaillard. Miss H.M. Steinberger, librarian, and ten assistants ran the library when it opened.18
The Chatham Square Branch has served an immigrant community since its opening. In 1903 the community was primarily Jewish and the library stocked the history, English literature, and philology books then popular with the community. The neighborhood is now part of Chinatown and the library offers a Chinese heritage collection and materials on Chinatown. In 1947, The New York Public Library proposed to demolish the Chatham Square Branch and to build a smaller branch in the A1 Smith Houses because the administration believed that the Chatham
Square Branch was too close to the larger Seward Park Branch, causing a duplication of services. The New York City Housing Authority rejected the proposal that same year and the library was saved. The building has continuously operated as a library since opening in 1903 and has been an important community institution, as originally intended.19
The library has had few alterations. The rail, post and steps in front of the library were removed before 1940.20By 1958 the library's interior was rehabilitated and the roof skylight was removed. There were more interior alterations in 1971, when a large meeting room was created on the third floor. The wood casement windows were replaced at an unknown date with aluminum fixed and double-hung windows and the wooden door was replicated.21
Description
The Chatham Square Library is a three-story, three-bay, fifty-foot wide masonry structure with a rectangular plan. The Renaissance Revival style building is faced in limestone with a rusticated ground floor. Located in the middle of the block on East Broadway, the building stands out from the brick tenements surrounding it. East Broadway between Catherine and Market Streets is a busy commercial and residential street lined with four to six story brick tenements dating primarily from the 1870s to about 1915.
The limestone basement has two rectangular window openings. Both the basement and the first floors are rusticated, but the basement is more deeply rusticated with rounded edges, while the first floor has shallower rustications with crisply defined edges. The first floor rustication follows the line of the three arched openings, two windows and a doorway. The basement is separated from the first floor by a simple limestone band, which also forms the sills for the windows. The two large arched window openings are filled with non-historic sash. The doorway, located on the south side of the fa?ade, contains a pedimented stone door enframement and a transom above, filling in the arch. The molded stone door enframement is visually connected to the opening by stone scrolls on either side of the doorway. The pediment has a frieze with circles at either end. Two historic bronze lanterns flank the doorway.
There is a pedimented bronze plaque placed at the left of the first floor facade, with the words "The New York Public Library, Camegie Gift, Chatham Square Branch."
Stone banding with a Greek fret design separates the first floor from the second and third floors. The five rectangular windows are recessed in a frame of stone pilasters supporting a denticulated cornice. There is a simple stone spandrel between each of the second and third floor windows. Six oversize Ionic columns divide the windows. Original wrought iron grilles cover the lower half of the third floor windows. The molded stone cornice has a frieze with the letters "NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY" incised in the center and wreaths carved in low relief at either end, over the pilasters. There is a stepped stone parapet above the cornice with an open book inside a shield at the center. A carved stone acanthus tops the parapet center, which is softened by carved stone scrolls on either side.
All of the sash has been replaced with aluminum sash similar to the originals. There are non-historic aluminum screens on the first, second, and third floor sash. There are non-historic mesh grilles on the basement windows, and non-historic aluminum grilles on the first floor windows. The wood-paneled front door in the western-most bay of the ground floor is non-historic. A non-historic flagpole is attached to the sill of the fourth-from-east second floor window and there are two non-historic spotlights in that same window.
- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
I'm guessing about the authors of these three pieces of graffiti written on a ventilation shaft of the MTR at Kowloon Tong station: there were three teenage, female, native English speakers, who shared the same felt tip pen while waiting for a bus. One or more was smoking a cigarette (because it's hidden from street view). The thoughts are interesting/sensitive, but they didn't finish one of them because their bus had arrived. I note the same mistake of a dotted "i" while the rest of the letters are capitalized. However, the mistake was probably made by different authors suggesting they are in the same class at school, and were taught the same mistake/were not corrected. The writing is delicate, suggesting the authors were female, but the "quiet hope" sentence was written with a heavier hand, suggesting either confidence or possibly a male author. There is some inconsistency about the dots at the end of each sentence, with most placing three, one four and one five.
Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Summary
The Catholic Apostolic Church, built in 1885-86, was one of architect Francis H. Kimball's earliest independent commissions in New York City. He had previously worked mostly in Hartford, Connecticut, where he supervised the construction of the Collegiate Gothic style buildings at Trinity College designed by English architect-theorist William Burges. The Church's foremost leaders, residents of Hartford, would have known Kimball's work.
A Christian Pentecostal sect established in England in the 1830s, the Catholic Apostolic Church formed a congregation in New York City in 1851. Kimball's beautiful design, executed in red brick laid in running bond and extensive red terra cotta above a brownstone base, is a sophisticated and original essay in the "muscular" Victorian Gothic style, as influenced by Burges. It was, as well, a masterful solution for a small midblock church, for a congregation with limited resources.
The church was widely admired for its design, proportions, color, beauty of materials, vigorous composition built around a central tower form, skilled ornament, and innovative use of terra cotta. Noted critic Montgomery Schuyler called it the most "scholarly Gothic work in New York." Kimball was in the forefront of architects in using exterior architectural terra cotta in New York during this period, and the Catholic Apostolic Church is significant in the history of American terra cotta.
It was one of the earliest churches in New York to employ structural terra cotta, which was manufactured by the Boston Terra Cotta Co., the leading East Coast firm at the time. The terra cotta's combed texture indicates the involvement of James Taylor, "the father of American terra cotta" who was then superintendent of the company. The church's facade is dominated by a central rose window within a pointed-arched surround, one of the most complex elements yet attempted in terra cotta in the United States.
The sculptural ornament also incorporates iconography of Apostle-Evangelists and angels. Despite dwindling membership, the Catholic Apostolic Church retained its building until 1995. It is currently the Church for All Nations, of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. The virtually unaltered Catholic Apostolic Church building is considered to be one of the finest late-nineteenth-century churches in New York City.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
The Catholic Apostolic Church in England and New York
A Christian Pentecostal sect established in England in the early nineteenth century, the Catholic Apostolic Church had no association with the Roman Catholic Church. Its followers, believers in the impending "second coming" of Christ, started out in yearly prayer meetings, held after 1826 at the estate of Henry Drummond, a wealthy London banker and member of Parliament. Edward Irving (1792-1834), a controversial Scottish Presbyterian minister, became an early leader of this group and also sanctioned speaking in tongues. The sect promoted the concept that the "second coming" must be preceded by a revival of customs and official positions associated with early Christianity. Between 1832 and 1835. twelve men (most associated with the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches) were appointed Apostles of the officially organized Catholic Apostolic Church.
Around 1836, these Apostles began embarking as missionaries. European converts to the church were found mostly in England and Germany. The Apostles met with little success farther afield, except in Australia, Canada, and the United States. The Catholic Apostolic Church was led by the original Apostles until the death of Francis V. Woodhouse, the last, in 1901. The church's elaborate hierarchy also included Angels (bishops in charge of local churches). Coadjutors. Evangelists, prophets, elders, and priests, all appointed by the Apostles, as well as deacons, who were elected by each congregation.
The ordination of church officials ended in 1901, thus leaving no succession of leadership. A schism had developed in 1860 over the issue of replacing the Apostles in order to maintain a body of twelve. Coming out of the church in Berlin, this schism led to the creation of the separate New Apostolic Church, which became active in northern Germany and in German-speaking communities in the United States. The Catholic Apostolic Church seriously declined in the twentieth century and some of the congregations affiliated with other Protestant sects.
The organizational center of the Catholic Apostolic Church was its "seven churches in London," all established in 1832-35, which were seen as a "pattern of the unity of Christendom." The Central Church (1850-54, John Raphael Brandon) at Gordon Square was a mammoth Gothic Revival style structure. Although the Catholic Apostolics "employed a number of the same architects who were designing Anglican Victorian churches in the neo-Gothic style, such as Brandon, [John L.] Pearson, and [Augustus W.N.] Pugin. the interiors of their church buildings were designed to meet previously determined liturgical requirements... and to conform to their particular theological principles," including a highly ritualistic form of worship.
One Catholic Apostolic historian noted that "the beginnings of the movement in the United States are rather obscure" but coincided with a period of religious revivalism that was receptive to the efforts of the Catholic Apostolic evangelistic missionaries, first Francis V. Woodhouse. and after 1860. Nicholas Armstrong. Although "New York [State] has ever been the centerth' of the Catholic Apostolic movement in the United States, the "three foremost men," William Watson Andrews, Samuel J. Andrews, and John Sydney Davenport, were all from Hartford, Connecticut.
The first American Catholic Apostolic church was established in the 1840s in Potsdam, in far northeastern New York. William Andrews (1810-1897), a former Congregational minister, took over this church from 1849 to 1856; he then became a Catholic Apostolic Evangelist in the United States and Canada. He was called the "head of the Catholic Apostolic Church in this country" by the New York Times in 1896.8 His brother. Samuel Andrews, became a Catholic Apostolic priest in Hartford. Davenport (1808-1900), a nephew of Hudson River Railroad president James Boorman. was an Episcopal priest until he was deposed for accepting Catholic Apostolicism. He became Evangelist with the Apostles, in charge of instruction and supervision of all American Evangelists.
In New York City, a Catholic Apostolic congregation was established in 1851. Prior to that, an informal group had met in Greenwich Village, but had disbanded. Woodhouse, the Apostle, called on John Canfield Sterling in 1850 to organize a meeting. Woodhouse commented in 1854 that the congregation, meeting for the last three years, had recently purchased a building and was conducting services under two Episcopal priests "by commission from the Apostles." Conveyance records indicate that in 1854 James Rintoul, on behalf of the church, purchased a Congregational church building that had originally been a German Evangelical church (c. 1844) at 126 West 16th Street.
