If Mr. Brown Pelican is going to make an emotional appeal then he should also include a rational argument. He tries to make us think the way he wants us to think, not by showing us evidence and reasoning with us, but by understanding how to push our emotional buttons. The tone of Mr. Pelican's ethics is eerily reminiscent of that of intrusive backbiters of the late 1940s in the sense that my cause is to fight the warped, distorted, misshapen, unwholesome monstrosity that Mr. Pelican's solutions have become. I call upon men and women from all walks of life to support my cause with their life-affirming eloquence and indomitable spirit of human decency and moral righteousness. Only then will the whole world realize that according to Mr. Pelican, taxpayers are a magic purse that never runs out of gold.

Peats 'World of Electronics' - Statement

 

02.04.2012

 

It is with deep sadness and regret that the family owned business of Peats ‘World of Electronics’, the long established and well-known Dublin electronics retail company is to seek the appointment of a Liquidator in an upcoming voluntary creditor’s liquidation.

 

The Chairman of the business, Ben Peat, briefed the company’s 75-staff today at the company’s head-office store in Parnell St and told staff that the company could not continue to trade in light of its current financial constraints confirming that the company’s eleven stores around Dublin have closed with immediate effect.

 

Mr Peat told staff that a combination of recession impacts, unsustainably high rental costs and a changing marketplace in which online shopping was eating into high street retailing, meant that the business cannot continue to trade going into the upcoming lean summer. Mr Peat said that “the business generated 60% of its annual sales in the period November to January, and that a summer’s spend could not carry the business, to allow it to continue. It is evident in our experience that consumers have little discretionary spend at this time and sales volumes are up to 50% down on peak 2007 spend, while in parallel it has not been possible to achieve appropriate rental adjustment to enable a profit margin to be achieved to sustain business viability. The sector in which we operate has been disproportionately affected by the downturn, if we don’t close now our capacity to settle our affairs to best effect will only further deteriorate”, Mr Peat said.

 

Mr Peat told staff that “Trade hit its peak in 2007, with turnover that year of €24m, it has since re-trenched to less than half for the current year” and thanking staff, customers and suppliers, he continued, “the Company had a fine heritage for quality, decency and value, it became a popular name on the Dublin retail landscape and it’s departure from the high-street will be a loss to the tradition of family retailing in Dublin. Thanking customers he said, it is with deep regret that we have to close the doors of our ‘world of electronics business’, - we have tried very hard to establish solutions with suppliers and landlords that could have brought balance and sustainability back into our business. We have implemented extensive cost-reduction at all levels including payroll and terms of employment, but unfortunately it is beyond our power to continue in operation and we have to protect our staff, creditors, debtors and legal interests to best possible effect and do right by all concerned as far as is both humanly and financially possible. We cannot allow our situation to deteriorate further – as we do not want to compromise our capacity to secure the best possible outcome for all out of what is a difficult situation”

 

Thanking staff for their support and loyalty in a number of cases for over thirty years, Mr Peat said that staff will be paid their entitlements and redundancy due in full, and asked for their support for both colleagues and the business in the coming days, while the business settled its affairs to the very best of its ability to do so. He commented that over the years Peat’s staff have always been exceptional, there was one big extended family within which three generations of the Peat family still currently work.

 

Peats began life in Parnell Street in 1934 when Brigit and William Peat set up shop to sell wet cell batteries, bicycles, furniture and prams. All six of their children joined the business and their youngest son, Ben Peat is the current chairman. In its early years the company began to develop the electronics side of the business selling radiograms, followed by three-in-one hi-fi systems and contemporary products including repair services, to the present day sales of an assembly of electronic home entertainment products including flat screen TV’s, cameras, computer laptops and accessories.

 

Peats’ eleven stores are located throughout Dublin, with its head office in Parnell St; the Company also has stores in Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, College Green, Rathmines, Swords and in the Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge. It also operated a number of Sony Centre shops under the Sony Centre identity. These outlets are located in the Jervis Shopping Centre, on O’Connell St, in Dun Laoghaire, in the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre and also on Stephen’s Green, close to the Shelbourne Hotel.

 

All stores have now been closed and telephone calls will automatically be directed to a call centre to accommodate any enquiries arising, so that they can be logged and dealt with as efficiently and as soon as possible.

 

In making enquiries customers are invited to call 01-9023718 or to Email: admin@peats.com

The Photograph

 

A 9.5cm x 6cm glossy photograph.

 

On the back of the card is written:

 

"Taken at Toronto Exhibition.

August 1927.

Dad Mam and Vera with Auntie

Alice and Cousin Doris on the

Balcony".

 

The 1927 Canadian National Exhibition

 

The 1927 Canadian National Exhibition broke its previous attendance record by nearly 300,000 visitors.

 

In addition to the varied entertainments and usual commercial exhibits, highlights included an appearance by the Prince of Wales (with his younger brother, George), for the official opening of the Exhibition grounds’ new landmark, the Princes’ Gates.

 

Another notable draw that year was the opportunity to cheer the 174 swimmers who braved exhaustion and, reportedly, the lake’s particularly vicious eels, as part of a gruelling 21-mile swimming marathon which only three of the starters managed to complete.

 

The Nude Paintings

 

A surprisingly popular venue in 1927, however, was the exhibition’s art gallery, which nearly tripled its attendance over the previous year, in no small part because of a prolonged series of letters in the Toronto newspapers concerned with several paintings depicting nude subjects.

 

Although the CNE was perhaps better known in the early 20th. century for its raucous midway and various commercial and industrial features, art was part of the Exhibition from its first year in 1879.

 

The curators of the art gallery at the Exhibition were themselves part of the local arts community, and produced exhibits showcasing a variety of works, not just from Canadian artists, but from all over the world. The successes of the art exhibit each year had resulted in the erection of a purpose-built art gallery on the Exhibition grounds, on a site now occupied by a parking lot on the north side of Manitoba Drive.

 

The CNE’s 1927 art exhibit was reviewed in most of the major Toronto newspapers at its opening in late August. In addition to its review, the Star ran a separate article under the headline:

 

“Nudes Hung at Exhibition

Likely to Cause Controversy.”

 

The article specifically referred to George Drinkwater‘s Paolo and Francesca, and John Russell‘s A Modern Fantasy, for their realistic depictions of the human form.

 

The Star article described the content of both pictures, and sought an explanation from Fred S. Haines, a local artist and head of the commission which had assembled the art exhibit, who explained that:

 

"There are some of the modern

French nudes that are really vulgar,

but this is not like that type of thing.”

 

The same day, the Telegram also published a positive review of the exhibit, including praise for Russell’s A Modern Fantasy, and another painting showing nudity, Ernest Procter‘s Mischievous Boy. The Telegram article published photographs of both works, and specifically praised Russell’s painting for its interesting subject matter, use of colour, and:

 

"The exquisite grace of modelling in

the feminine figure in the foreground.”

 

Elsewhere in the same day’s paper, however, the Telegram printed a lengthy letter of protest attributed to “A Father,” which denounced:

 

"At least two pictures on view last

evening that are unwholesome,

unnecessary, and unwanted.

It doesn’t matter in the least whose

pictures they are, nor whether they

are great and beautiful works of art

or mere daubs.

Their effect on the mind of the boy

or girl a year or two past puberty

cannot be good, and might be hurtful

beyond measure.”

 

Alongside this letter, the Telegram published a response from Fred Haines, who explained that:

 

"Art reflects the thought and emotion

of its environment, and that if there are

serious pictures that appear to [A Father]

to overstep the bounds of good taste,

then I must answer that that is a result of

a condition and an attitude of mind that

is prevalent in society.”

 

Haines added that the committee had displayed works from around the world which reflected the best work currently being done, and that both of the unspecified works which had apparently caused offence in Toronto had previously been warmly received in Europe.

 

Over the next month, and for several weeks after the closing of the CNE, the Toronto newspapers published an incredible number of letters from the public, as people (including many visitors from out of town) debated the merits of the works on display. One Globe reader wrote:

 

“It does not require censoriousness but

only common decency to protest against

the display of these pictures where

thousands of young eyes can see them.

Were scenes such as they depict presented

on the stage of any theatre in this city, the

manager would be in the Police Court within

24 hours.”

 

Another Globe reader wrote:

 

“May I suggest that you call] upon all those

who are in favour of having an inquiry made

as to what persons are really responsible for

the outrage that has been committed upon

public morals and decency.”

 

Some readers condemned all the displayed paintings featuring nude forms, while others cited between one and three offending works. Drinkwater’s Paolo and Francesca and Rosalie Emslie‘s Comfort were mentioned by several letter-writers, but the chief source of controversy seems to have been Russell’s A Modern Fantasy.

 

John Wentworth Russell, born and raised in southern Ontario, had developed a reputation in his native Canada as a talented portrait artist.

 

He eschewed most schools and collectives, and publicly decried the growing Canadian interest in natural landscapes then being popularised by the Group of Seven. Much of his serious work featured the human form, and his work had been particularly warmly received in Paris, where he had lived intermittently since 1906.

 

Several of his works had been hung at the prestigious Salon in Paris, including A Modern Fantasy, which had itself earned the highest honour there earlier in 1927, contributing to its selection for exhibition at the CNE.

 

Writing in 2008, historian Jane Nicholas notes that while it is tempting to see the Exhibition controversy as a typical example of prudish “Toronto the Good,” there are several elements of the letters which reveal more nuanced anxieties. After all, this was hardly the first time that nude pictures had been on display in Toronto, and only some of the works on display had been a source of public complaint.

 

Nicholas suggests that whereas Toronto audiences may have been accepting of traditional, classical nudes, the 1927 paintings appeared to show more contemporary, everyday figures. The female figures are all shown with modern, bobbed hair, even in Drinkwater’s Paolo and Francesca, which depicted the adulterous couple described in Dante’s Inferno that is discovered (and killed) in flagrante.

 

In A Modern Fantasy, Nicholas writes:

 

"Russell announced a new public woman,

but in a traditional and controversial form

that fused old and new in strange ways.

Here was a woman of leisure casually lying

about in the nude, surveying her collection

of mass-produced, commercial goods.”

 

Nicholas notes that the use of various modern elements in the works played to anxieties concerning changes in the modern world, particularly those concerning sex.

 

Many of the letters objected explicitly to the venue at which the paintings were displayed, and the sort of audience that the gallery seemed to be attracting. The CNE drew visitors across classes, and some believed that the Exhibition gallery attracted people who would not usually visit the city’s primary gallery at the Grange. The inclusion of paintings viewed by some as salacious thereby blurred the traditional line between the perceived high art of the gallery and the baser appeals of the midway.

 

One reader with the pseudonym "Art Lover" wrote to the Star:

 

“I contend that these two pictures should

not be shown in a gallery which will be

visited by tens of thousands of boys and

girls, and unsophisticated young folks".

  

A Telegram reader wrote:

 

“Not one third of the people who are visiting

the art gallery daily would ever think of going

at all were it not for the fact that these two

pictures are on view within.”

 

A Peterborough resident wrote to the Star:

 

“By hanging the paintings in question they

gave the crude and vulgar an opportunity to

see what they would naturally see in such

paintings.”

 

While most of the complaints appear to have come from individuals, the Star reported that a formal objection had been filed by a deputation of women representing various women’s organisations in the city:

 

“The women urged that such pictures had

a dangerous effect on young minds and on

those who lacked artistic sense. One woman

said that after a somewhat similar picture had

been shown in Toronto some years ago, there

were a number of offences against women.”

 

The Toronto papers sent their reporters to the gallery to observe the behaviour of the visitors, and therein found the reactions they had clearly hoped to find:

 

“A man in blue strode into this octagonal

apartment (where A Modern Fantasy was

displayed) with two men friends. He looked

about him, and saw the large Russell.

Then he lifted up his voice so all the sixty

people in the apartment could hear, and

exclaimed, quite crudely, but truly, ‘Let’s get

out of here. We will spoil our eyes.'”

 

While the Telegram managed to find people who were outraged, the Star managed to find those who were shocked and embarrassed:

 

“Some people seemed to be ashamed of

being in the art gallery. Two prim ladies

walked into the room where the nude

pictures were hanging with their eyes

straight ahead of them. Then, as if upon a

prearranged signal, each flicked their eyes

sideways in a sly manner. One blushed, the

other whitened.”

 

After the close of the exhibit, the Star and Globe printed more letters by readers who were in favour of the works, and who insisted that they had seen none of the scandalised reactions at the gallery which had been reported in the press.

 

Gene LaVerne Devore wrote to the Globe:

 

“Three times I, who am an ardent lover,

stood before those much discussed

paintings, and three times I failed to see

‘blushing girls and snickering youths’

sneak past and dodge out the door.

I am not a married man, and on one of

those three occasions I was accompanied

by a young lady who is a typical product

of the twentieth century.

Side by side we stood and discussed

those paintings as we discussed others

under the same roof. I didn’t see her blush,

I didn’t blush myself, and we didn’t sneak

away abashed.”

 

People on both sides of the debate chastised the Toronto press for having generated the controversy themselves. One Star reader went so far as to suggest that the Telegram should be censured for having published photos of the nudes, and several pointed out that the letters claiming offence only enticed more people to view the paintings for themselves, accounting for the long lines outside the gallery.

 

The Canadian Forum wrote:

 

“Two or three skilfully emphasized and

suggestive reviews, and a few hundred

of their readers—perhaps one half of one

percent—decided that the Art Gallery was

for once worth visiting.

It would seem obvious to any unbiased

observer that the whole humiliating rumpus

was caused by the newspapers for reasons

best known to themselves.

Had the public been left to itself, the

comparatively few who are really interested

in pictures would have visited the gallery

and admired or condemned these pictures

as they found them.”

 

The newspapers reported with deliberate irony that the art gallery seemed unusually popular in 1927, and suggested that the art committee might have intentionally displayed shocking work in an effort to boost attendance.

 

Art commissioner Fred Haines denied this, but made no secret that he was happy about the spike in public interest. Haines commented:

 

“In the future, the art gallery will be one

of the supreme attractions. I figure that

the publicity given by the Telegram was

worth at least 30,000 admissions.”

 

The absurdity of the situation might be best summed up in one letter to the Star, in which the writer complained that:

 

"Having seen in the press news about there

being in the art gallery at the Exhibition certain

pictures of the nude that ought not to be there,

I decided to go and see those pictures so that

I could decide for myself about them.

But imagine my disgust, when, on reaching the

place, I could not get in owing to the long line

of people ahead of me.

Those people were going to see those pictures,

drawn by vulgar curiosity. If these pictures are

going to be shown anywhere else before leaving

the city, kindly let me know at the address

enclosed.”

 

At the close of the Exhibition, the Star reported that more than 158,000 had paid to see the art exhibit, nearly triple the total from the year before. The art committee promised to apply a stricter standard for selecting art in future years, and in 1928, Fred Haines told the Star that:

 

"To have a fine exhibit you must have

fine paintings…and to get the finest

pictures you must take nudes.”

 

Haines claimed the committee had indeed rejected some works for the 1928 exhibition which they thought some prude might object to, and boasted that:

 

“I went to particular care to get a

nude that no one could complain

about.”

 

Attendance failed to reach the lofty total achieved in 1927.

 

The publicity surrounding A Modern Fantasy appears to have helped establish John Russell as a maverick in the minds of the public. Russell visited Toronto during the 1927 exhibition and gave several interviews, but appears to have eluded most of the questions about the controversy, instead taking the opportunity to share some of his other views on art.

 

Over the coming years he became a clear favourite with local journalists for his willingness to speak his mind, once famously dismissing the Group of Seven as “The jazz band of Canadian art.” In a 1934 piece, the Toronto Star referred to Russell as:

 

“The bad boy of the pose

and paint industry.”

 

Russell had numerous exhibitions at the CNE in later years, and caused controversy again in 1935 when the centrepiece of his exhibit was The Spirit of the Island, a very large work depicting a naked young woman diving off a rock on the Toronto Island. Nevertheless, Russell remained welcome at the CNE and in demand, and was commissioned by the Exhibition the following year to produce a large work commemorating Vimy Ridge.

 

After the controversy over the 1927 nudes had died down, Saturday Night wrote an editorial, ridiculing the attention which had been given to the vocal minority who had expressed offence related to the nude paintings:

 

“It is astonishing that in this day of mental

hygiene and liberal sex education, the

prurient conception of the human figure

still exists.”

 

After addressing the subjective nature of art and the role that the Toronto dailies had played in provoking the controversy, the Saturday Night piece continued:

 

“No sound morality will ever be built up that

takes as its premise the theory that the

biological processes are degrading and that,

as a corollary, the human figure partakes of

the obscene.

There will be nudes at the Gallery next year

without a doubt, and it is our suggestion that

those who disapprove of such things go to

see them as often as possible.

They will soon realize that there is, after all,

very little about nude paintings to write to the

papers about.”

 

Images of the contentious paintings, which include full-frontal nudity, can be readily found on the Internet.

A few days ago I read that this facility is to be restored as a cafe or restaurant and I also discovered that the area was locally known as the "Four Corners of Hell" because crossroad junction of Kevin Street, New Street South, Dean Street and Patrick Street had a pub on each corner and became especially rowdy at closing time.

  

This caught me by surprise [when I first noticed it a few months ago] especially as I should have been aware that these facilities existed having gone to school in Leeson Street and college in Kevin Street. There are two separate entities - a small park and an underground public toilet.

 

Initially I thought that it was an old monument or memorial but upon seeing the entrance I realised that it was an underground public toilet block.

 

In the 1950s and 1960s there were about seventy public toilets in Dublin but all of them have been closed. The underground public toilet block at the junction of Kevin Street and New Street was one of a number that were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in response to an increasing demand for public facilities in the city. Underground facilities such as this were partially hidden from general view in order to satisfy Victorian perceptions of decency. It retains many of its historic features including railings, gates and decorative ventilation shaft.

Day #38

www.132daysofdarkness.com

 

Jeff was on another angry streak. It was the worst one since the month following Dad’s departure. It had been 7 years without him now and even though it hurt us all, Jeff was the only one still making a fuss about it. He was 17 for god sake, throwing tantrums like a constipated kid. It was really a sight. He yelled and screamed and cried and licked the snot off of his upper lip. I always wanted to film him freaking out, but our family 8mm took off with Dad and my part-time job mowing lawns only paid enough for mower maintenance and gas. How sweet it would have been though to project all 6’2 of Jeff onto the auditorium walls for all the kids he bullied to enjoy. With or without embarrassment, Jeff would eventually learn his lesson, but for now he was just one angry son of a bitch.

 

It was a particularly bad day for Jeff. The night before, he wrecked his car going head to head with some greasers in a Century after they revved on him. The confrontation began while out cruising Van Nuys and ended when Jeff lost it on the take off and whipped it into the curb. He broke the front axle and bent the frame; front corner panel was toast too. The next morning he had to catch the bus to school. He missed the 7:50 pick-up and was late to first period P.E. As punishment Coach Gunny made him come back during lunch and run laps. He quit after two and a half and walked up the bleachers towards the shade. He reached the top and rounded the announcer’s booth only to see Mandy Romero, the girl he’d been crushing on since September, making out with some guy who he swore was queer. To top off the day, he got chewed out by Mr. Copley, the new vice dean of students who had just moved here from the outback’s of Australia, or so we joked, for smoking in the locker-room.

 

I saw him walking up to the house. Mom was outside gardening and I was washing my grandma's car, a butter cream yellow 1950 Merc. "Jeffrey, Mr. Copley called today", Mom said with a cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth. "Yeah, and? You can't make me quit, you'd be a hypocrite." "Quit? Why would I make you quit? You need to be in school. Mr. Copley informed me you’re in danger of flunking the 11th grade. He recommended you stay for some of the after school study sessions in the library. It sounded like he was really concerned." Jeff scoffed. "Are you kidding me? Why would I willingly go to detention? Fuck Mom, are you that stupid?" Mom cussed more than any of us, but always acted surprised when we let it slip in front of her. "Jeffrey!" She shook her head. " Mom! God, Mr. Copley doesn't give two shits about me. He chewed me out once today and now he's calling my house, trying to bother me here too? Why can’t he just leave me alone?" Jeff was in many ways the man of the house since dad left and always called it "his house", in the way a homeowner would. "Jeffrey, I think you should give it a chance." "Oh so you’re on his side, huh Mom? You're gunna just believe that kangaroo fucker over your own son? Is that it Ma? Is that it?" All the while I had been laying low behind the Merc, enjoying the show from a safe distance. Jeff was so predicable. His hands for instance; they were balled into fists. Whenever he got tense he'd clinch his fists and start hitting anything with in arms reach. Usually it was the wall or the desk in our bedroom, but the more spectacular times included the front porch windows, all three of them, the particleboard door in the pantry, he left a big ol’ hole in that, and the finale the neighbors dog. Yup, he punched the neighbors dog straight in the mouth after it pissed on his catchers glove. I egged him on most of the time, but paid the price for it too. More often than not he'd catch me and lump me up pretty good. The Charlie-horses and monkey bumps wouldn’t loosen up for days. I couldn’t help myself though. I thought his little tantrums were hilarious, I still do.

 

Mom and Jeff were still going at it and creating quite a scene. I saw him move closer to mom, towering over her by nearly a foot. "Jeffery, calm down. The neighbors are staring." She smiled and waved to Fran, the nosey fat lady who lived across the driveway from our small bungalow. "God I hate you. You're the worst fucking mother in this entire city. No wonder dad left you." I had heard enough and started to cross the grass towards them. The running hose had made it soppy and muddy and I hated that feeling. "Yeah well he left you too Jeff. Must not have impressed him that much either." "Ah go fuck yourself." He knew he had gone too far, but when Jeff freaked out, he couldn't control his words or actions. You could see in his eyes that he was conscious of his irrationality, but being aware didn't stop him. Mom stared at him. "What Mom, WHAT? ... SAY SOMETH.." She slapped him. She slapped him good and hard and slapped him like he had never been slapped before. Fran ran inside to call the cops. Jeff clinched his jaw. He panted like an running asthmatic and held his eyes open so wide that even from a distance I could see the veins that held them inside their sockets. It had never happened before, but I knew it was going to happen now. Jeff cocked back and hit mom, square on the chin with a left hook. She fell, spinning on her way down, sending her pearl necklace and golden heart hairpin flying through the air, staining the lace around the neck of her blouse as she hit the soggy grass and curled up in agony. I ran, and Jeff was waiting for me with his fists up. I avoided him, ducked under two of his wide swings and headed straight for mom. The rage had taken Jeff at this point. I saw the coward in him come out through his glare, but his hubris was in control now and no matter how cowardly he felt in his core, a flow of prideful magma had hardened around it, suffocating any chance of decency arising. I tried to reason with this rock, "Jeff its over. Just get away from her, Just fucking get away." He lurked closer, still under the influence. "Jeff the cops are coming. I fucking hear their sirens man. If you're here when they show up you can bet you'll be spending the night in Van Nuys." He grinned and said, "Ain't nothing new to me." He was within arms reach now and I knew he'd hit either me or Mom, so I stood up and prepared to take the blow. I put my fists up and so did Jeff. He came straight for me and I jumped to the right. He came at me again and I jumped to the left. He came at me a third time and before I could jump Mom hit him across the head with a shovel. I locked eye’s with him as he collapsed, and in his descent I saw remorse. Mom saw it too and even though her cheek was red and her lips were fat and bloody, she forgave him and blamed the real monster, Dad. The cops ended up stopping by, but Jeff's antics were nothing new. When they saw him out cold on the front lawn they winked at us and kept on driving. Mom went inside and started dinner and I turned off the hose and put away the shovel. I finished up with Grammies Merc and helped Jeff off the grass before calling it a night.