By 1885, the congregation had reached the point where it was able to commission a new building. Francis H. Kimball was hired as architect for the proposed Catholic Apostolic Church. He probably received this commission due to his previous work in Hartford, including Trinity College and other Episcopal Church-related buildings, which would have been well known by the Catholic Apostolic Church leaders who resided in that city.
The Architect
Bom in Maine. Francis Hatch Kimball (1845-1919) worked as a teenager in a relative's building firm, served in the Navy during the Civil War. and in 1867 entered the firm of the Boston architect Louis P. Rogers (who later joined with Gridley J.F. Bryant). In 1869. Kimball became supervisor of this firm's work in Hartford, and in 1873 was appointed superintending architect of the buildings at Trinity College (1875-82) designed by English architect and theorist William Burges.
Kimball worked directly with Burges in London from the end of 1873 to the fall of 1874. The Trinity College buildings are considered the earliest examples of the Collegiate Gothic style in the United States. Kimball also received independent commissions in Hartford, including the Orphan Asylum (1876-78, demolished) and Theological Seminar)' (1879). He moved to New York City to work on the remodelling of the Madison Square Theater in 1879 and soon formed a partnership with the English-born architect Thomas Wisedell. which lasted until the latter's death in 1884.
Their firm was responsible for the Goodwin Building (1881). Hartford, and the Moorish style Casino Theater (1881-82. demolished), 1400 Broadway. Kimball practiced alone'" until 1892, producing designs in a variety of styles and executed with notable terra-cotta ornament, including: the Catholic Apostolic Church (1885-86); Emmanuel Baptist Church (1886-87), 279 Lafayette Avenue. Brooklyn; Corbin Building (1888-89). 11 John Street; Montauk Club (1889-91). 1925 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn; Harrigan's (later Garrick) Theater (1890-91, demolished), 65 West 35th Street; the exterior of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Terminal headhouse (1891-93), Philadelphia; and the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co. Building (1892). 42-10-42-16 Vernon Boulevard. Long Island City. Queens. Another church commission was the picturesque Riverdale Presbyterian Chapel (1888-89; later Edgehill Church of Spuyten Duyvil). 2550 Independence Avenue, the Bronx.'' In the iron-and-steel-framed Fifth Avenue Theater (1891-92, demolished), 1185 Broadway, Kimball developed a technique for constructing foundations with concrete cylinders sunk by mechanical means that was a precursor of the later pneumatic caisson system of skyscraper foundation construction.
Kimball emerged in the forefront of early skyscraper design in New York City during his collaboration from 1892 to 1898 with George Kramer Thompson (1859-1935). Kimball & Thompson's seminal seventeen-story (plus tower) Manhattan Life Insurance Co. Building (1893-94. demolished). 64-66 Broadway, was the tallest building constructed in the city at that time and is credited with being the first New York skyscraper with a full iron and steel frame, set on pneumatic concrete caissons.
Among the firm's other commissions were the Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo Mansion (1895-98). 867 Madison Avenue; the Standard Oil Building addition (1896-97). 26 Broadway; and the Empire Building (1897-98), 71 Broadway. Kimball's later skyscrapers, designed in a variety of styles, include the Trinity and U.S. Realty Buildings (1904-07), 111 and 115 Broadway; J. & W. Seligman & Co. Building (1906-07. with Julian C. Levi), 1 William Street; Trust Co. of America Building (1906-07), 39 Wall Street; City Investing Co. Building (1906-08, demolished). Broadway and Cortlandt Street: and Adams Express Co. Building (1912-16), 61 Broadway. Kimball also designed two early automobile-related structures, the A.T. Demarest & Co. and Peerless Motor Car Co. Buildings (1909), 1770 and 1760 Broadway.
He formed a partnership with Frederick H. Roosa in 1915, but a petition was filed against the firm in 1917 that apparently led to involuntary bankruptcy. Upon his death in 1919, the New York Times referred to Kimball as "the father of the skyscraper," reflecting his technical innovations and involvement with many fine early skyscrapers.
Construction and Design of the Catholic Apostolic Church.
In May 1885, two lots on the north side of West 57th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues were conveyed for $25,000 to prominent Catholic Apostolic Church members David M. Fackler and Stephen R. Rintoul. Rev. David Moms Fackler (1811-1895), a former Episcopal priest who had converted to Catholic Apostolicism during Apostle Woodhouse's 1850 visit, was ordained a priest (1859) and an Angel and "served prominently in the history and development of the Church in New York."
Stephen R. Rintoul was later a priest and an Angel of this church. Other members involved in the construction of the new church on this site were John S. Davenport, then a lawyer residing in New York and serving on the building committee, and Rev. Charles A.G. Brigham. apparently the first priest in this church. Construction of the Catholic Apostolic Church commenced at the beginning of June 1885 and was completed at the end of March 1886. The property was transferred to the Church Building Trust Association in November 1886.
The English Catholic Apostolics had no distinct architectural tradition, but appear to have favored the Gothic style. The Catholic Apostolic Church in New York was designed in the Victorian Gothic style, which originated in England and was most closely associated with ecclesiastical architecture, but also with public buildings, in the second half of the nineteenth century. The style, also popular for similar building types in the United States in the late nineteenth century, was characterized by an eclectic use of medieval forms (including pointed arches) in an original manner, simple massing and sculptural composition, complex rooflines. and the bold use of contrast, color, texture, and material.
Churches in the Victorian Gothic mode have sometimes been referred to as "muscular Gothic." Kimball's Catholic Apostolic Church is a sophisticated and original essay in the "muscular" Victorian Gothic style. Despite its small size and midblock location, the church attracts notice due to its vigorous and complex yet symmetrical composition built around a central tower form; the beauty and color of its materials (brownstone. red brick, red terra cotta. and leaded glass) and ornament, especially the rose window; and its technical solutions to practical considerations, such as providing natural light to the interior.
The design was influenced by the churches of Burges, such as the Church of Christ the Consoler (1871-76), Skelton-on-Ure. In particular, the rose window and the figures of the winged lion and the eagle below it. representing the Apostle-Evangelists St. Mark and St. John, were clearly inspired by the similar rose window and "Four Evangelistic Beasts" sculptures carved on Burges' St. Fin Barre's Cathedral. Cork. Ireland (1863-79)" Kimball's church can also be seen as related to the work of a number of noted contemporary American architects, such as [Frank] Furness & [George W.j Hewitt's Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1871-76), Philadelphia, and Edward T. Potter's Church of the Holy Innocents (1872-74), Hoboken.
It has been suggested that the presence of two side entrances on the Catholic Apostolic Church, rather than the usual major central entrance, may have been influenced by other architects' designs for "nonconformist" religions.
Kimball's design for the Catholic Apostolic Church received favorable critical comment. The Real Estate Record & Guide in 1888 called the church "one of the most artistic of recent buildings in New York, and the architect and his clients are to be heartily congratulated upon it."
The journal further remarked that it especially deserves to be better known because, apart from being a very pretty and effective bit of street architecture, it presents a solution of a problem that most architects who have attempted it have found very untractable.
The problem is that of a city church on an "inside lot," that is to say, in such a situation that it can be lighted only from the ends, or even from one end, and from a clerestory so arranged as not to be deprived of its light by towering buildings alongside. So far as a view of the exterior can enable one to say the solution is highly successful, and the means to its practical success are also the means of giving architectural force and character to the building.
The congregation itself was quite pleased with Kimball's work. John S. Davenport, writing in response to the Real Estate Record & Guide's article, enthused that we are entitled to the congratulations you speak of for Mr. Kimball's success in the architectural treatment of the building, but for the additional reason that we are conscious that Mr. Kimball was equally successful in the exceedingly economical and advantageous manner in which he applied the limited amount of money which we were able to furnish him for the purpose.
Noted critic Montgomery Schuyler wrote in 1898 that "the arrangement is expressed in a clear and edifying way. of which the effect is immensely heightened by the excellence of the detail in design, and its perfect adaptation in scale. There is no more scholarly Gothic-work in New York." In 1899, Brickbuilder referred to the church as "an interesting composition in brick and terra cotta" in which "that most admirable rose window" was "the distinguishing feature."
Architectural Terra Cotta in New York City in the 1880s While a number of buildings in the late 1840s and 1850s employed terra cotta for architectural ornament in New York City and elsewhere, it was after the Chicago and Boston fires of 1871-72 that terra cotta was revived as a significant interior and exterior building material in the United States.
Walter Geer observed that "by these fires it was conclusively demonstrated that fire-proof buildings could not be made of unprotected stone or iron, and that only brick and terra-cotta walls were practically fire-proof. This increased use of brick work, and of terra-cotta as a constructive and decorative material in connection with brick work, revived the demand for the manufacture of this material in or near New York."
Advantages seen in terra cotta for both exterior architectural ornament and interior fireproofing included its fireproof properties, strength, durability, lower cost and weight in shipping and handling, the relative ease with which elaborate decoration could be molded, and the retention over time of crisp ornamental profiles compared to stone.
In the 1870s and early 1880s. architectural terra cotta was often a color that matched stone (commonly brownstone, buff or red) that could be pleasantly juxtaposed with brick, or used as a substitute for brownstone. The Real Estate Record & Guide noted that during this period "terra cotta is most generally used for the trimming and ornamentation of buildings, taking the form of panels, courses, friezes, small tiles, roofing tiles and paving blocks."
At this time. George B. Post was the leader in the use of exterior terra cotta in New York City, including the Braem House (1878-80. demolished), 15 East 37th Street; Long Island Historical Society (1878-81). 128 Pierrepont Street. Brooklyn, for which a contemporary said "the material has been employed, for the first time in the United States, both for the building material and for all decorative details": New York Produce Exchange (1881-84. demolished), 2 Broadway: and Mills Building (1881-83. demolished). 59 Exchange Place. Among other contemporary architects who employed terra cotta were Silliman & Famsworth. in the Morse Building (1878-80).
140 Nassau Street, then considered the first prominent New York office building to employ exterior terra cotta (though it was used sparingly for architectural details, in conjunction with molded red and black brick), and Temple Court Building (1881-83). 3-9 Beekman Street: Kimball & Wisedell. in the Goodwin Building. Hartford, and the Casino Theater, an early New York building having highly intricate, exotic terra-cotta ornament (the terra cotta on both buildings was by the Boston Terra Cotta Co.); and Kimball, in many of his early independent commissions.
James Taylor, the Boston Terra Cotta Co.. and the Catholic Apostolic Church
The terra cotta employed by Kimball on the Catholic Apostolic Church was manufactured by the Boston Terra Cotta Co. the leading East Coast terra cotta firm at the time. James Taylor (1839-1898), called "the father of American terra cotta," was superintendent of the Boston company during construction of the church. Formerly superintendent of the J[ohn]. M[arriottJ. Blashfield & Co. terra cotta works in Stamford. England.
Taylor emigrated to superintend the Chicago Terra Cotta Works in 1870-77. the period during which the Chicago firm was the dominant center of American terra cotta manufacturing After 1878, the Chicago firm collaborated with the Boston Fire Brick Co. to meet the demand for terra cotta on the East Coast; the latter plant became the Boston Terra Cotta Co. in 1880 and Taylor became superintendent there until 1886.
The Boston Terra Cotta Co. produced the exterior terra cotta for many significant buildings in New York City until its demise in 1893. Extant buildings ornamented with Boston terra cotta include Nos. 19 and 21 East 17th Street (1881-82, Silliman & Famsworth); No. 746-750 Broadway (1881-83, Starkweather & Gibbs), for Orlando B. Potter; Grace M.E. Church (1882-83. Parfitt Brothers), 29-35 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn; Chelsea Apartments (1883-85. Hubert. Pirsson & Co.), 222 West 23rd Street; Potter Building (1883-86. N.G. Starkweather). 35-38 Park Row, for Orlando Potter: YMCA Institute Building (1884-85, Bradford L. Gilbert). 222 Bowery: and Mercantile Exchange (1885, Thomas R. Jackson). 2-6 Harrison Street.
Orlando Potter decided to organize his own firm, the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co.. which was launched in January 1886 with Walter Geer and his father, Asahel Clarke Geer. Taylor was superintendent until he retired in 1893. The company, the only major architectural terra cotta firm in New York City, became one of the largest such manufacturers in the United States, remaining in business until its bankruptcy in 1932.
The Real Estate Record & Guide in 1888 noted of the Catholic Apostolic Church that the material of the church is baked clay throughout - red brick with wrought work of terra cotta in a slightly different tint. An effective texture is given to the terra cotta by roughening the mould so as to produce something the effect of bush-hammering in stone work. The mouldings are throughout artistic in form and successfully adjusted in scale. The ornament is copious, as there is no excuse for its not being in terra cotta, but it is nowhere overloaded, though this is rather a matter of design and disposition than of quantity. ... This ornament is so well placed and derailed that it emphasizes and nowhere confuses the effect of the admirable arrangement and proportion to which the little church mainly owes its success.
The combed texture of the terra cotta on the church is a "signature" indicating the involvement of James Taylor. Taylor later transferred the use of this texture to his next firm. The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co. Building has a similar textured effect, as does a fireplace located inside that is signed "Jas. Taylor."
Taylor wrote in 1892 that Kimball was one of the first architects in the United States to employ "highly ornamental work in terra cotta" and to demonstrate that terra cotta was capable of elaborate decoration at moderate cost. This capability has been constantly put before the public by F.H. Kimball in various buildings which he has designed, viz., the Catholic Apostolic Church... which has an elaborate rose window, in which several features were introduced that had not before been attempted in America, presumably a reference to the complexity of its design.
Montgomery Schuyler remarked of the church in 1898 that the charm of it is heightened by the fact that, although the ornament is in terra cotta, and is or might be a substitute for stone-carving, there is yet in some of it, as in the main offset of the front and the gableted offsets of the buttresses, a recognition in design of the material which adds the raciness of idiom to scholarly diction.
Brickbuilder in 1899 referred to the Catholic Apostolic Church as "the first church, and one of the first buildings of importance on which structural terracotta was used in New York... and. though one of the least pretentious, is considered one of [Kimball's] happiest efforts." This publication was also impressed by the manner in which the design and manufacture of the terra cotta on this building was able "to obtain the maximum of merit at a minimum cost."
The use of the term "structural" here refers to the manner in which the terra cotta was fully integrated into the exterior brick bearing walls, in contrast to the use of low relief terra-cotta panels found typically on contemporary buildings.
The Catholic Apostolic Church is a significant building in the history of terra cotta in the United States, employing extensive and notable 1880s exterior architectural terra cotta. Today the building, virtually unaltered, is a relatively rare survivor of that period of development of terra cotta in New York, by one of the most significant East Coast terra cotta companies of the period. The red, matt-glazed terra-cotta ornament on the church, some of the most complex elements yet attempted in the United States, incorporates religious iconography referring to Catholic Apostolic beliefs: a winged lion and an eagle, representing two of the four Apostle-Evangelists, St. Mark and St. John: two angels, one playing a musical instrument and one bearing a censer: and cherubs. There are also many foliate and floral motifs employed in moldings.
Later History
King's Handbook in 1893 stated that there were about 400 members of the Catholic Apostolic Church in New York. That same year, the New York Times reported that this church was
the only one in New York. It has dependencies in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, and smaller places, but they have not a completely ordered priesthood. The New-York church has as its head the Angel, and under him a long list of elders, priests, deacons, sub-deacons, and deaconesses. The latter officiate in acts of charity and render assistance particularly to the women of the parish.
In 1893, however, a small, one-story German Apostolic Church (William J. Bower, builder; demolished) had been built for a German immigrant congregation at 202 West 114th Street in Harlem. A church census in 1936 identified seven Catholic Apostolic churches in the United States. The Church then had about 2,577 members nationally, with the other churches located in New York, Connecticut. Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California. In 1946, a church history referred to the 57th Street church as "the oldest Church in the country." The German Apostolic and Catholic Apostolic congregations merged in 1947 and the Harlem building was sold to the Church of the Good Shepherd.
The last "Angel in Charge of the Catholic-Apostolic Church" in New York and other Eastern states, since 1919, was Henry Ogden DuBois (c.1855-1949). An Episcopal priest who was ordained an Angel in the Church in 1890, he later served as Coadjutor to the Inducted Angel prior to 1919. The congregation continued in this building for another 45 years after his death under the leadership of a deacon, despite the rapid decrease in membership. The handful of remaining members "became greatly concerned that the building be preserved as a sanctuary for a Biblically faithful Christian ministry. Thus, they began a careful study of other denominations." The Catholic Apostolic Church donated the property in 1995 to the Atlantic District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. After a restoration of the building, the Church for All Nations opened in 1997.
Description
The midblock Catholic Apostolic Church has a complex shape due to its cruciform plan, with a square central tower crowned by a peaked roof at the front of the nave, flanked by low side (aisle) wings; a peaked-roof nave with a gable-dormered clerestory behind the tower; a peaked-roof transept with a gable-dormered clerestory; and a peaked-roof chancel. Built with masonry bearing walls and timber framing, the church is clad in red brick laid in running bond and extensive red terra-cotta ornament, above a rusticated brownstone base.
The terra cotta has a combed texture. Between 1995 and 1997, the church was cleaned and re-pointed and some small elements of deteriorated terra cotta were replicated (using cast stone, from molds based on the original terra cotta), including on the rose window and eastern entrance. The roofs were originally covered with gray slate shingles; they are currently covered with asphalt shingles with terra-cotta ridgecaps. Windows currently have protective plastic coverings.
Tower The ground-story level has two sets of paired arched windows, with squat columns having stylized floral capitals, capped by a stringcourse with end corbels in the shape of heads. The tower is dominated by an elaborate central rose window, set above a winged lion and an eagle and placed within a molded, pointed-arched surround. The rose window surmounts an arcade of windows, with columns having stylized floral capitals and floral rondels, surmounting a setback covered with terra-cotta tiles.
The arcade and setback are flanked by buttresses ornamented with gablets and terra-cotta-tiled steps. Flanking the rose window are plaques ornamented with angels (the western angel originally played a musical instrument (which has been removed): the eastern angel bears a censer) and chamfered comers. The gable of the tower, rising above a wide, molded band course that continues along both sides of the tower, is ornamented by a tripartite arcaded window group and. at the peak, floral diaperwork with a small blind arch.
All windows are leaded glass. The tower has four polygonal corner turrets with blind arches and steeply peaked roofs covered with terra-cotta tiles. Original finials are missing. The ridge of the front gable is coped with terra cotta with crockets and a Celtic-type cross. The ridge of the rear gable is coped with copper.
Side (aisle) Wings Each wing has an entrance with a molded, pointed-arched surround springing from squat columns with stylized floral capitals: stone steps with historic wrought-iron railings and gates: double, paneled wooden doors with wooden tympanum ornamented with quatrefoils; and reveals ornamented with terra-cotta blocks with floral and cherub motifs.
Each entrance is surmounted by a setback covered with terra-cotta tiles, in turn surmounted by a triple band of windows with leaded glass and a gableted buttress on the outer end. The shed roof of each wing is covered with red tile shingles and has a terra-cotta ridgecap.