 

East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was constructed in 1891-2 as a refuge for homeless girls by the Children’s Aid Society . Designed by renowned architect Calvert Vaux in a picturesque, High Victorian Gothic style in brick and sandstone with a Dutch-influenced stepped gable, this building was one of approximately twelve that the architect created for this organization in the 1880s and 90s. It was the only lodging house designed for girls and one of only a few surviving CAS buildings. The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 to help New York’s poorest children improve their lives through education and the advantages of “home-like” living quarters. Brace believed that it was necessary to remove poor children from the bad influences of their environment, where they often had no one to care for them and no opportunities for education, in order to improve their lives and alleviate the crushing poverty of the city.

 

He was able to enlist many wealthy supporters and established a strong organization that continues to exist for the benefit of children and their families today. The Children’s Aid Society employed several approaches to achieve its goals, including sending orphan children to homes in the Midwest where they could enjoy the “benefits” of a home in a more rural setting, lodging houses for homeless children and industrial schools where they were trained for trades and employment. The Children’s Aid Society ran the Elizabeth Home in this building until 1930 when it was sold to Benjamin Lust, a practitioner of a natural “water cure” for illnesses, who coined the term naturopathy. In 1946, the building was purchased by the Florence Crittendon League and used again as a residence for girls without other places to live, called Barrett House. In 1984, the building changed ownership again and was converted to co-op apartments.

 

Its picturesque façade is significant for its architecture and as an evocation of the working class history of the Lower East Side.

 

Development of the East Village Area

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area was populated by bands of Native Americans from the Lenape tribe. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. The main trail ran the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Inwood following the course of Broadway adjacent to present day City Hall Park before veering east toward the area now known as Foley Square. It then ran north with major branches leading to habitations in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side at a place called Rechtauck or Naghtogack in the vicinity of Corlears Hook. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods.2

 

Under the Dutch, most inhabitants of New Amsterdam lived south of Fulton Street, where they could be close to each other for protection and close to the harbor for the essential shipping activities on which the colony depended. North of the settlement, many wealthy families owned large estates, used as farms and plantations and as country retreats, especially for those recurring times when epidemics threatened the crowded population on the island’s tip. The area now known as the Lower East Side and the East Village was divided into a series of large farms, which by the mid-eighteenth century were owned by three families: the Stuyvesants, Rutgers and De Lanceys.

 

The Rutgers property ran from Chatham Square to Montgomery Street between the East River shore and Division Street. The De Lancey holdings consisted of two large parcels abutting the Rutgers property on the north and east, acquired by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey around 1741. Peter Stuyvesant, who came to the colony in 1647, owned a large working farm he called his Bowerie. It lay between present day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth Avenue to the East River.3 He owned about 40 slaves, most employed in farm work. This property remained in the ownership of Stuyvesant’s descendents for many years. By the mid-nineteenth century, Peter Stuyvesant’s grandson Gerardus still lived in the original family house. Gerardus’ sons, Petrus and Nicholas lived nearby and divided the property between them. Nicholas called his section Bowery while his brother’s was called Petersfield, and this area included the property on which the Elizabeth Home was constructed.

 

After slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827, many former slaves settled in several black enclaves, including that near the Bowery, another in Greenwich Village, and still another in the growing slum area that came to be known as Five Points. During the eighteenth century Greenwich Village had been a small rural hamlet, but also was the site of a number of summer estates for wealthy families from downtown Manhattan. Its population swelled during the large cholera and yellow fever epidemics that struck in the early nineteenth century. The 1830s brought a huge economic boom to New York, attracting many more people and a great need for more commercial space as well as housing. African-Americans and other poor people were forced northward as more land was opened to development for the upper classes.

 

The areas around Great Jones, Bleecker and Bond Streets were all being paved and built up with “genteel residences”4 while Lafayette Place and St. Mark’s Place developed into some of the city’s most fashionable addresses. Seeking to take advantage of this boom, Petrus Stuyvesant began to subdivide his property in the 1830s and sell lots for development in the 1840s. Many of the buyers of these lots were large landholders who purchased extensive property and built speculative homes here, waiting for the housing need to catch up. These individual houses were first rented, and then sold to middle class families.5 Middle class residents however, did not stay too long in this section.

 

By the 1850s, the population of New York soared, due primarily to an influx of European immigrants as well as newly-freed African-Americans who were drawn to Manhattan because of the availability of jobs.6 Immigrants had been arriving in New York continuously and already by 1825, over one fifth of the population of New York was foreign born. In the 1840s, many of these immigrants were Irish who started coming in large numbers looking for work after the collapse of Irish agriculture and the rapid industrialization that displaced many workers.

 

Germans had always had a strong presence in New York, but after the failed revolutions of 1848, 70,000 more arrived in New York, fleeing “land shortages, unemployment, famine and political and religious oppression.”7 Many were poor and unskilled and tried to find housing in Manhattan’s notorious slum known as Five Points but the Irish and free Blacks who were already there did not welcome them. Although they were all classified as German, this name covered a multitude of ethnicities, and people tended to subdivide themselves, preferring to live among others who came from the same native communities and regions. The German immigrants first congregated in the five-block span between Canal and Rivington Streets, but the newcomers were forced to look elsewhere as landlords continued to crowd more and more people into inhuman living conditions.

 

They moved northward, up the eastern side of Manhattan island, pushing out existing residents of this area, including the African-Americans who had been there.8 Some of the existing homes in what is now the East Village9 were subdivided or changed into boardinghouses, while others were torn down to make way for tenement buildings, constructed to fit more people into the same space. Eventually the area north of Division Street up to 18th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River filled with German immigrants until it became the third largest concentration of German speakers in the world.10 This section came to be known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, Dutchtown, or Deutschlandle and was “the first large immigrant neighborhood in American history that spoke a foreign language” and remained the major German-American center in the United States for the rest of the century.11

 

German businesses congregated near Broadway creating a lively commercial strip, while various German groups created institutions to remind them of home and to help ease their way in their new lives. The Staats-Zeitung was the most popular of many German language newspapers. The German Dispensary helped with the health needs of the community, while the Ottendorfer Branch of the Free Circulating Library provided books in their native tongue. Social and other support organizations organized around a place of origin or a particular outlook or activity. German shooting clubs became popular12 as did clubs for music, such as the Aschenbroechel Verein. Beer gardens and dance halls such as Scheffel Hall provided places for lively entertainment.13

 

The City’s Poor

 

The poor German immigrants who lived in Kleindeutschland did not have the wherewithal to take advantage of these institutions. They could barely find a place to sleep and a way to feed their families.

 

Since its earliest years, New York has dealt with the poor and helpless among its population with a combination of benevolence and disdain. When the Dutch West India Company sent a group of Dutch orphans to the colony “to be bound out as apprentices and servants” in 1656, Peter Stuyvesant established the first public home for orphans and an “Orphan Masters’ Court.”14 Generally however, under the Dutch, religious organizations were expected to care for the city’s poor. Under the English, in 1693, the Common Council passed its first “poor rate” tax to enable them to distribute fuel, clothes, food and cash to the “deserving” poor and established an almshouse on Broad Street for those who were unable to care for themselves.15 A two-story brick building was constructed on the Common in 1736, housing a mix of the city’s poor along with the unruly as well as convicted criminals, all of whom were required to attend prayer services and work if they were physically able, so they would not be a “Burthen to the Publick.”

 

With time, the gap between the rich and poor grew, and increasing numbers of people needed financial help to overcome problems that were sometimes created by illness or the death of a spouse. The city provided more and more “outdoor relief” and also had to build more almshouses to accommodate the growing need. Religious and philanthropic organizations also helped, their efforts usually involving “education in the habits of self-discipline and the self-reliance necessary to survive in a wage-based economy… to instill prudence, decency, sobriety, thrift, punctuality” since poverty was usually seen as “moral turpitude, not misfortune.”17 In 1806, the Isabella Graham Society for the Relief of Poor Widows opened an orphanage where poor children “could be brought up to lead productive lives,” that eventually led to the formation of the Orphan Asylum Society.18

 

By the early nineteenth century, only half of all children in New York attended school even though the traditional apprenticeship system for learning trades and behavior no longer existed. Many children were caught stealing or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior and the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents began in 1823 to try to deal with these problems. The first New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 to house children under sixteen years old, and the authorities used religion and education to try to redeem the children brought there.19

 

By the 1850s, conditions for the poor were only getting worse. The huge numbers of immigrants coming into New York increased the competition for jobs and housing, and crowded conditions led to higher rates of illness and crime. Efforts of groups such as the American Tract Society were comprised of preaching and giving away bibles, while the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was able to attract the interest and donations of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens. They managed to get more needy people into almshouses on Blackwell’s Island, build a new one for the able-bodied poor, and get a new truancy law passed that enabled the police to round up delinquent children to get them off the streets.20

 

Children’s Aid Society

 

The Children’s Aid Society, another in a wide variety of efforts to deal with the problem of poor and uneducated children, was started by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 and continued under his leadership for the next 37 years. Brace graduated from Yale University and studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary. After a trip to Europe, during which he traveled in England with Frederick Law Olmsted,21 Brace began serving with Rev. Pease at the Five Points Mission in 1852. He was discouraged that the traditional methods of outreach were not helping change the lives of the people he saw. He also was struck by the large numbers of boys and girls who apparently had nothing useful to do and no one to look after them, and who seemed to be headed only for lives of crime. He decided that the most effective way to change conditions for the poor was to reach these children and try to change their circumstances

 

He wanted to “help the helpless, neglected children of the city to help themselves to become good and useful citizens.”23 Typically, their families could not care for them and they were sent out on the streets to fend for themselves, or to find some way to bring money or food back home.24 Because they were small, they were often preyed on by unsavory types who sent them out to steal, or they sold things on the streets or helped organ grinders in their trade. Boys would steal, sell newspapers or hawk matches, while many girls were forced into prostitution. 25 Street gangs developed to offer some protection for these wretched children who often slept on steam grates or in the remains of burned out buildings.

 

Brace believed that if he could show these children that someone cared about them, educate them to have good habits such as industry and self-control, and help them achieve some basic skills, they could get jobs and improve their lives. He felt that “home life was better than institutions and that self-help was better than alms.”26

 

From its beginning, the work of the Children’s Aid Society involved several separate efforts. The most radical and well-known was “placing out.” Over the course of the first forty years, the organization took 97,738 children from New York, and sent them by train to situations away from New York City, usually with “Christian families” in the Midwest where they were supposed to enjoy the benefits of a good home life in a rural setting. While some did in fact become essentially members of these families and benefitted from the experience, others were put to work in stores and on farms, in conditions close to indentured servitude. Brace felt that this effort was very positive because he believed that it was important to completely change the circumstances of these children’s lives in order to have a positive impact.

 

“The effort to place the children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see.”27

 

Since Brace could not remove every poor child from the bad influences of the city, he also made local efforts. These included the development of a series of lodging houses and industrial schools located around the city. The lodging houses were places a homeless child could come so he or she did not have to sleep on the street, with separate facilities for boys and girls. A young person could stay for a night or two if his difficulty was temporary, or he could stay for extended periods, and be assured of receiving food and a bath, as well as shelter. If they could pay, the children were asked for a small amount so that they felt they were paying their own way, rather than accepting charity, or they were asked to help with certain chores. These lodging houses eventually offered evening or morning classes to help the children with reading and writing, and specific skills that could help them gain employment.

 

The Newsboys’ Lodging House was opened in a building at Fulton and Nassau streets in 1854. The liveliness and ingenuity of the newsboys had a special resonance with Brace, who admired these qualities but felt they needed to be channeled into some productive enterprise. By 1928, the Children’s Aid Society ran seven lodging houses, located throughout the city.28

 

Brace saw that many poor children did not attend public school, either because they could not afford proper clothes, or because they had to work to help their families, so Brace established the Industrial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society to educate these children.29 The Industrial Schools taught reading and writing and character building, as well as skills such as carpentry for boys and cooking and laundering for girls. They also trained children to work on machines that might help them gain employment, such as sewing machines and typewriters, filling a gap left by the public schools. They provided clothes if needed, as well as a hot meal, and were non-sectarian. The Children’s Aid Society found that different groups had different needs, so they organized specific schools for Italian, German and “Colored” children, and later started medical and dental clinics for these children as well.

 

They became active in legislative efforts to promote their cause, such as working for the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of 1874. They started mothers’ groups to train them for this most important task, and day care centers for those who had to work. They eventually opened homes for sick and convalescing children, a school for crippled children, kindergartens, summer camps and playgrounds. While the Children’s Aid Society no longer runs lodging houses and schools, it continues to exist today, providing a variety of social services to New York children and their families.

 

Elizabeth Wheeler Home for Girls

 

The first lodging house for girls, called “The Girls’ Temporary Home,” was opened at 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1863 and during its first nine months, this building served 597 girls. The intention of this facility was to be “a resting place, a temporary home for any girl without friend or family in the city . . . to gain time to seek reputable employment” as well as a place where they could get help and advice.30 The Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society of 1889 called this girls’ home “one of the most successful and economical of all the branches of the Society,” but noted that there was a great need for an additional building for this facility.31 In the Annual Report of the following year the writer was even more adamant. “. . . we feel deeply the lack of accommodations, and look forward earnestly to the time when, with increased facilities, much more can be accomplished.”32

 

They reported that during the previous year, there had been 15,533 lodgings in the house, 49,324 meals served, 45 girls trained on typewriters and 72 girls trained on sewing machines, with 178 girls sent to situations and employment.33

 

In July 1891, the property at 307 East 12th Street was purchased by Emily Wheeler and conveyed by her to the Children’s Aid Society.34 The home was given by Mary B. Wheeler, Mary B. Ceccarini and Emily B. Wheeler in memory of Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler.35 The Elizabeth Home was designed by the preeminent architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.36 The home opened with a festive dedication in 1892, and included dormitories as well as single bedrooms for girls, sitting rooms, a reading room, office, dining rooms and kitchen, and rooms fitted with sewing machines and typewriters.

 

Calvert Vaux

 

Calvert Vaux 37 was one of the most prolific and influential architects working in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. His picturesque buildings and romantic landscape designs were constructed in numerous cities and towns and his books had a wide-ranging audience, contributing to the vogue during this period for interesting and picturesquely styled buildings. Vaux, trained in architecture, landscape design and planning, came from England to the United States in 1850 to work with A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York as a partner in his Bureau of Architecture. They specialized in the creation of picturesque English country houses and also began the planning of the grounds around many government buildings in Washington, D.C. After Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux began a partnership with Frank Clarke Withers, with whom he designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse .

 

Vaux’s book of house designs, Villas and Cottages was modeled on Downing’s highly popular Cottage Residences and became a standard for the genre.

 

Vaux relocated to New York City where, in 1858, he and Frederick Law Olmsted entered the competition for Central Park with their plan for a “Greensward,” the first public park in the country . Their design, based on the tradition of English landscape gardening, became a major influence in the development of public parks throughout the country. Vaux was responsible for the design of many of the architectural features of the park, including the bridges, and the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain. He went on to design numerous projects with Olmsted under the auspices of the landscape firm, Olmsted, Vaux and Company . These included Prospect Park in Brooklyn , Riverside, Illinois , Morningside Park , and Riverside Park .

 

Vaux designed many public buildings, institutions and grounds in various cities. These included the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut , Hudson River State Hospital and Grounds , the Grounds for Gallaudet College in Washington , the grounds of Parliament buildings in Ottawa , and the park system for Buffalo, NY. With Jacob Wrey Mould, who had come earlier from England and contributed many designs for Central Park, Vaux developed a Master Plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History .

 

Around 1873, Vaux began a partnership with George Kent Radford , a civil engineer, that was to last for eighteen years. This partnership was formalized as the architectural division of Vaux & Co., Landscape Architects in 1876. In addition to numerous designs for the Children’s Aid Society during the last part of his career, Vaux designed a High Victorian Gothic townhouse for Samuel J. Tilden in New York and the grounds for Tilden’s country estate, Greystone, in Yonkers, New York . Vaux had a long and varied career, from private homes for the wealthy to model tenements for the poor, from the landscape of individual estates, to the layout for entire cities. His designs helped establish the standard aesthetic of the late nineteenth century, both in building and landscaping and he is known as one of the founders of the field of landscape architecture.

 

Calvert Vaux and the Children’s Aid Society

 

Vaux became increasingly interested in the way architecture could be used to better the lives of unfortunate members of society and devoted much of the last part of his career to this cause. He was a careful observer of the first model tenement competition in 1879, sponsored by the journal, Plumber & Sanitary Engineer. In 1880, he designed a block of model tenements on First Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets for the Improved Dwellings Association. These apartments had windows in each room, central courtyards for improved air circulation and roof-top gardens for the residents.38

 

Calvert Vaux was a friend of Charles Loring Brace who lived in a house Vaux designed in Hastings, New York. By the late 1870s, Brace’s organization was successful and well-funded enough to want to construct its own lodging houses, in order to create the exact type of structure they needed. In 1879, Vaux designed their first purpose-built building, the East Side Boys’ Lodging House and Industrial School on East Broadway and Gouveneur Street . The picturesquely designed, 3 ½ story, brick and brownstone building had steeply pitched roofs and held dormitories, classrooms, and a well-furnished reading room as well as a dispensary and sick room. The free-standing building was a far cry from the dingy tenements of the area and was hailed in the press as “Christianity solidified in brick and mortar.”39

 

Vaux went on to design more than a dozen buildings for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, a very important part of his work. These included four lodging houses, among them the West Side Lodging House at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street and the Tompkins Square Lodging House and Industrial School at 8th Street and Avenue B , and five industrial schools that had similar facilities without the beds. This latter type included the Mott Street Industrial School at 256-258 Mott Street , and the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School .

 

The 44th Street Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School was the first to display a large, front-facing, stepped gable. According to the Society’s 46th Annual Report of 1888, this element came from “an old Nuremburg house called the ‘Petersen’ building, [which] is one of the most picturesque in the city.”40 This lodging house was marked by steep gables, dormer windows and oriole towers, in keeping with Vaux’s intentions to create a home-like and visually interesting composition, but also was “appropriately reminiscent of the city’s Dutch heritage.”41 Most of Vaux’s buildings that were built in the following years employed this design element.

 

The Children’s Aid Society buildings were both domestic and institutional, intended to be an ornament to a part of the city the ugliness of which is particularly in need of some relief. It is a fortunate circumstance that the objects of the Children’s Aid Society require it to undertake its building operations in quarters where, but for its efforts, it is unlikely that there would be any architecture worth looking at or discussing.42

They were usually free-standing structures, with highly varied rooflines that provided visual interest and variety. Vaux believed that,

In any architectural design, the separate groups of forms may be, in themselves, attractive, or the building may be splendid in its general conception of masses, or rich in its varied and charming detail, but it will be defective as an architectural composition if it fails in its sky-line.43

 

Vaux’s rooflines were usually faced with slate or tile, and consisted of mansard roofs with steeply pitched towers, conical roofs or front-facing stepped gables. These buildings were built of brick and sandstone, common and inexpensive materials that were deemed to give a picturesque effect. Vaux tried to site them on corner lots because he felt that two perspectives gave him a chance to create a more interesting design. He used projecting oriels, large windows, dormers and chimneys in an attempt to create a home-like atmosphere for the neglected children who came here. Faithful to his earliest design theories, Vaux worked to evoke the imagery of a snug country inn in the middle of New York City.44 By varying the placement of the entrance as well as the size and placement of the window openings, he created a lively façade, ornamented solely with decorative brickwork such as string courses and recessed panels.

 

Design of the Elizabeth Home for Girls

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, the last of this group designed by Vaux has the picturesque characteristics common to Vaux’s other designs although its 40-foot-wide, mid-block site required a more restrained composition. It has two asymmetrical sections, with the entrance sited off center, in the western side. The eastern section is topped by the typical stepped gable while the western side has a mansard roof with two dormer windows, a reverse arrangement from that of the House of Reception on West 23rd Street . The windows are placed along continuous sills, providing some unity in a façade of varied window sizes, shapes and groupings. Unlike many of the other CAS buildings, this one has no projecting oriel window, but here the entrance is given special emphasis by its projecting surround topped by a balustraded balcony.

 

While not as elaborate as some of the other CAS buildings, the Elizabeth Home is a distinctive building that would have provided the sense of “hominess” so desired by both the architect and the organization. Located on a block of brick-fronted rowhouses, this building is obviously different, but not enough to be jarring. Rather, it continues to add interest and variety to the streetscape.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1895, the Children’s Aid Society hired architects Clinton & Russell to create a two-story addition on the north of the building to house a laundry.45 Another alteration, in 1915, added bedrooms in three floors above this addition.46 In 1901, the Children’s Aid Society acquired the adjacent property at No. 311 East 12th Street and converted it into an addition to the Elizabeth Home.47

 

In 1930, the Society moved its operations to West 134th Street and sold both of these buildings to Dr. Benedict Lust, a promoter of natural healing.”48 Lust, a German immigrant with degrees in osteopathy and medicine, believed in natural healing, including a “water cure” and organized the Naturopathic Society of America. He established the American School of Naturopathy which offered a post-graduate curriculum in naturopathy, chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.49

 

Upon Lust’s death, the buildings were purchased by the Florence Crittenton League and remodeled and reopened in 1948 as a private shelter for girls aged 16-21, called Barrett House.50 The Crittendon League was started in 1883 by Charles N. Crittenton, a wealthy New York drug supply manufacturer.51 Originally called the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls and Night Mission for Fallen Women , it was named after his late daughter and was established as a shelter for troubled and runaway young girls, many of whom were orphaned, and as a mission for women of ill repute. In the late 1880s, the group started a shelter and mission on Bleecker Street that gained renown for its midnight gospel readings. By the turn-of-the-century, the Crittenton Foundation operated in many large

 

U.S. cities and was expanding its services in New York. In 1913, the group relocated its headquarters to West 27th Street and in 1946 purchased the former Children’s Aid Society buildings in order to be able to care for more residents and offer expanded services. The home’s residents were generally referred there by courts, clinics and private agencies and given a variety of therapies to help them emotionally, while keeping them out of the House of Detention.

 

In 1982, the building was sold to a developer and in 1984 it was re-opened as co­op apartments.