Clerestory gable dormers The two gable dormers on the eastern and western facades of the nave, and the gable dormer at each end of the transept, have double arched windows capped by a quatrefoil.
Areaway The areaway is bordered by an historic wrought-iron fence and gate. Stone steps at the west end lead to a basement entrance, which has a non-historic metal door and awning. There are currently an air conditioning unit and wooden church sign installed within the areaway. Basement windows on the church have historic wrought-iron grilles.
- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Analysis of iron in water from Pacific surface region by the Flow Injection analysis in the Chemistry Lab.
Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, New York City, United States
Summary
The Romanesque Revival style office building at 31 Belvidere Street is the focal point of the William Ulmer Brewery complex, a reminder of one of Bushwick's, and Brooklyn's, most prominent 19th- and 20th -century industries. The entire complex remains a largely intact example of a late-19 -century brewery designed in the American round arch style, and includes, in addition to the office building, the main brew house (1872) and addition (c.1881), engine and machine houses (Theobald Engelhardt 1885), and stable and storage building (Frederick Wunder 1890).
A German emigrant, William Ulmer (1833-1907) began working in a New York City brewery owned by his uncles in the 1850s and later became a partner in the Vigelius & Ulmer Continental Lagerbier brewery, founded in 1871.
Within seven years, Ulmer became the sole proprietor of the brewery and under its new name - the William Ulmer Brewery - the business was expanded in the 1880s and 1890s with the construction of ice house, engine-, machine- and wash-room additions, a large storage and stable building, and a handsome Romanesque Revival style office building. Designed by prominent Brooklyn architect Theobald Engelhardt and constructed in 1885, the two-story red brick office building was the architectural highlight of the complex, featuring arched and dormered windows, a squat mansard roof clad in slate, as well as terra-cotta ornament.
Divided into three bays, the building's projecting center bay incorporates remarkably crisp red terra-cotta panels that identify the initial of the last name of the owner, the brewery's trademark, and the function of the building, as well as corbelled brickwork and a blind arcade. The office building was separated from the larger brewery by a passage with an elaborate iron gate. Though rusted, the richly embellished gate is historic and possibly original to the structure. The other buildings of the Ulmer brewery complex feature details commonly found on other 19th-century breweries, including round arch-headed and segmentally arch-headed window and door openings, projecting brick pilasters, pedimented parapets and corbelled, denticulated, zigzag-patterned, and channeled decorative brickwork, all characteristic of the American round arch style.
Prior to Prohibition, there were at least 24 breweries in Brooklyn, many of which were located in Williamsburgh and Bushwick. Ulmer's was one of the more successful and in 1896 the Brooklyn Eagle described him as a millionaire. Under Ulmer, beer production more than quadrupled, reaching over three million gallons annually. Upon his retirement in 1900, the brewery was run by Ulmer's sons-in-law, John W. Weber and John F. Becker. Like many other breweries, the enactment of Prohibition closed the Ulmer brewery.
The factory buildings were sold and converted for light manufacturing use, but the family retained ownership of the office building until 1952, using it as an office for their real estate business. The buildings remain largely intact and retain the detailing that defines their history and use.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
The History of Brewing in Brooklyn and New York
"To speak of the origins of brewing in America is to speak of the origins of the nation itself," stated historian Stanley Baron in his book, Brewed in America. While the first European settlers were dependent on beer shipments brought from England, there are also late-16th- and early-17th-century references to brewers operating in the Massachusetts Bay and Virginia colonies.
In many early colonial accounts, beer was considered safer to drink than water, and was consumed by all ages at all times of the day. Sickness, death and failure of some settlements were often attributed to a lack of supplies, including beer. In New Amsterdam, the Dutch, who were "even more partial to beer that the English," discovered that the ingredients for beer could be grown in the new world in 1626, the year Peter Minuit "purchased" Manhattan from Native Americans.
Brewing was an active industry in New York City during the 17th century, with small-scale commercial, home, and municipal breweries, including one operated by The Dutch East India Company. By the 1770s, New York City and Philadelphia were established as the colonies' brewing centers.
At least two documented commercial brewers operated in Brooklyn during the 18th century, and despite the advantage of abundant fresh water, that number grew very slowly after the turn of the 19th century. Most brews were produced for home consumption or by common brewers for sale in nearby "ordinaries" or taverns.
The few commercial brewers produced English style brews, such as ale, porter, stout, and common beer, using top-fermenting yeast. In 1840, a former brewer from Bavaria, John Wagner, who had brought lager beer yeast to this country, opened a small brewery in back of his house in Philadelphia to supply his nearby tavern. From these humble beginnings, the opening of small-scale breweries eventually led to a major switch in the American brewing industry, from English to German brewing techniques and brewery proprietors. While the industry did not change overnight, the introduction of lager beer to the American market coincided with a massive influx of German immigrants in the 1840s that revolutionized the brewing industry in New York City, Brooklyn and other cities where they settled in large numbers. The Germans provided an increased market for beer, and they favored lager:
"Lager beer - An effervescent malt beverage, brewed by using the bottom-fermentation process, in which a special yeast settles as residue at the bottom of the brewing vats. The distinctly German beer was popular in German countries in the early nineteenth century, and was introduced in the U.S. probably in the 1840s by John Wagner. Because the process for making this light, sparkling brew involved storage while fermentation occurred [which required cool temperatures], it was termed 'lager,' which is derived from the German verb lagern, meaning to stock or store."
While two New York City breweries (George Gillig and F & M Schaefer) began to brew lager in the 1840s, S. Liebmann and Sons Brewery (later renamed Rheingold), founded in 1854, was one of the first to use the bottom fermenting process in Brooklyn. As lager gained popularity beginning in the mid-1850s, the cities where most German immigrants settled became the largest brewing centers in the country, including Cincinnati, Milwaukee and St. Louis, as well as Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City and Brooklyn. Several articles in the Brooklyn Eagle from the 1860s and 1870s focused on the growing popularity of lager beer, calling it our "National Beverage," appealing to people of all classes.
Using Long Island lake water supplied by a new gravity-fed water system, "by the 1870s Brooklyn had become a major force in American beer brewing, as numerous establishments, largely run by Germans, flourished in the borough's Eastern District (Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick)." Between the 1850s and the 1880s, 11 separate breweries operated there in a 14-square block area known as "Brewer's Row." "By the 1880s, 35 breweries had been established in Brooklyn," generating an estimated $8 million in revenue annually. The majority of these firms exclusively brewed lager beer, while the remainder brewed ale or weiss (wheat) beer.
Technology and increased demand, as well as taste, influenced the course of the brewing industry in the second half of the 19th century. Like many other industries, the use of steam power and mechanization were common by the second half of the 19th century, altering the earlier "hand-done" brewing process and allowing for greater and more consistent production with the use of less labor.
While both processes required boiling and cooling, the German brewing technique differed from the English in requiring cooler temperatures to store the beer. Like the ale breweries, lager breweries operated seasonally (from October to April) but also employed extensive cellars for storage, taking advantage of cooler underground temperatures, and used large blocks of ice to regulate temperature.
Changes in refrigeration technology, which was first employed in Brooklyn at S. Liebmann and Sons in 1870, hit most of the breweries in the 1880s, shortening the cooling stages of the brewing process and permitting a longer brewing season. Just as steam power had revolutionized the hand brewing process, in the last years of the 19th century electric power and machinery began to replace the large steam engines.
Finally, pasteurization, bottling and later canning, in combination with expanded shipping methods, allowed brewers to branch out beyond local markets. These factors all made it possible for brewers to run larger breweries with greater production and profits, and tended to eliminate the smaller competitors.
While the number of breweries increased slowly in the 1880s and 1890s, production continued to steadily increase, driven both by an increased demand and technological advances.
Prior to consolidation in 1898, Brooklyn was the fourth most populous city in the country and supported 45 breweries. The prosperity continued in the 20th century, and although the number of breweries declined, the quantity of beer produced continued to grow, reaching its peak, pre-Prohibition, output of 2.5 million barrels in 1907.
Bushwick, which was considered a major brewing center from about 1890 until the late 1940s, was supplying almost 10% of all beer consumed in the United States during the height of its production.
Eventually, the technological advances that allowed Brooklyn brewers to greatly increase their production ultimately worked against them, as "cheap rail transportation and mechanical refrigeration allowed entrepreneurs in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati to make inroads into the local markets. Successful breweries made larger investments in production and distribution facilities, and small firm disappeared."
Still, at the close of the 1910s, there were at least 24 breweries in Brooklyn, and 70 breweries in all the boroughs combined.
In 1920, the 18 th Amendment, the National Prohibition or Volstead Act closed many of the Brooklyn breweries,11 while others continued to manufacture near beer (less than .05% alcohol,) soft drinks or other food products. With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, only 23 of the New York City's (including Brooklyn's) breweries resumed business, with most targeting the local market.
Over the next half of a century, brewing in the city declined. Brooklyn's last two breweries closed in 1976 (Rheingold and F & M Schaefer), marking the end of an era. However, about a decade later, during the micro-brewing revolution of 1980s, two Brooklyn entrepreneurs opened the Brooklyn Brewery in 1987. Although their first beers were contract brewed in Utica, New York, the opening of their new brewery in Williamsburg in 1996 revived an industry that once flourished in the borough. The Ulmer complex is a significant reminder of this once important and now reviving Brooklyn industry.
The History of the Neighborhood
The William Ulmer Brewery is located within the historic boundaries of the town of Bushwick, near the present boundary line between Brooklyn and Queens. Bushwick is one of the earliest colonial settlements in New York, first occupied in the 1630s. One of the original six towns in Brooklyn, it remained a rural farming area until the mid-19th century.