 

Description

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls is a four story brick-faced building set on a raised basement. Built originally on a street of townhouses , the forty-foot-wide façade blends in by appearing to be two buildings. The western section is two bays wide and holds the building’s main entrance, in the eastern bay of the first story. The raised basement has a pair of large windows framed by a sandstone lintel and watertable and fronted by an iron grille, while the areaway is marked by a non-historic iron fence. The entrance, reached by a short concrete stairway with non-historic iron railings is emphasized by a projecting brick enframement embellished by small, terra-cotta ornament, string courses and globe lights. It is capped by a projecting hood supported on stone brackets. The entrance consists of a paneled door with a large glass light flanked by paneled side sections.

 

A plain, sandstone lintel separates it from the large, round-headed glass transom that is subdivided into small squares. A pair of plain rectangular windows on a continuous sill is in the western bay of the first story. The second story has a single window in the western bay and, in the eastern bay, is a double multi-light, non-historic door that leads to a small, balustraded balcony formed by the projecting hood over the entranceway. At the third story, two pairs of narrow, rectangular windows share a common sill and a smooth sandstone lintel. A simple, corbelled brick cornice separates the roof from the floor below. This section has a mansard roof pierced by two dormer windows with bell-shaped roofs and flanked on the western side by a stepped parapet wall that projects above the roof.

 

A tall, prominent chimney rises between the two sections. Its plain brick facing is marked by several narrow string courses. The section on the east is topped by a stepped, front-facing gable with a decorative sandstone molding that echoes the steps. Each floor contains grouped window openings linked by continuous sills and sometimes lintels. The fourth story has three, round-headed windows capped by a continuous, rounded brick molding. The third story has four evenly-spaced windows under a plain, continuous stone lintel, while the second story has two pairs of windows under stone lintels and a sill that runs across the entire section. There are five windows with transoms and a continuous stone sill and lintel at the first story, and two individual windows fronted by iron grilles at the basement level. A third window has been converted to an entrance, with a non-historic door and light.

 

A broad sandstone lintel and watertable is located at the top of the basement level, creating a strong distinction between it and the rest of the building. A non-historic iron fence shields the areaway.

 

- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Washington DC, The Walter E. Washington Convention Center, the afternoon of March 1, 2015. Around one hundred social justice activists affiliated with Code Pink, Jewish Voice For Justice, AVAAZ, US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation, Boycott From Within, Answer Coaltion and other peace and faith groups demonstrate in front of the Convention Center to protest the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) yearly DC meeting. AIPAC is regarded by many as the most powerful lobbying group in town. AIPAC has a policy agenda that's out of step with the values of most Jewish Americans and other participants in civilized society but they call the tune because our corrupt political culture is fueled by money, not decency. In an act of peaceful civil disobedience, five demonstrators, all women, were arrested for failing to obey police orders to remove themselves from the granite in front of one of the Convention Center's many doorways. They were given three warnings before being arrested. I photographed one of women as she was being lead away in plastic handcuffs. "I'm a Jewish mother!" she proclaimed. I gave her the 'thumbs up'.

Most of the DC cops kept their cool but when some of the demonstrators got in their face a brief scuffle ensued. Some of us locked arms and and helped lift up one of the Code Pink ladies who was almost knocked down onto the steps by a DC officer who lost it.

Brooklands Austin Morris Day 2015

 

This Bentley, with shooting brake body, is a 1934 second series 3 ½ Litre ‘Derby’ built car.It was originally delivered with a Park Ward open tourer body to Alexander Duckham, of oil fame, at a 10% discount and with his special-order spare wheel, side-mounted strangely on the off-side.At the outbreak of the second World War he donated the car, together with another 4 ¼ model he also owned and a couple of houses, to the RAF Benevolent Fund. The car then disappeared until around 1955 when it passed through the hands of John Hind & Co. Ltd. of Hanover Square and then, via keepers Thompson, Buckingham and Gray, was found, by the present keeper, in the late 1970’s in a West Sussex private garage. The car was decorated overall, including the then fitted P 100 headlamps, with Dulux cream paint, the tin and brush being discovered in the car.

The ‘woodie’ body is grafted on from windscreen rearwards, retaining all the original front bits, windscreen, running boards and rear wings. It is conjecture that, as the body is competently constructed but not in true coach-maker fashion, the likelihood is that the car was converted during the unpleasantness or thereafter to become ‘load carrying’, so attracting extra petrol coupons. It may also be that the car was partly destroyed by enemy action, as there is still one complete tracer bullet hole in the front off-side brake drum, with suitably welded-up shoes behind!

When found, it rejoiced in Rover P4 seats in a parlous state upon which, in 1980, the present keeper’s youngest daughter nearly first saw the light of day in darkest France. They and she survived the ordeal until the innards were replaced with ex-vintage front seats and home-made rear appointments in order to meet the demands of decency and the 21st Century!

The car is used regularly but infrequently and is a favourite with some as a wedding carriage. She has made appearances in such diverse areas as Windsor Castle before HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, in ‘Classic Car Weekly’ and the front cover of the BDC Derby Bentley Technical Scheme Newsletter !

View the official Migulski Art Gallery

Early career, Sister, London (1975–1980)

Main articles: Sister (band) and London (heavy metal band)

At the age of 17, he moved to Los Angeles[1] and began various jobs such as working at a liquor store[1] and selling vacuums over the phone[1] while he auditioned for bands. He eventually joined the group Sister,[1] led by Blackie Lawless,[20] after answering an ad in the Recycler for a bass player.[21] Soon after recording a demo, Sixx was fired from Sister[21] along with bandmate Lizzie Grey.[3]

Sixx and Grey formed the group London soon afterwards, in 1978.[3][21] During this time, he legally changed his name to Nikki Sixx.[1][21] After a number of lineup changes, London added former Mott the Hoople singer Nigel Benjamin to the group recording a 16-track demo in Burbank.[21] After the departure of Benjamin, along with the failure to find a replacement, Sixx departed London.[21] The group would go on to feature Sixx's former Sister band mate Blackie Lawless (later of W.A.S.P.),[21] Izzy Stradlin (then of Hollywood Rose, later of Guns N' Roses) and drummer Fred Coury (later of Cinderella).[3]

In 2000, a number of the London demos recorded with Sixx were included on London Daze by Spiders & Snakes, led by former London guitarist Lizzie Grey.[3]

[edit]Mötley Crüe (1981–present)

Main article: Mötley Crüe

In 1981, Sixx founded Mötley Crüe with drummer Tommy Lee, later being joined by guitarist Mick Mars through an ad in the local newspaper he was reading, then by singer Vince Neil with whom Tommy had attended high school.[1][7] The band decided to self-record their debut album, Too Fast for Love, which was subsequently released in November 1981 on the band's own Leathür Records label.[1] After signing with Elektra Records they re-released the album.[1] The band then went on to record and release Shout at the Devil, raising the band to national fame.[1][7] They issued two more albums, Theatre of Pain in 1985 and Girls, Girls, Girls in 1987,[1][7] followed by Dr. Feelgood in September 1989.

Unlike his bandmates, Nikki Sixx became addicted to heroin. Nikki Sixx, from The Heroin Diaries: "Alcohol, acid, cocaine... they were just affairs. When I met heroin it was true love." He estimates he overdosed "about half a dozen times".[1][22]

On the night of December 23, 1987, Sixx was declared dead for two minutes after a heroin overdose, only to be revived by paramedics with two adrenaline shots to the heart[1] (this incident was the inspiration for the song "Kickstart My Heart").[7] In an interview, Sixx states that after he was declared dead, the ambulance arrived and one of the paramedics in the ambulance was a Mötley Crüe fan. "Apparently, the paramedic took one look at me and said, 'No one's gonna die in my ambulance.'" He also recalled having an out of body experience while being revived. When Nikki came into the hospital, he ripped the tubes out of his nose and escaped into the parking lot where two girl fans gave him a ride home wearing just a pair of leather pants. At the time, Nikki's near death experience did not do much to change his ways. Not long after returning home, he shot up in his bathroom and passed out until the next morning, where he found the needle he had used the night before still dangling from his arm. On an earlier trip to London, Sixx overdosed at a dealer's house and the dealer apparently tried to beat the life back into him with a bat. Afterward, the dealer dumped Sixx into a nearby dumpster. Sixx recounted the incident in The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, saying, "I had overdosed in London exactly a year earlier: Valentine's Day 1986. We had played the Hammersmith Odeon".[23]

This incident was the inspiration behind the lyric "Valentine's in London, found me in the trash" from the Mötley Crüe song "Dancing on Glass".

  

Nikki Sixx and Mick Mars performing onstage with Mötley Crüe, on June 14, 2005 in Glasgow, Scotland

Soon after his overdose, he and his bandmates went into rehab. In 1989, the band produced their most successful record,[1][7] Dr. Feelgood, with producer Bob Rock. The album stayed on the charts for 114 weeks after its release. After releasing the compilation album Decade of Decadence, that included a new version of "Home Sweet Home", in 1991, Neil departed the group and was replaced by John Corabi formerly of The Scream.[7] They released one self titled album with Corabi, in 1994, before firing him and releasing Generation Swine with Neil returning as lead vocalist.[7] In 1999, Tommy Lee left the group and formed Methods of Mayhem. He was replaced by former Ozzy Osbourne drummer Randy Castillo.[7] The group remastered and reissued all of their studio albums as well as releasing a new album titled New Tattoo in 2000.[7] Due to Castillo's illness, former Hole drummer Samantha Maloney filled in for Castillo for the subsequent tour.[7] The group went on hiatus soon after before reuniting in 2004, during which Sixx declared himself sober.[7] A 2001 autobiography entitled The Dirt packaged the band as "the world's most notorious rock band". The book made the top ten on The New York Times Best Seller list and spent ten weeks there.[7]

In 2006 Mötley Crüe completed a reunion tour featuring all four original members[7] and embarked on a co-headlining tour with Aerosmith, called "The Route of All Evil".

In April 2008, the band announced the first Crüe Fest, a summer tour, that featured Sixx's side project Sixx:A.M., Buckcherry, Papa Roach and Trapt.[24] On June 24, 2008, Mötley Crüe released their ninth studio album, Saints of Los Angeles, with Sixx credited as either writer or co-writer on all tracks. The second Crüe Fest, Crüe Fest 2, commenced a year after the first and featured Charm City Devils, Drowning Pool, Godsmack, and Theory of a Deadman, in addition to Mötley Crüe themselves.

Sixx is controversial for an October 30, 1997 incident at Greensboro Coliseum in which during a Mötley Crüe concert he goaded the audience to physically attack a security guard for repeatedly punching a female fan.[25] In May 2001, Sixx addressed the issue and claimed he had apologized to the victim of the incident.[26]

Sixx wrote most of Mötley Crüe's material, including tracks such as "Live Wire", "Home Sweet Home", "Girls, Girls, Girls", "Kickstart My Heart", "Wild Side", "Hooligan's Holiday" and "Dr. Feelgood". In the 1990s, all four members began contributing to the material on the albums.

Sixx is currently touring with Mötley Crüe, which is the opening act for Kiss, on The Tour 2012.

[edit]58 (2000)

Main article: 58 (band)

In 2000, Sixx formed the internet based side project 58 with producer Dave Darling, guitarist Steve Gibb (formerly of Black Label Society and Crowbar) and drummer Bucket Baker.[4] They released one single, titled "Piece of Candy", and their debut album, Diet for a New America, also in 2000 through Sixx's Americoma label and Beyond Records.[4] The group did not tour and was described by Sixx as "strictly an artistic thing."[26]

[edit]Brides of Destruction (2002–2004)

Main article: Brides of Destruction

Brides of Destruction were formed by Sixx[7] and Tracii Guns[2] in Los Angeles 2002 initially with the name Cockstar[5][27] after Mötley Crüe went on hiatus and Guns left L.A. Guns. Sixx also invited former Beautiful Creatures guitarist DJ Ashba to join the group however he declined to focus on his solo band, ASHBA. Ashba would eventually join Sixx in Sixx:A.M..[28]

After a few lineup changes, that included Sixx's former Mötley Crüe band mate John Corabi,[5] keyboardist Adam Hamilton[5] and drummer Kris Kohls of Adema,[5][29] the group was composed of Sixx, Guns, singer London LeGrand and drummer Scot Coogan formerly of Ednaswap and Annetenna.[5]

They were advised by radio programmers that the name Cockstar would not be announced on air.[27] They briefly adopted the moniker Motordog before settling on Brides of Destruction.[27][30][31]

They entered the studio with producer Stevo Bruno to begin recording what would become Here Come the Brides. The Brides played their first show opening for Mudvayne and Taproot on November 14, 2002 at the Ventura Theatre in California.[32][33]

After signing a deal with Sanctuary Records,[5][34][35] the group released Here Come the Brides in 2004, with the album debuting at number 92 on the Billboard 200[36] selling over 13,000 copies.[37] A tour of the US, Europe, including an appearance at Download Festival in the United Kingdom,[38] and Australia followed.

On October 25, 2004 it was announced that the group were to go on hiatus while Sixx reunited with Mötley Crüe for a reunion tour.[7][39] The group continued without Sixx, however, with Guns adding former Amen bassist Scott Sorry to the group as Sixx's replacement.[40]

The second Brides of Destruction album, titled Runaway Brides, released in 2005 featured three songs co-wrote by Sixx during the Here Come the Brides sessions.[41]

[edit]Sixx:A.M. (2006–present)

Main article: Sixx:A.M.

Sixx formed the group Sixx:A.M. in 2006, initially to record an audio accompaniment to his autobiography The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star,[6] with friends producer/songwriter James Michael and guitarist DJ Ashba (Guns N' Roses, formerly of Beautiful Creatures and BulletBoys).[6][42] They recorded and released The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack in August 2007 through Eleven Seven.[6] The single "Life Is Beautiful" received strong radio and video play[43] peaking at #2 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks.

The band made their live debut at Crash Mansion on July 16, 2007. They performed five songs from the album, with former Beautiful Creatures drummer Glen Sobel filling in on drums. On April 15, 2008, Sixx:A.M. announced they would be touring as part of Mötley Crüe's Crüe Fest.[24] The tour began on July 1, 2008, in West Palm Beach, Florida.[44] During Crüe Fest, Papa Roach drummer Tony Palermo served as a touring drummer for the band. A deluxe tour edition of The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack was released on November 25, 2008, which included a bonus live EP entitled Live Is Beautiful which features recorded performances from the band's summer tour.

In April 2009, both Sixx and Michael confirmed that the band were in the studio, recording new material. Sixx added that the new material is "inspiring. it feels like we may have topped ourselves on this album coming up, and can't wait for you to hear what it sounds like."[45] In 2010, the group continued recording the album with plans to release it by the late 2010/early 2011 with the group bringing in Paul R. Brown to shoot the video for the album's first single.[46][47] During an interview in July, Sixx stated that the album was almost finished.[48][49]

With the release of "Lies of the Beautiful People" in April 2011, Sixx took to a feud with Facebook.[50] Having posted stills from his photography book 'This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life, Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx' on Facebook, the social network deemed a shot portraying a porn star to contravene the site's rules on pornography, and deleted it. Dissatisfied with the ruling, Sixx encouraged fans to replace their profile pictures with a similar shot of the same female performer. When over 250,000 did so, the act resulted in a number of fans having their Facebook accounts deleted. Sixx's criticism of Facebook centered around his consideration of the original photograph being art - and should therefore have been judged by different standards of decency. Source: Wikipedia

East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was constructed in 1891-2 as a refuge for homeless girls by the Children’s Aid Society . Designed by renowned architect Calvert Vaux in a picturesque, High Victorian Gothic style in brick and sandstone with a Dutch-influenced stepped gable, this building was one of approximately twelve that the architect created for this organization in the 1880s and 90s. It was the only lodging house designed for girls and one of only a few surviving CAS buildings. The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 to help New York’s poorest children improve their lives through education and the advantages of “home-like” living quarters. Brace believed that it was necessary to remove poor children from the bad influences of their environment, where they often had no one to care for them and no opportunities for education, in order to improve their lives and alleviate the crushing poverty of the city.

 

He was able to enlist many wealthy supporters and established a strong organization that continues to exist for the benefit of children and their families today. The Children’s Aid Society employed several approaches to achieve its goals, including sending orphan children to homes in the Midwest where they could enjoy the “benefits” of a home in a more rural setting, lodging houses for homeless children and industrial schools where they were trained for trades and employment. The Children’s Aid Society ran the Elizabeth Home in this building until 1930 when it was sold to Benjamin Lust, a practitioner of a natural “water cure” for illnesses, who coined the term naturopathy. In 1946, the building was purchased by the Florence Crittendon League and used again as a residence for girls without other places to live, called Barrett House. In 1984, the building changed ownership again and was converted to co-op apartments.

 

Its picturesque façade is significant for its architecture and as an evocation of the working class history of the Lower East Side.

 

Development of the East Village Area

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area was populated by bands of Native Americans from the Lenape tribe. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. The main trail ran the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Inwood following the course of Broadway adjacent to present day City Hall Park before veering east toward the area now known as Foley Square. It then ran north with major branches leading to habitations in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side at a place called Rechtauck or Naghtogack in the vicinity of Corlears Hook. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods.2

 

Under the Dutch, most inhabitants of New Amsterdam lived south of Fulton Street, where they could be close to each other for protection and close to the harbor for the essential shipping activities on which the colony depended. North of the settlement, many wealthy families owned large estates, used as farms and plantations and as country retreats, especially for those recurring times when epidemics threatened the crowded population on the island’s tip. The area now known as the Lower East Side and the East Village was divided into a series of large farms, which by the mid-eighteenth century were owned by three families: the Stuyvesants, Rutgers and De Lanceys.

 

The Rutgers property ran from Chatham Square to Montgomery Street between the East River shore and Division Street. The De Lancey holdings consisted of two large parcels abutting the Rutgers property on the north and east, acquired by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey around 1741. Peter Stuyvesant, who came to the colony in 1647, owned a large working farm he called his Bowerie. It lay between present day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth Avenue to the East River.3 He owned about 40 slaves, most employed in farm work. This property remained in the ownership of Stuyvesant’s descendents for many years. By the mid-nineteenth century, Peter Stuyvesant’s grandson Gerardus still lived in the original family house. Gerardus’ sons, Petrus and Nicholas lived nearby and divided the property between them. Nicholas called his section Bowery while his brother’s was called Petersfield, and this area included the property on which the Elizabeth Home was constructed.

 

After slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827, many former slaves settled in several black enclaves, including that near the Bowery, another in Greenwich Village, and still another in the growing slum area that came to be known as Five Points. During the eighteenth century Greenwich Village had been a small rural hamlet, but also was the site of a number of summer estates for wealthy families from downtown Manhattan. Its population swelled during the large cholera and yellow fever epidemics that struck in the early nineteenth century. The 1830s brought a huge economic boom to New York, attracting many more people and a great need for more commercial space as well as housing. African-Americans and other poor people were forced northward as more land was opened to development for the upper classes.

 

The areas around Great Jones, Bleecker and Bond Streets were all being paved and built up with “genteel residences”4 while Lafayette Place and St. Mark’s Place developed into some of the city’s most fashionable addresses. Seeking to take advantage of this boom, Petrus Stuyvesant began to subdivide his property in the 1830s and sell lots for development in the 1840s. Many of the buyers of these lots were large landholders who purchased extensive property and built speculative homes here, waiting for the housing need to catch up. These individual houses were first rented, and then sold to middle class families.5 Middle class residents however, did not stay too long in this section.

 

By the 1850s, the population of New York soared, due primarily to an influx of European immigrants as well as newly-freed African-Americans who were drawn to Manhattan because of the availability of jobs.6 Immigrants had been arriving in New York continuously and already by 1825, over one fifth of the population of New York was foreign born. In the 1840s, many of these immigrants were Irish who started coming in large numbers looking for work after the collapse of Irish agriculture and the rapid industrialization that displaced many workers.

 

Germans had always had a strong presence in New York, but after the failed revolutions of 1848, 70,000 more arrived in New York, fleeing “land shortages, unemployment, famine and political and religious oppression.”7 Many were poor and unskilled and tried to find housing in Manhattan’s notorious slum known as Five Points but the Irish and free Blacks who were already there did not welcome them. Although they were all classified as German, this name covered a multitude of ethnicities, and people tended to subdivide themselves, preferring to live among others who came from the same native communities and regions. The German immigrants first congregated in the five-block span between Canal and Rivington Streets, but the newcomers were forced to look elsewhere as landlords continued to crowd more and more people into inhuman living conditions.

 

They moved northward, up the eastern side of Manhattan island, pushing out existing residents of this area, including the African-Americans who had been there.8 Some of the existing homes in what is now the East Village9 were subdivided or changed into boardinghouses, while others were torn down to make way for tenement buildings, constructed to fit more people into the same space. Eventually the area north of Division Street up to 18th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River filled with German immigrants until it became the third largest concentration of German speakers in the world.10 This section came to be known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, Dutchtown, or Deutschlandle and was “the first large immigrant neighborhood in American history that spoke a foreign language” and remained the major German-American center in the United States for the rest of the century.11

 

German businesses congregated near Broadway creating a lively commercial strip, while various German groups created institutions to remind them of home and to help ease their way in their new lives. The Staats-Zeitung was the most popular of many German language newspapers. The German Dispensary helped with the health needs of the community, while the Ottendorfer Branch of the Free Circulating Library provided books in their native tongue. Social and other support organizations organized around a place of origin or a particular outlook or activity. German shooting clubs became popular12 as did clubs for music, such as the Aschenbroechel Verein. Beer gardens and dance halls such as Scheffel Hall provided places for lively entertainment.13

 

The City’s Poor

 

The poor German immigrants who lived in Kleindeutschland did not have the wherewithal to take advantage of these institutions. They could barely find a place to sleep and a way to feed their families.

 

Since its earliest years, New York has dealt with the poor and helpless among its population with a combination of benevolence and disdain. When the Dutch West India Company sent a group of Dutch orphans to the colony “to be bound out as apprentices and servants” in 1656, Peter Stuyvesant established the first public home for orphans and an “Orphan Masters’ Court.”14 Generally however, under the Dutch, religious organizations were expected to care for the city’s poor. Under the English, in 1693, the Common Council passed its first “poor rate” tax to enable them to distribute fuel, clothes, food and cash to the “deserving” poor and established an almshouse on Broad Street for those who were unable to care for themselves.15 A two-story brick building was constructed on the Common in 1736, housing a mix of the city’s poor along with the unruly as well as convicted criminals, all of whom were required to attend prayer services and work if they were physically able, so they would not be a “Burthen to the Publick.”