The site of the center of the township, the village of Bushwick, is the present intersection of Bushwick Avenue, Old Woodpoint Road, Metropolitan Avenue, Maspeth Avenue, and Humboldt Street. In 1852, Williamsburgh, the western and most populous section of the township, became an independent city, however, its municipal status ended three years later in 1855 when it and all of Bushwick were incorporated within the City of Brooklyn. Thereafter, until Brooklyn's consolidation into Greater New York in 1898, both areas and Greenpoint were known collectively as Brooklyn's Eastern District.
Located south of the center of Bushwick village, in the early 19th century, the land around the Ulmer Brewery site was owned by members of the Debevoise family.
Charles Debevoise purchased over 45 acres of property near the Bushwick-Newtown border from his brother Francis in 1823, and operated a farm.
Like many of his relatives and neighbors, Charles Debevoise was a slave owner. After his death in the 1850s, the Debevoise farm, which had been mapped and lotted in anticipation of sub-divison, was transferred to Charles' children, Jane Stockholm, Elizabeth Debevoise and Abraham Debevoise.
During the 1850s Bushwick began to lose its rural, agricultural landscape. Large numbers of Germans immigrated to New York following the political upheavals in central Europe in 1848. Many settled in Williamsburgh and Bushwick and began the development of the area's most famous local industry, brewing. The area boasted a number of features attractive to the brewing industry: an abundant water supply, soil suitable for the construction of underground storage chambers, and convenient water and rail transportation, as well as sufficient local demand. Henry R. Stiles, the notable Brooklyn historian, wrote in 1870:
"That quarter of Brooklyn, the Eastern District irreverently designated as Dutchtown, has been for some time the centre of the lager bier manufacturing interest in the Metropolitan District. Here are located some of the largest breweries in existence in the country. Surrounded by a population almost exclusively German, they all enjoy a local patronage to a considerable extent..."
A second wave of development in Bushwick began after the construction of the elevated railroad along Myrtle Avenue in 1888, making the area an attractive alternative to congested downtown Brooklyn and lower Manhattan.18 Development, consisting primarily of three-and four-story multiple dwellings, spread eastward toward the Brooklyn-Queens border during the following decade.
The population remained largely German until the 1930s and 40s, when Italian-Americans began moving in. Beginning with the brewery workers strike of 1949, the industry began a steady decline. The closing of factories, including the breweries, created an economic depression of the area. In the late 1950s and 1960s, African-Americans and Puerto Ricans immigrated to Bushwick, comprising more than half of its population by 1970.
Under the encouragement of real estate agents, many houses changed hands, purchased by low-income families with Federal Housing Authority insured mortgages, who were not necessarily able to maintain their buildings or payments during the economic downturn of the 1970s. New York City's fiscal crisis tightened the budget during this period, cutting essential services to certain communities.
Among them were cuts to fire department service in the area, at a time when buildings abandoned by foreclosure were subject to frequent fires, further devastating the neighborhood. Redevelopment efforts began in the 1980s and are still continuing today. According to a 2007 exhibit at the Brooklyn Historical Society, "today, Bushwick is one of Brooklyn's 'hottest' neighborhoods, abuzz with construction, renovation, and aspiration. With a burgeoning arts scene and convergence of Latin American people, Bushwick is truly one of Brooklyn's most dynamic communities."
German Immigration, Brooklyn's Eastern District and Lager Beer
From its founding in 1626 by Peter Minuit, a native of the German town of Wesel am Rhein, New York City has had a significant German population. During the 1820s, the first German neighborhood and commercial center developed in the area southeast of City Hall Park and by 1840 there were more than 24,000 Germans living in the city. During the next twenty years, their numbers increased dramatically as "mass transatlantic migration brought another hundred thousand Germans fleeing land shortages, unemployment, famine, and political and religious oppression," with over 1,350,000 immigrating to the United States.
To accommodate this growth, new German neighborhoods, developed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the Eastern District of Brooklyn. In the 1870s and 1880s, dislocations caused by the growth of the German Empire brought more new immigrants to the United States while thousands of American-born children of German immigrants established their own homes in these neighborhoods. By settling in areas with such a high concentration of fellow countrymen, it was easy for Germans to maintain their culture and customs, which included German-speaking churches and synagogues, German newspapers, singing societies, Turnvereine, and beer gardens.
In Williamsburgh and Bushwick, it was not uncommon for "Eastern District German-Americans to enrich their day with a brew or two. Lager tended to be the normal mealtime beverage, and it most certainly was served all around at picnics, Sunday outings, sporting events and all the other social gatherings that characterized German-American life everywhere these fun-loving people settled in the United States."
More than just a component of the German diet, lager beer was an integral part of the customs that new immigrants maintained in the United States. Lager was for socializing, recreating with family, and enjoyed at club meetings. While some of the clubs constructed their own buildings, such as the Eastern District Turnverein and the Arion Singing Society's Arion Hall, beer gardens were also popular meeting spots, providing entertainment and a family retreat, especially in the hot days of summer, unlike saloons, which were notorious for keeping workers away from their families after a day's labor.
The William Ulmer Brewery
Born in Wurttemberg in 1833, William Ulmer immigrated to New York in the 1850s to work with his two uncles, Henry Clausen Sr. and John F. Betz, in the brewing industry,25 eventually becoming the brewmaster for Clausen's very successful New York firm. In 1871, Ulmer partnered with Anton Vigelius to form the Vigelius & Ulmer Continental Lagerbier Brewery on Belvidere and Beaver Streets in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Born in Bavaria, Anton Vigelius immigrated to Brooklyn in 1840 at the age of 18 and was involved in the produce business prior to opening the brewery. He purchased land at the corner of Beaver and Belvidere Streets from Abraham and Anna Debevoise in 1869, selling a half-interest in the parcel to Ulmer shortly before the construction of the brewery.
As evidenced by the marble date stone in the center of its facade, the first building of the Vigelius and Ulmer Brewery was constructed at the site in 1872. Typical of this period, all of the early brewing operations would have taken place in this building, from the storage of grains, to malting, brewing and lagering (or storage) of the beer. Vigelius also constructed a large residence behind the brewery facing Belvidere Street in 1872, following the common practice of 19th-century brewers who lived in or very near their breweries. The early success of the firm was noted in an 1875 article in the Brooklyn Eagle, which cited the Vigelius & Ulmer Brewery
among the largest and most noted of the Williamsburgh breweries, and of the 30 to 40 breweries that were then operating in Brooklyn.
In December of 1877, Anton Vigelius sold his share of the brewery to Ulmer and retired from brewing, leaving Ulmer the sole proprietor of what had "grown to be one of the largest breweries in Brooklyn."28 Vigelius remained a well-known and active member of the German community as Vice President of the German Savings Bank, a Director of the Broadway (Williamsburg) Bank, and a member of the Arion Singing Society until his death in 1891.
Like many other breweries in Brooklyn, New York and throughout the country, the Ulmer brewery complex expanded over time to increase capacity and accommodate technological advances in the industry.
Around 1880, shortly after Ulmer purchased the lot at the corner of Beaver and Locust Streets, a large, storage-house addition to the main building was constructed on Beaver Street. A testament to the brewery's success, in 1885 a major building campaign was begun that included the brick office building and boiler and machine houses (designed by architect Theobald Engelhardt) facing Belvidere Street, as well as a large addition at the rear of the main brewery that served as a wash house and racking (keg-filling) room. Several years later, brewery architect Frederick Wunder designed a large wagon room, stable, and storage building to replace an existing frame stable building.
This three-story brick building and its additions, constructed c.1890, was the last major building constructed at the brewery. By the late 1880s, the William Ulmer Brewery and John Becker (Ulmer's son-in-law who lived in Vigelius's former home adjacent to the brewery, demolished) owned more than half of the block bounded by Beaver Street, Belvidere Street, Broadway and Locust Street.
Through the 1890s and first decade of the 20th century, the brewery continued to construct minor additions and interior alterations as needed, including the installation of steel framing for a new 236-barrel cooking tank in the main brew house in 1906, a year before Brooklyn reached its peak beer production. Although specific production statistics have not been found, the regular alterations to the buildings indicates that the Ulmer Brewery continued to be successful and expand production.
Upon his retirement in 1900, the William Ulmer Brewery was incorporated with Catharine Ulmer (his wife), John F. Becker and John W. Weber (Ulmer's sons-in-law) as directors and stockholders and his daughters, Catharine Becker and Caroline Weber as additional stockholders. Weber, an attorney by trade, became president and Becker, who had been working for Ulmer for over 20 years as a brewer, was named treasurer.
The brewery's success continued, allowing Weber to construct a large home at 101 Eighth Avenue in 1909 (within the Park Slope Historic District), while Becker continued to occupy Vigelius's former home behind the brewery. An active philanthropist who belonged to many charitable organizations, Ulmer died in 1907 at his home at 680 Bushwick Avenue. His wife died the following March, leaving a "large estate."
Unlike other 19th- and early 20th -century lager breweries in Brooklyn, no evidence has been found that Ulmer operated an adjacent beer garden or that the brewery sold any bottled or canned beer. Instead, both for personal profit and beer distribution opportunities, Ulmer invested extensively in real estate. By purchasing or building taverns and installing a proprietor, brewers could guarantee that their beer was the only one sold.
Advertisements and articles in the Brooklyn Eagle and other publications indicate that Ulmer owned several taverns.
In 1893, in consultation with Weber, he opened Ulmer Park along the waterfront in Gravesend. This large resort and hotel featured music, dancing, boating, bathing, a shooting gallery, bowling alley and other attractions, and mostly importantly served as a place for the sale of Ulmer's lager.
In 1901 Ulmer purchased Dexter Park, a popular baseball and football stadium located in Woodhaven, Queens, where Sunday "blue laws" were less strictly enforced than in Brooklyn, a clear advantage for lager sales. Additionally, in 1914 the William Ulmer Brewery constructed a pavilion with a restaurant and bar at the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Union Turnpike in Forest Hills, Queens, at the edge of Forest Park.
The William Ulmer Brewery closed with the passing of the Volstead Act, and its buildings were sold. The brewery retained ownership of the office and attached wagon house and storage additions, and maintained the buildings for use as a real estate office. Weber became president of the Ulmer Park Realty Company, owned by his wife and sister-in-law, while Becker, already in his 70s, likely retired. A few years prior to the repeal of Prohibition, in 1930, the company officially changed its name to William Ulmer Incorporated, signifying the company's permanent departure from brewing.
The Design of the Ulmer Brewery Buildings
The Ulmer Brewery complex consists of the main brew house and addition, office, engine and machine house, and stable and storage building. These buildings and other mid- to late-19th-century Brooklyn breweries show a similarity in form and design and feature details of American round arch design. This American industrial interpretation of the German Renaissance Revival or Rundbogenstil ("round-arch style"), which evolved in Germany in the 1820s, "synthesized classical and medieval architecture—particularly the round-arched elements of those style," according to Bradley.
These simply designed factory buildings use corbelled and other decorative brickwork, projecting brick piers, round arch window openings, and had parapets that sometimes varied in height and featured pediments, rather than applied ornament for interest and decoration. (Despite its name, buildings constructed in the American version of the style often used economical segmentally arch-headed window openings.) The
style was particularly well-suited to industrial and commercial buildings because of its reliance on brick and locally available stones, simplicity of detail, and structural expressiveness, as well as rapidity of construction, economy of materials and workmanship, durability, ample fenestration, and ease of adding extensions without grossly violating the original building fabric. Brick was the material of choice for most industrial buildings. It was inexpensive, durable, and easily supplied. More important, machine-pressed brick remained "the most fire-resistant building material available prior to the widespread use of concrete."
The American round-arch style was widely employed in the United States for factories, breweries, warehouses, and school buildings. Transmitted to this country through the immigration of German and Central European architects in the 1840s, as well as through architectural publications, the influence of the Rundbogenstil is clearly visible is the Ulmer Brewery buildings and other extant former brewery buildings in Brooklyn, many of which were located in the heavily German-populated Eastern District, owned by German immigrants and designed by German-immigrant architects or first generation German-Americans.
The first building at the brewery, the main brew house constructed in 1872, features many details characteristic of the American round arch style, including round arch-headed window and segmentally-arch-headed door openings with corbelled brick archivolts, projecting pilasters, and corbelled brickwork. Historic photos and illustrations of the complex indicate that the main brew house also featured pedimented parapets at the Beaver Street facade and a two-and-a-half-story, mansard-roofed tower, which are typical of 19th-century brewery architecture.
Between 1880 and 1885, shortly after Ulmer purchased the lot at the corner of Beaver and Locust Streets, a large, storage-house addition to the main building was constructed on Beaver Street. Similar in style to the original building, it featured a pedimented parapet, corbelled brickwork and round arch-headed window openings with corbelled brick archivolts. Like other 19th-century breweries, all of the operations likely took place in different sections of this four-story main building, which was divided into two buildings on the interior. As production expanded, the c.1881 addition along Beaver Street provided additional space for operations.
By 1887, maps indicate that the mashing of the malt and boiling took place on different floors of the building at the corner of Beaver and Belvidere streets, while in the remainder of the main brew house and its addition, ice was used to maintain cooler temperatures for fermenting, a much longer process. For the final step of the brewing process, the Ulmer Brewery took advantage of underground storage; Department of Buildings permits indicate that both sections of the main brew house have deep cellars, 20- and 34-feet deep.
The Ulmer brewery began a major building campaign in 1885; construction was begun on the two-story, brick office building and two- and three-story boiler and machine houses facing Belvidere Street, as well as a large addition at the rear of the main brewery. Dictated by expanding brewing capacity and changing brewery technology, the additions were designed by Eastern District architect Theobald Engelhardt.
Although not described specifically as brewery architect, Engelhardt worked on a number of brewery commissions and was also a prominent member of the German community. The new boiler and machine house building on Belvidere Street, which was connected to the southwest facade of the main brew house, was designed in the American round arch style, and features many details similar to its adjacent neighbor, including round arch-headed window openings with corbelled brick archivolts, projecting brick pilasters, and a decorative brick cornice.
Although it is only three stories in height, the machine house section of the building extends to the height of the four-story brew house, and the brick cornice, which features corbelled, denticulated and zigzag-patterned brickwork, extends across both buildings. This decorative brick cornice, characteristic of the inexpensive ornament applied to American round arch style factories, also extends across the lower, two-story, boiler-house section of the building and its side and rear facades. Designed with practical mechanical needs in mind, to house boilers and machinery, the tall first and second stories of the new building do not align with the adjacent brewery.
By 1887, maps indicate that an ice machine was located on the second story of the machine house, showing Ulmer's efforts to keep up to date with the latest brewing industry advances. Although it was not specifically cited in the permit, it is possible that this building was partially designed and constructed to accommodate this new technology. Also included in this building campaign was the construction of one-story addition at the rear of the main brew house that served as a wash house and racking room.
Constructed of brick, this addition was demolished in 1923 to allow for the construction of a parking lot in the former brewery courtyard.
Brewery architect Frederick Wunder designed the large wagon house, stable and storage building that faces Locust Street for the brewery in 1890. This three-story brick building and its additions, constructed in a similar round arch design as the other brewery buildings, was the last major building constructed at the brewery.
The one- and two-story wagon room and stable additions of the same building campaign were constructed as a rear addition to the office building, linking the Belvidere Street building with the new building fronting Locust Street. Both the northwest, Locust Street facade and the northeast, courtyard-facing facade, which was originally visible from Locust and Beaver streets, of the building are fully developed with features characteristic of the American round arch style, including segmentally arch-headed windows and doors with projecting brick lintels at the first floor; round arch-headed window openings with corbelled brick archivolts at the upper stories; bluestone window sills and string coursing; brick pilasters; and denticulated, channeled and corbelled decorative brickwork. Also characteristic of the style, a tall, pedimented parapet extends above the facade on the Locust Street side of the building and features the remnants of what appears to have been a round, terra-cotta ornament.
Original drawings (see illustrations) show that the courtyard-facing facade featured a two-story, central tower or monitor and a shorter tower at the building's northeast corner. (This shorter tower remains with an altered roof and attached fire escape.) The ground floor openings are raised at this facade, likely to accommodate horses, and the northeasternmost door opening (adjacent to the office) is large enough to permit the storage of wagons. By 1910, the Ulmer Brewery was using trucks for delivery, thereby diminishing the need for horses. The upper stories continued to be used for storage and later the third floor of the building was a cooperage.
While Ulmer's and other Brooklyn breweries display many Rundbogenstil characteristics, including Philadelphia brick facades with plain pilasters, decorative, patterned brickwork, and of course, round-arched openings accented with archivolts, the more elaborate office building complete with a terracotta company trademark, is the show piece of the brewing complex.
By the mid-1880s brewers and their architects were already attempting to show the wealth and success of their businesses through their brewery complexes, by creating a highly-visible corporate symbols, which could be used in company advertising. An article in the Brooklyn Eagle from 1886 described the counting houses of the S. Leibmann and Sons, Obermeyer and Liebmann, and Ulmer breweries as "not surpassed by anything of the kind in Broadway or Wall Street."
Designed in 1885 by Theobald Engelhardt, the office building features round arch-headed window openings, facade symmetry and a central projecting bay that are all characteristic of the Romanesque Revival style, which was also inspired by French medieval sources and the German Rundbogenstil.
Additional Romanesque Revival details include corbelled blind arches that decorate the pedimented parapet and corbelled archivolts. The terra cotta panels on the office building are of particular note. "OFFICE." above the front entry and the trademark "U" identify the original use and owner of the building, while a band of Queen Anne-inspired decorative panels separates the first and second floors. These floral- and foliate-motif panels were likely manufactured by the Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company, as very similar tiles appear in an 1895 catalog issued by the company. Other decorative details include, at the second floor, a slate-clad, faux mansard roof and projecting dormers, which were historically more decorative, round arch-headed, copper dormers.
The finely detailed iron gate, located to the north of the office building, which historically obscured the entry to the brewery courtyard, also features Queen-Anne inspired motifs and is likely original to the building. As previously described, the office was later expanded as part of the construction of the stable building on Locust, with one- and two-story wagon room, storage and stable additions, which were later partially raised one story to allow for additional storage.
Later Building History and Alterations
The bulk of the brewery complex was sold in the early 1920s. The large stable and storage building on Locust Street was sold in 1921, and resold within two years to the Artcraft Metal Stamping Corp. A manufacturer of light fixtures, the company later changed its name to Artcraft Metal and Electrical Products and occupied the building as a factory until c.1940, at times sharing the space with other metal fabricators and lighting manufacturers. The full height addition to the building at its northeast corner is an elevator shaft that was probably constructed c. 1932.63 Alterations to the Locust Street fenestration, including the enlargement of several openings and the installation of square-headed windows, were completed by c.1940. Artcraft retained ownership of the building until 1944, after which it changed hands several times (likely between tenants) before it was sold to a realty company in 1949. Metal fabricators and clothing manufacturers are listed as occupants there until at least the 1980s.