 

With time, the gap between the rich and poor grew, and increasing numbers of people needed financial help to overcome problems that were sometimes created by illness or the death of a spouse. The city provided more and more “outdoor relief” and also had to build more almshouses to accommodate the growing need. Religious and philanthropic organizations also helped, their efforts usually involving “education in the habits of self-discipline and the self-reliance necessary to survive in a wage-based economy… to instill prudence, decency, sobriety, thrift, punctuality” since poverty was usually seen as “moral turpitude, not misfortune.”17 In 1806, the Isabella Graham Society for the Relief of Poor Widows opened an orphanage where poor children “could be brought up to lead productive lives,” that eventually led to the formation of the Orphan Asylum Society.18

 

By the early nineteenth century, only half of all children in New York attended school even though the traditional apprenticeship system for learning trades and behavior no longer existed. Many children were caught stealing or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior and the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents began in 1823 to try to deal with these problems. The first New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 to house children under sixteen years old, and the authorities used religion and education to try to redeem the children brought there.19

 

By the 1850s, conditions for the poor were only getting worse. The huge numbers of immigrants coming into New York increased the competition for jobs and housing, and crowded conditions led to higher rates of illness and crime. Efforts of groups such as the American Tract Society were comprised of preaching and giving away bibles, while the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was able to attract the interest and donations of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens. They managed to get more needy people into almshouses on Blackwell’s Island, build a new one for the able-bodied poor, and get a new truancy law passed that enabled the police to round up delinquent children to get them off the streets.20

 

Children’s Aid Society

 

The Children’s Aid Society, another in a wide variety of efforts to deal with the problem of poor and uneducated children, was started by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 and continued under his leadership for the next 37 years. Brace graduated from Yale University and studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary. After a trip to Europe, during which he traveled in England with Frederick Law Olmsted,21 Brace began serving with Rev. Pease at the Five Points Mission in 1852. He was discouraged that the traditional methods of outreach were not helping change the lives of the people he saw. He also was struck by the large numbers of boys and girls who apparently had nothing useful to do and no one to look after them, and who seemed to be headed only for lives of crime. He decided that the most effective way to change conditions for the poor was to reach these children and try to change their circumstances

 

He wanted to “help the helpless, neglected children of the city to help themselves to become good and useful citizens.”23 Typically, their families could not care for them and they were sent out on the streets to fend for themselves, or to find some way to bring money or food back home.24 Because they were small, they were often preyed on by unsavory types who sent them out to steal, or they sold things on the streets or helped organ grinders in their trade. Boys would steal, sell newspapers or hawk matches, while many girls were forced into prostitution. 25 Street gangs developed to offer some protection for these wretched children who often slept on steam grates or in the remains of burned out buildings.

 

Brace believed that if he could show these children that someone cared about them, educate them to have good habits such as industry and self-control, and help them achieve some basic skills, they could get jobs and improve their lives. He felt that “home life was better than institutions and that self-help was better than alms.”26

 

From its beginning, the work of the Children’s Aid Society involved several separate efforts. The most radical and well-known was “placing out.” Over the course of the first forty years, the organization took 97,738 children from New York, and sent them by train to situations away from New York City, usually with “Christian families” in the Midwest where they were supposed to enjoy the benefits of a good home life in a rural setting. While some did in fact become essentially members of these families and benefitted from the experience, others were put to work in stores and on farms, in conditions close to indentured servitude. Brace felt that this effort was very positive because he believed that it was important to completely change the circumstances of these children’s lives in order to have a positive impact.

 

“The effort to place the children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see.”27

 

Since Brace could not remove every poor child from the bad influences of the city, he also made local efforts. These included the development of a series of lodging houses and industrial schools located around the city. The lodging houses were places a homeless child could come so he or she did not have to sleep on the street, with separate facilities for boys and girls. A young person could stay for a night or two if his difficulty was temporary, or he could stay for extended periods, and be assured of receiving food and a bath, as well as shelter. If they could pay, the children were asked for a small amount so that they felt they were paying their own way, rather than accepting charity, or they were asked to help with certain chores. These lodging houses eventually offered evening or morning classes to help the children with reading and writing, and specific skills that could help them gain employment.

 

The Newsboys’ Lodging House was opened in a building at Fulton and Nassau streets in 1854. The liveliness and ingenuity of the newsboys had a special resonance with Brace, who admired these qualities but felt they needed to be channeled into some productive enterprise. By 1928, the Children’s Aid Society ran seven lodging houses, located throughout the city.28

 

Brace saw that many poor children did not attend public school, either because they could not afford proper clothes, or because they had to work to help their families, so Brace established the Industrial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society to educate these children.29 The Industrial Schools taught reading and writing and character building, as well as skills such as carpentry for boys and cooking and laundering for girls. They also trained children to work on machines that might help them gain employment, such as sewing machines and typewriters, filling a gap left by the public schools. They provided clothes if needed, as well as a hot meal, and were non-sectarian. The Children’s Aid Society found that different groups had different needs, so they organized specific schools for Italian, German and “Colored” children, and later started medical and dental clinics for these children as well.

 

They became active in legislative efforts to promote their cause, such as working for the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of 1874. They started mothers’ groups to train them for this most important task, and day care centers for those who had to work. They eventually opened homes for sick and convalescing children, a school for crippled children, kindergartens, summer camps and playgrounds. While the Children’s Aid Society no longer runs lodging houses and schools, it continues to exist today, providing a variety of social services to New York children and their families.

 

Elizabeth Wheeler Home for Girls

 

The first lodging house for girls, called “The Girls’ Temporary Home,” was opened at 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1863 and during its first nine months, this building served 597 girls. The intention of this facility was to be “a resting place, a temporary home for any girl without friend or family in the city . . . to gain time to seek reputable employment” as well as a place where they could get help and advice.30 The Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society of 1889 called this girls’ home “one of the most successful and economical of all the branches of the Society,” but noted that there was a great need for an additional building for this facility.31 In the Annual Report of the following year the writer was even more adamant. “. . . we feel deeply the lack of accommodations, and look forward earnestly to the time when, with increased facilities, much more can be accomplished.”32

 

They reported that during the previous year, there had been 15,533 lodgings in the house, 49,324 meals served, 45 girls trained on typewriters and 72 girls trained on sewing machines, with 178 girls sent to situations and employment.33

 

In July 1891, the property at 307 East 12th Street was purchased by Emily Wheeler and conveyed by her to the Children’s Aid Society.34 The home was given by Mary B. Wheeler, Mary B. Ceccarini and Emily B. Wheeler in memory of Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler.35 The Elizabeth Home was designed by the preeminent architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.36 The home opened with a festive dedication in 1892, and included dormitories as well as single bedrooms for girls, sitting rooms, a reading room, office, dining rooms and kitchen, and rooms fitted with sewing machines and typewriters.

 

Calvert Vaux

 

Calvert Vaux 37 was one of the most prolific and influential architects working in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. His picturesque buildings and romantic landscape designs were constructed in numerous cities and towns and his books had a wide-ranging audience, contributing to the vogue during this period for interesting and picturesquely styled buildings. Vaux, trained in architecture, landscape design and planning, came from England to the United States in 1850 to work with A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York as a partner in his Bureau of Architecture. They specialized in the creation of picturesque English country houses and also began the planning of the grounds around many government buildings in Washington, D.C. After Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux began a partnership with Frank Clarke Withers, with whom he designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse .

 

Vaux’s book of house designs, Villas and Cottages was modeled on Downing’s highly popular Cottage Residences and became a standard for the genre.

 

Vaux relocated to New York City where, in 1858, he and Frederick Law Olmsted entered the competition for Central Park with their plan for a “Greensward,” the first public park in the country . Their design, based on the tradition of English landscape gardening, became a major influence in the development of public parks throughout the country. Vaux was responsible for the design of many of the architectural features of the park, including the bridges, and the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain. He went on to design numerous projects with Olmsted under the auspices of the landscape firm, Olmsted, Vaux and Company . These included Prospect Park in Brooklyn , Riverside, Illinois , Morningside Park , and Riverside Park .

 

Vaux designed many public buildings, institutions and grounds in various cities. These included the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut , Hudson River State Hospital and Grounds , the Grounds for Gallaudet College in Washington , the grounds of Parliament buildings in Ottawa , and the park system for Buffalo, NY. With Jacob Wrey Mould, who had come earlier from England and contributed many designs for Central Park, Vaux developed a Master Plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History .

 

Around 1873, Vaux began a partnership with George Kent Radford , a civil engineer, that was to last for eighteen years. This partnership was formalized as the architectural division of Vaux & Co., Landscape Architects in 1876. In addition to numerous designs for the Children’s Aid Society during the last part of his career, Vaux designed a High Victorian Gothic townhouse for Samuel J. Tilden in New York and the grounds for Tilden’s country estate, Greystone, in Yonkers, New York . Vaux had a long and varied career, from private homes for the wealthy to model tenements for the poor, from the landscape of individual estates, to the layout for entire cities. His designs helped establish the standard aesthetic of the late nineteenth century, both in building and landscaping and he is known as one of the founders of the field of landscape architecture.

 

Calvert Vaux and the Children’s Aid Society

 

Vaux became increasingly interested in the way architecture could be used to better the lives of unfortunate members of society and devoted much of the last part of his career to this cause. He was a careful observer of the first model tenement competition in 1879, sponsored by the journal, Plumber & Sanitary Engineer. In 1880, he designed a block of model tenements on First Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets for the Improved Dwellings Association. These apartments had windows in each room, central courtyards for improved air circulation and roof-top gardens for the residents.38

 

Calvert Vaux was a friend of Charles Loring Brace who lived in a house Vaux designed in Hastings, New York. By the late 1870s, Brace’s organization was successful and well-funded enough to want to construct its own lodging houses, in order to create the exact type of structure they needed. In 1879, Vaux designed their first purpose-built building, the East Side Boys’ Lodging House and Industrial School on East Broadway and Gouveneur Street . The picturesquely designed, 3 ½ story, brick and brownstone building had steeply pitched roofs and held dormitories, classrooms, and a well-furnished reading room as well as a dispensary and sick room. The free-standing building was a far cry from the dingy tenements of the area and was hailed in the press as “Christianity solidified in brick and mortar.”39

 

Vaux went on to design more than a dozen buildings for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, a very important part of his work. These included four lodging houses, among them the West Side Lodging House at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street and the Tompkins Square Lodging House and Industrial School at 8th Street and Avenue B , and five industrial schools that had similar facilities without the beds. This latter type included the Mott Street Industrial School at 256-258 Mott Street , and the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School .

 

The 44th Street Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School was the first to display a large, front-facing, stepped gable. According to the Society’s 46th Annual Report of 1888, this element came from “an old Nuremburg house called the ‘Petersen’ building, [which] is one of the most picturesque in the city.”40 This lodging house was marked by steep gables, dormer windows and oriole towers, in keeping with Vaux’s intentions to create a home-like and visually interesting composition, but also was “appropriately reminiscent of the city’s Dutch heritage.”41 Most of Vaux’s buildings that were built in the following years employed this design element.

 

The Children’s Aid Society buildings were both domestic and institutional, intended to be an ornament to a part of the city the ugliness of which is particularly in need of some relief. It is a fortunate circumstance that the objects of the Children’s Aid Society require it to undertake its building operations in quarters where, but for its efforts, it is unlikely that there would be any architecture worth looking at or discussing.42

They were usually free-standing structures, with highly varied rooflines that provided visual interest and variety. Vaux believed that,

In any architectural design, the separate groups of forms may be, in themselves, attractive, or the building may be splendid in its general conception of masses, or rich in its varied and charming detail, but it will be defective as an architectural composition if it fails in its sky-line.43

 

Vaux’s rooflines were usually faced with slate or tile, and consisted of mansard roofs with steeply pitched towers, conical roofs or front-facing stepped gables. These buildings were built of brick and sandstone, common and inexpensive materials that were deemed to give a picturesque effect. Vaux tried to site them on corner lots because he felt that two perspectives gave him a chance to create a more interesting design. He used projecting oriels, large windows, dormers and chimneys in an attempt to create a home-like atmosphere for the neglected children who came here. Faithful to his earliest design theories, Vaux worked to evoke the imagery of a snug country inn in the middle of New York City.44 By varying the placement of the entrance as well as the size and placement of the window openings, he created a lively façade, ornamented solely with decorative brickwork such as string courses and recessed panels.