In 2002, a permit was issued by the Department of Buildings approving a change from factory to residential use. The building is currently divided into a several apartments per floor.
The main brewery building, including its additions and engine and machine houses along Belvidere Street, was sold in 1922. Brooklyn Department of Buildings records indicate that the Otis Elevator Company filed to install an elevator in the main brewery building a year earlier, perhaps in anticipation of its sale and reuse for another function. Marcus Leavitt, owner of M. Leavitt Flooring Co. purchased the property in 1923 and made alterations to convert the buildings from a brewery to light manufacturing.
Among the changes were interior alterations, the replacement of the interior wooden stairs with fire proof equivalents, the installation of metal fire escapes on the Beaver Street and Locust Street-facing side facades, window replacement with steel sash and other fenestration changes. New fireproof stair cases were installed just behind the Beaver and Belvidere Street facades, as evidenced on the exterior by the offset window openings and stair bulkheads at the roof. The enlargement of several of the round arch-headed windows on the Beaver Street facade may have taken place at this time, as well as the bricking up of windows at the first floor of both facades and at the rear facade, and the lengthening of window openings along Belvidere Street for the installation of doors.
The additions to the main brew house and storage addition, located to the rear of the Beaver Street facade, were demolished during this period to allow for the construction of the one-story parking garage that occupies most of the former brewery courtyard and has frontage on Locust and Beaver Streets. (This garage remained part of the same tax lot as the brewery buildings until c.1965, but is not included in this designation.)
The brewery building's parapet was reconstructed in 1936, replacing the pedimented and decorative brickwork with four-feet of plain brick. A sprinkler system was added in 1952, and the fire escapes and doors to reach them were replaced in 1958. Subsequent alterations have mainly focused on interior and plumbing, heating or other mechanical work.
Leavitt sold the property in 1924 to a realty company in which he was a partner and continued to occupy a warehouse there into the 1940s. Other building tenants included mainly clothing, shoe and handbag manufacturers, which occupied the building into the 1980s. Belvedere Improvement Company Inc. sold the property in 1931, and it changed hands again under foreclosure in 1937. It was purchased by Beaver Management Corp. in 1945. Since the 1960s, several deeds have been recorded against the lot, mostly between realty companies. An application, filed to convert part of the building from light manufacturing into residential units in 2001, was disapproved by the Department of Buildings; however, the Department of Finance currently classifies the building as an elevator apartment building with artists-in-residence. Its recent uses include a warehouse for an electronics importing company and studio space for an artist.
William Ulmer Incorporated, with Ulmer's grandson William Ulmer Becker as president, sold the office building to William H. Ludwig Inc. in 1952. The Ludwig company, an electrical appliance manufacturer located at 656 Bushwick Avenue, made several alterations to the building, including interior alterations and the construction of a small concrete block addition at the northwest corner of the lot, as well as changing the use of the building from office and brewery to office, factory and storage. William H. Ludwig Inc. retained ownership of the building for ten years before selling it to Twenty Starr Street Corporation, based next door at 21 Belvidere Street. Twenty Starr Street Corp. held the building for over twenty years, part of which time it is said to have been used for lamp manufacturing and storage. The office building was sold to its current owner in 1985.
Description
All of the main buildings of the Ulmer Brewery complex are extant, and occupy the northern portion of the block bound by Locust, Beaver, and Belvidere streets and Broadway in Bushwick. The complex consists of the main brew house and addition (71-83 Beaver Street), office (31 Belvidere Street), engine and machine house (35-43 Belvidere Street), and stable and storage building (28 Locust Street), occupying three separate tax lots. The buildings were historically situated around a central courtyard, which is now occupied by a one-story parking garage that is not included in this designation.
- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
race analysis: 100% Chinese !!
gender: Female
intelligence: 5.6
risk: 6.2
ambition: 6.2
gay factor: 1.3
honor: 5.8
politeness: 3.4
income: 6.0
sociability: 5.0
promiscuity: 5.9
archetype: Beta Boss
Personality Profile:
You are a power driven risk-taker. Your desire to obtain power quickly propels you to take large risks, both financially and socially. You are so effective and confident when it comes to making short term decisions at crucial moments that it almost becomes contagious. Your high confidence level leads you to focus on the rewards of your decisions, rather than over-calculating. Your directness may make others think you are rude. You know what you want and you want it now.
Some people consider you a political mastermind as you are able to take advantage of peoples strengths and weaknesses so effectively, that it enables you to undertake and achieve monumental tasks. Others tend to characterize you as confrontational, but you take this as a compliment, and in turn you characterize these people as push-overs. You would rather stand up for yourself and those you care about and face confrontation, than avoid confrontation and give in. You act promptly when it comes to making big decisions and thus others look to you to carry the burden of responsibility.
Your view of other types
You consider Academic Types to be a valuable resource of advice. You constantly interact with them to make better decisions and you respect the opinion of certain Academics. Artist types do not concern you for you look down on them, you believe they waste too much time. You like Charmers but you dont always trust them or bring them too close. You can relate to the Gambler types' risk taking personality but for the most part you do not trust them. You may have some things in common with Blue collar types, but for the most part you only interact with Blue collar and White collar types during the course of business. You feel no pity for Drifters. You believe that they are lazy.
Other types view of you
Academic Types view you as potential business clients and as great resources to expand their contacts. Therefore they treat you with respect. Artist types see you as egotistical and selfish and they may only interact with you during their employment. Blue collar and White collar types sometimes disagree with you, but they respect you for the most part. They may even be envious of your lifestyle. Charmer Types tend to like you and try to get close to you because you possess the intimidating factor and confrontational attitude that they lack. Gambler types regard your type as their main competition to be on top. Drifter Types tend to feel that you types are a bad tempered bully.
Alpha Boss:
- Most ambitious
- Makes the smartest decisions
- Occupations examples: Military general, Dictator, Organized crime boss, CEO of large company, Large Business owner (management/people oriented business operation)
Beta Boss
- More ambitious than Theta but less than Alpha
- Makes smarter decisions than Theta but less than Alpha
- Occupation examples: High/medium ranking military officer, Small/medium business owner (management/people oriented business operation), Gangster
Theta Boss
- Fears and distractions may affect your ambition
- Makes less wise decisions than Alpha and Beta
- Occupation examples: Manager, Low level criminal, entertainer
With the CCTV image applied to the scan, it was then possible to identify the post impact position of the ejected occupant in a detailed 3D scene model. This allowed us to confirm that the only opportunity for an occupant to leave the vehicle without being subsequently struck or ran over by it is following the rebound from the tree impact.
The Thing from Another World 1951
Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!
—Ned “Scotty” Scott
www.youtube.com/v/T5xcVxkTZzM Trailer
This is one of the major classics of 50s sci fi movies. Released in April of 1951, it was the first full-length film to feature a flying saucer from outer space, which carried a hostile alien. The budget and the effects are typical B-grade stuff, but the acting and pacing are well above the usual B levels. Kenneth Toby and Margaret Sheriden star. James Arness (more known for his westerns) plays The Thing.
Howard Hawks' early foray into the science fiction genre took advantage of the anti-communist feelings of the time to help enhance the horror elements of the story. McCarthyism and the Korean War added fuel to the notion of Americans stalked by a force which was single of mind and "devoid of morality." But in the end, it is American soldiers and scientists who triumph over the evil force - or the monster in the case of this film. Even today, this is considered one of the best of the genre.
Film review by Jeff Flugel. June 2013
There's not a lot new or particularly insightful I can offer when it comes to discussing the seminal sci-fi flick, The Thing from Another World that hasn't been written about ad naseum elsewhere. One of the most famous and influential of all 1950s creature features, it kicked off more than a decade of alien invasion and bug-eyed monster movie mayhem, inspired a host of future filmmakers (one of whom, John Carpenter, would go on to direct his own version of the story in 1982), and remains one of the best-written and engaging films of its kind.
Loosely (and I do mean loosely) adapted from John W. Campbell's novella, "Who Goes There?," The Thing is legendary director Howard Hawks' lone foray into the science fiction/ horror genres, but it fits comfortably into his filmography, featuring as it does Hawks' favorite themes: a group of tough professionals doing their job with ease, good-humored banter and practiced finesse; a bit of romance with a gutsy dame who can easily hold her own with the boys; and lots of overlapping, razor-sharp dialogue. Featuring a script by Charles Lederer and an uncredited Ben Hecht, The Thing is easily the most spryly written and funniest of all 50s monster movies. In fact, it's this sharpness in the scripting, and the extremely likeable ensemble cast of characters, rather than the now-familiar story and somewhat unimaginative monster design, that makes the film still feel fresh and modern to this day.
There's likely few people out there reading this who don't know the story of The Thing like the back of their hand, but here goes...When an unidentified aircraft crashes close to a remote research station near the North Pole, Captain Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey, in the role of his career) and his squad are dispatched there to investigate. Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) heads the scientific contingent there, and he informs Hendry that he thinks the downed craft is possibly "not of this earth." A joint team of soldiers and scientists head out to the crash site and find an actual, honest-to-goodness flying saucer lying buried under the ice.
The spaceship is destroyed while the men try to melt the ice around it with thermite bombs, but they find a lone, 8-foot-tall extraterrestrial occupant frozen nearby and bring the body back to the outpost in a block of ice. Dr. Carrington and his crew of eggheads want to study the thing, but Hendry is adamant that it should be kept as is until he gets word from his superior in Anchorage, General Fogerty. It wouldn't be a monster movie without something going pear-shaped, of course, and before you know it, a careless mistake results in the creature being thawed out of his iceberg coffin and going on a bit of a rampage, taking out a number of sled dogs and a few unsuspecting scientists along the way. The rest of the film details the tense battle between the surviving humans and the coldly intelligent, remorseless alien invader, which seems virtually unkillable, impregnable to cold, bullets and fire...
The set-up for the film, and how everything eventually plays out, might seem overly familiarly nowadays, but in 1951, this was cutting-edge stuff, at least in cinemas. The Thing plays as a veritable blueprint of how to make a compelling "alien monster-on-the-loose" movie. Howard Hawks not being particularly well-versed, or even interested in, science fiction per se likely worked to its benefit, as he ended up making, as he so often did in his other films, what is first-and-foremost a well-oiled entertainment, rather than simply a genre exercise.
Typical of a Hawks film, The Thing is meticulously designed, composed and shot, but in such a way as to appear offhand. Hawks almost never went in for showy camera angles or flashy effects. His technique was nearly invisible; he just got on with telling the story, in the most straightforward, unfussy way. But this easy, seemingly effortless style was very carefully considered, by a shrewd and knowing mind. As Bill Warren, author of one of the best (and certainly most encyclopedic) books about 1950s sci-fi filmmaking, Keep Watching the Skies, notes in his detailed analysis of the film:
As most good movies do, The Thing works in two areas: sight and sound. The locale is a cramped, tunnel-like base; the men are confined within, the Thing can move freely outdoors in the cold. Compositions are often crowded, with more people in the shot than seems comfortable, reinforcing the idea of confinement After the Thing escapes, only the alien itself is seen standing and moving alone.
This feeling of a cold, hostile environment outside the base is constantly reinforced throughout the film, and a real tension mounts when, towards the climax, the highly intelligent Thing, itself immune to the subzero arctic conditions, turns off the compound's heating, knowing the humans inside will quickly die without it. (The freaky, otherworldly theremin-flavored music by Dimitri Tiomkin adds a lot to the eerie atmosphere here.)
As groundbreaking and well-structured as the plot of The Thing was (and is), what makes the film play so well today is the great script and the interaction of a bunch of seasoned character actors, who toss off both exposition and pithy bon mots in such a low-key, believable manner. This is a truly ensemble movie, and the fact that it doesn't feature any big name stars really adds to the overall effect; no one really hogs all the limelight or gets the lion's share of good lines. Hawks was a director who usually worked with the biggest names in the business, but, much as in the earlier Air Force, he was equally at home working with a cast of rock-solid character actors.
All this talk of Howard Hawks as director, when it's actually Christian Nyby who is credited with the job, has long been a source of speculation with fans of the film. Todd McCarthy, in his bio Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood, seems to clear the issue up once and for all (though really, after viewing enough Hawks films, the results speak for themselves):
The perennial question surrounding The Thing From Another World has always been, Who actually directed it, Christian Nyby or Howard Hawks? The sum of participants' responses make the answer quite clear. Putting it most bluntly, (associate producer) Ed Lasker said "Chris Nyby didn't direct a thing. One day Howard was late and Chris said,'Why don't we get started? I know what the shot should be.' And I said, 'No, Chris, I think we'll wait until Howard gets here." Ken Tobey testified, "Chris Nyby directed one scene. Howard Hawks was there, but he let Chris direct one scene. We all rushed into a room, eight or ten of us, and we practically knocked each other over. No one knew what to do." Dewey Martin, Robert Cornthwaite and Richard Keinen all agreed that Hawks was the director, and Bill Self said, "Chris Nyby was a very nice, decent fellow, but he wasn't Howard Hawks."
Nyby had been Hawks' editor on a number of films, and Hawks apparently decided to help his collaborator establish a name for himself by allowing him directorial credit on the film. This seemingly altruistic gesture didn't mean that Hawks wasn't involved in virtually every aspect of the making of the film, however, and ultimately, The Thing did little for Nyby's directing career, at least on the big screen (he did go on to a long and busy career directing for numerous television programs, however.)
Bill Self was told at the time that Hawks didn't take directing credit on The Thing because it was planned as a low-budget film, one in which RKO didn't have much confidence. But, as critics have been saying ever since it was released, The Thing is a Howard Hawks film in everything but name. The opening scene of various members of the team bantering is so distilled as to be a virtual parody of Hawksian overlapping dialogue. Even more than Only Angels Have Wings, the picture presents a pristine example of a group operating resourcefully in a hermetically sealed environment in which everything in the outside world represents a grave threat. (3)
In addition to all the masculine camaraderie and spooky goings-on, one of the best aspects of The Thing is the fun, charming little tease of a romance between Capt. Hendry and Nikki (top-billed Margaret Sheridan). Nikki works as Prof. Carrington's assistant and is not merely the requisite "babe" in the film. True to the Hawksian norm, she's no pushover when it comes to trading insults with the men, nor a shrinking violet when up to her neck in perilous situations. Unlike most actresses in 50s monster movies, she doesn't utter a single scream in The Thing
and in fact, it's her practical suggestion which gives Bob, Hendry's ever-resourceful crew chief (Dewey Martin), the notion of how to finally kill the monster. Lederer and Hecht's screenplay hints at the backstory to Nikki and Pat's relationship in humorous and oblique ways, and their flirtation amidst all the chaos adds sparkle to the film but never gets in the way of the pace of the story. One nice little throwaway exchange near the finale encapsulates their verbal give-and-take, as Nikki playfully pokes the temporarily-befuddled Hendry, as his men scurry about, setting Bob's plan in motion.
Nikki: Looks as if the situation's well in hand.
Hendry: I've given all the orders I'm gonna give.
Nikki: If I thought that were true, I'd ask you to marry me.
Sheridan, a former model signed to a 5-year contract by Hawks, is quite good here, but after The Thing her career never really caught fire and she retired from acting a few years later. The closest thing to a star turn in the film is Kenneth Tobey as Capt. Hendry. Tobey racked up an impressive number of credits throughout his nearly 50-year-long career, generally as gruff, competent military men or similar types, and he was always good value, though it's as Capt. Hendry in The Thing that he truly shines. He consistently humanizes the no-nonsense, take charge man of action Hendry by displaying an easygoing approach to command. Most of Hendry's men call him by his first name, and delight in ribbing him about his budding romance with Nikki, and he responds to all this joshing in kind. When things get hairy, Tobey's Hendry doesn't have to bark his orders; it's clear that, despite the friendly banter, his men hold him in high esteem and leap to do his bidding at a moment's notice.
Many of the other members of the cast, while none of them ever became household names, will likely be recognizable from countless other roles in both film and television. Hawks gave Dewey Martin co-star billing in The Big Sky a few years later. Robert Cornthwaite kept busy for decades on stage and television, as well as in supporting roles in films such as Monkey Business, Kiss Me Deadly and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? John Dierkes (Dr. Chapman) and Douglas Spencer (Scotty) both had juicy roles in the western classic Shane, as well as many other movies too numerous to name. Sharp-eyed viewers will also recognize Eduard Franz, Paul Frees (he of the famous voice) and Groucho Marx's right-hand man on You Bet Your Life, George Fenneman, in pivotal roles. And of course we mustn't forget 6' 7" James Arness (years before becoming renowned as Marshall Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke) as the hulking Thing.
A quick note on the "remake": John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), a bleak, grisly and brilliant take on the story, was a box-office dud when first released, but has since attained well-deserved status as a modern classic. While most fans seem divided into two camps - those who love the more restrained, old-fashioned thrills of the original, and those who prefer the more visceral, paranoiac Carpenter version - I happen to treasure both films equally and revisit each of them often. The Carpenter version is by far the gutsier, unsettling one, emphasizing as it does the "trust no one," shape-shifting "the alien is one of us" scenario imagined by John W. Campbell, but the Hawks' film is the most fun, with a far more likeable array of characters, working together to defeat an implacable menace. Each has its own clear merits. I wouldn't want to do without either film, and frankly see no need to choose one over the other.
"Every one of you listening to my voice...tell the world. Tell this to everybody, wherever they are: Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.”
Acting Credits
Margaret Sheridan - Nikki Nicholson
Kenneth Tobey - Captain Patrick Hendrey
Robert Cornthwaite - Professor Carrington
Dewey Martin - Crew Chief
Douglas Spencer - Ned "Scotty" Scott
Eduard Franz - Dr Stern
Robert Nichols - Lieutenant Ken Erickson
William Self - Colonel Barnes
Sally Creighton - Mrs Chapman
John Dierkes - Dr. Chapman
James R. Young - Lieutenant Eddie Dykes
Norbert Schiller - Dr. Laurenz
William Neff - Olson
Allan Ray - Officer
Lee Tung Foo - Cook
Edmund Breon - Dr. Ambrose
George Fenneman - Dr. Redding
Tom Steele - Stuntman
James Arness - The Thing
Billy Curtis - The Thing While Shrinking
Asbestos has also been closely linked to a rare cancer, mesothelioma, which attacks the linings of the lungs and abdomen.
Someone came out with this visual poster of Twitter, weighted by followers. What are the patterns here? Why do they have large followings and what do the do on twitter? Does topic affect it? Gender? Promotion? Community leadership?
It's no surprise to me that daringfireball and majornelson are there. Mac and XBOX fans, yeah. Easy following. We have some TV types also. The two Twitter guys Ev and Biz might be an exception, it's their product.
Have fun! :)
Participants attending the Technical Meeting on Nuclear Power Cost Estimation and Analysis Methodologies held at the Agency headquarters in Vienna, Austria. 25 April 2018
Photo Credit: Dean Calma / IAEA
Analysis of iron in water from Pacific surface region by the Flow Injection analysis in the Chemistry Lab.
Young hipster worker writing on small notebook while meeting with colleagues in coworking space. Freelancer teamwork and brainstorm concept with vintage filter effect