 

Design of the Elizabeth Home for Girls

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, the last of this group designed by Vaux has the picturesque characteristics common to Vaux’s other designs although its 40-foot-wide, mid-block site required a more restrained composition. It has two asymmetrical sections, with the entrance sited off center, in the western side. The eastern section is topped by the typical stepped gable while the western side has a mansard roof with two dormer windows, a reverse arrangement from that of the House of Reception on West 23rd Street . The windows are placed along continuous sills, providing some unity in a façade of varied window sizes, shapes and groupings. Unlike many of the other CAS buildings, this one has no projecting oriel window, but here the entrance is given special emphasis by its projecting surround topped by a balustraded balcony.

 

While not as elaborate as some of the other CAS buildings, the Elizabeth Home is a distinctive building that would have provided the sense of “hominess” so desired by both the architect and the organization. Located on a block of brick-fronted rowhouses, this building is obviously different, but not enough to be jarring. Rather, it continues to add interest and variety to the streetscape.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1895, the Children’s Aid Society hired architects Clinton & Russell to create a two-story addition on the north of the building to house a laundry.45 Another alteration, in 1915, added bedrooms in three floors above this addition.46 In 1901, the Children’s Aid Society acquired the adjacent property at No. 311 East 12th Street and converted it into an addition to the Elizabeth Home.47

 

In 1930, the Society moved its operations to West 134th Street and sold both of these buildings to Dr. Benedict Lust, a promoter of natural healing.”48 Lust, a German immigrant with degrees in osteopathy and medicine, believed in natural healing, including a “water cure” and organized the Naturopathic Society of America. He established the American School of Naturopathy which offered a post-graduate curriculum in naturopathy, chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.49

 

Upon Lust’s death, the buildings were purchased by the Florence Crittenton League and remodeled and reopened in 1948 as a private shelter for girls aged 16-21, called Barrett House.50 The Crittendon League was started in 1883 by Charles N. Crittenton, a wealthy New York drug supply manufacturer.51 Originally called the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls and Night Mission for Fallen Women , it was named after his late daughter and was established as a shelter for troubled and runaway young girls, many of whom were orphaned, and as a mission for women of ill repute. In the late 1880s, the group started a shelter and mission on Bleecker Street that gained renown for its midnight gospel readings. By the turn-of-the-century, the Crittenton Foundation operated in many large

 

U.S. cities and was expanding its services in New York. In 1913, the group relocated its headquarters to West 27th Street and in 1946 purchased the former Children’s Aid Society buildings in order to be able to care for more residents and offer expanded services. The home’s residents were generally referred there by courts, clinics and private agencies and given a variety of therapies to help them emotionally, while keeping them out of the House of Detention.

 

In 1982, the building was sold to a developer and in 1984 it was re-opened as co­op apartments.

 

Description

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls is a four story brick-faced building set on a raised basement. Built originally on a street of townhouses , the forty-foot-wide façade blends in by appearing to be two buildings. The western section is two bays wide and holds the building’s main entrance, in the eastern bay of the first story. The raised basement has a pair of large windows framed by a sandstone lintel and watertable and fronted by an iron grille, while the areaway is marked by a non-historic iron fence. The entrance, reached by a short concrete stairway with non-historic iron railings is emphasized by a projecting brick enframement embellished by small, terra-cotta ornament, string courses and globe lights. It is capped by a projecting hood supported on stone brackets. The entrance consists of a paneled door with a large glass light flanked by paneled side sections.

 

A plain, sandstone lintel separates it from the large, round-headed glass transom that is subdivided into small squares. A pair of plain rectangular windows on a continuous sill is in the western bay of the first story. The second story has a single window in the western bay and, in the eastern bay, is a double multi-light, non-historic door that leads to a small, balustraded balcony formed by the projecting hood over the entranceway. At the third story, two pairs of narrow, rectangular windows share a common sill and a smooth sandstone lintel. A simple, corbelled brick cornice separates the roof from the floor below. This section has a mansard roof pierced by two dormer windows with bell-shaped roofs and flanked on the western side by a stepped parapet wall that projects above the roof.

 

A tall, prominent chimney rises between the two sections. Its plain brick facing is marked by several narrow string courses. The section on the east is topped by a stepped, front-facing gable with a decorative sandstone molding that echoes the steps. Each floor contains grouped window openings linked by continuous sills and sometimes lintels. The fourth story has three, round-headed windows capped by a continuous, rounded brick molding. The third story has four evenly-spaced windows under a plain, continuous stone lintel, while the second story has two pairs of windows under stone lintels and a sill that runs across the entire section. There are five windows with transoms and a continuous stone sill and lintel at the first story, and two individual windows fronted by iron grilles at the basement level. A third window has been converted to an entrance, with a non-historic door and light.

 

A broad sandstone lintel and watertable is located at the top of the basement level, creating a strong distinction between it and the rest of the building. A non-historic iron fence shields the areaway.

 

- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

As good and feminine as it may feel to have my hair draped over my bare shoulders at the end of the night, Joni must still maintain a modicum of female modesty, not just to keep the Flickr police happy, but to maintain her own standards of decency. . . . So she lovingly covers up her "little girls", allowing them to avoid indecent exposure . . .

When I was young, in the 50’s, there were no gays in Ireland, no child abuse and no prostitutes … you had to travel to England to find that sort of thing [OK, Oscar Wilde was an exception and Molly Malone was really a good catholic girl].

 

Having worked in San Francisco and in Sweden I have never really considered being gay as being an issue so I was not paying much attention to the recent referendum campaign here in the Republic Of Ireland. I had assumed that the vote would be “YES” but I was amazed by the turnout and the massive majority in favour of changing to constitution.

 

A few hours ago I could not make my way home along Capel Street as it was packed with the gay community celebrating their referendum victory.

 

In case you are not aware Ireland became the first country in the world to bring in same-sex marriage by a popular vote. 62% of voters voted Yes in the same-sex marriage referendum, a result that has been described as a social revolution, an expression of decency and a country coming of age. 1.2 million people voted Yes for same sex marriage.

The Paxina 29 is the fastest medium format camera you can buy on a budget. Facts: Paxina 29's go on eBay for relatively little, have a big glass Steiner 2.9 lens, shutter speeds from bulb to 1/200. Those lucky enough to own a copy with a Praxanar Bayreuth lens and a Prontor SVS shutter with a much fuller range of speeds going up 1/300 are sharing specs with the rangefinder version of this camera, the Braun Gloria. That camera, and both versions of the Paxina 29 laugh in the the face of public decency with their rigid tubus design. This design is a huge advantage over similarly aged medium format folders, as there are no light tightness issues.

 

The Paxina 29 can be difficult to focus without the aid of an accessory rangefinder, and doesn't have a filter thread (so 'push on' filters and hoods only). The lens is single coated, and will almost certainly require a lens hood if shooting against the light. Rarely used slow speeds shutter speeds and self timers are generally the first to go, and this one was no exception. Here the self timer is jammed solid, but that's no big loss on a manual focus 6 x 6 shooter, is it?

Sikhism originated in the 15th century, in the Punjab region by Guru Nanak, who preached ideas that were radical for his age: he denounced Hinduism's oppressive caste system and Islam's gender discrimination, preaching that all people can commune with the divine equally, without the intervention of rituals or priests. The Sikh faith is a monotheistic religion, meaning Sikhs worship one God. The three core pillars of Sikhism are: vaṇḍ chakkō (sharing with others, helping those in need, as well as participating as part of a community), kirat karō (earning/making a living honestly, without exploitation or fraud, and speaking the truth at all times) and naam japna (meditating on God’s name to live a life of decency and humility).

The temporary distractions of the material world are seen as an illusion. The qualities of ego, anger, greed, attachment and lust are known as the Five Thieves that rob a person of their ability to realize their oneness with God and creation. Sikhs work to counteract the temptations of these qualities through the values of service, equality, and seeking justice for all. Sikhs also believe that one’s form on Earth is only a temporary vessel for the eternal soul. Thus, the death of the physical body is a natural part of the life cycle, while the soul remains. Death is not an end, but merely the progression of the soul on its journey toward God.

Nine more gurus succeeded Guru Nanak (Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das, Arjan, Har Gobind, Har Rai, Har Krishan, Tegh Bahadur, and Gobind Singh), and continued to spread his teachings across the world.

The last guru, Guru Gobind Singh, named the Sikh sacred text, the Guru Granth Sahib, to be the eternal Guru that would guide the Sikhs going forward. It consists of 1,430 Anks, or pages, and 6,000 Sabads, or line compositions, all are written in poetic verse and are aligning to the rhythmic forms of ancient north Indian classical music. At the core of the Guru Granth Sahib is a yearning for a world governed by divine justice, without oppression of any kind.

The final living guru, Gobind Singh, also established the Khalsa, or order of Sikh soldier-saints. They are recognizable by "The 5 k's," their physical articles of faith: Kesh (unshorn hair and beard), Kirpan (ceremonial sword), Kangha (comb), Kara (steel bracelet) and Kachha (drawers). The Dastar, or turban, is considered a spiritual crown, a token of remembrance of the Sikh principles.

 

Subathu, Himachal Pradesh, India

A while later the backroom is free of people, when Mirah goes in there with Honor closely following her…

 

Mirah: “Violet said her cousin’s wife brought some really good homemade buns here. I thought I’d better check them out. Yum! They sure look delicious!”

 

Honor: “Where is Leo? I haven’t seen him here yet.”

 

Mirah: “Oh? Violet said something about him sleeping in her car. I guess he’s still there. Poor boy must not have slept well in ages – but I guess that’s quite understandable since he’s got a fiancée. (smirks at Honor) If you catch my drift? I hope you’re still not pining for him?”

 

Honor (blushes): “No.”

 

Mirah: “You should know it’s too late for you. Ophelia got there first. Well, not first exactly, but anyway, she’s got him hooked.”

 

Honor: “I’m not pining for Leo. I just care for him – unlike you do. You talk about him as if he were just another line on your headboard. He’s a real person with feelings – a person who has had to see and feel too much in his life. He was on the rebound after Sybil when you seduced him and made an even more mess of his head by telling him that you loved him, then dumping him for Davy.”

 

Mirah: “Yeah, right. That was an aeon ago. I can’t believe you’re still going on about that. Leo got over me at the latest when he found his next girlfriend – which was like a week later.”

 

Honor (snorts annoyed): “You must mean one-night stand? Leo didn’t have any girlfriends at the time. He couldn’t trust anyone anymore – thanks to you.”

 

Mirah: “Oh, come on. He was a sharing kind, actually. He was like the village bike. I just happened to be his first stop after prison. At least half of all the girls from the neighborhood shagged him.”

 

Honor (shakes her head): “Not true.”

 

Mirah (nods adamantly): “Is too! There would still have been all those other girls before he decided to get clean and settle down with Ophelia.”

 

Honor: “He was still on the rebound when you clamped your nails around him, and he was using drugs. It was hardly his fault that he drifted into the wrong places with the wrong company. I don’t think there would have been that line of girls if you had had the decency to support him as a friend. But no – you just had to bed him to show you could. You took advance of him for what? A laugh!”

   

The following article was sent to me with commentary by my friend Robin Dude. The article is worth reading in full, as it brings attention to the inevitability of the U.S. waging perpetual warfare in attempting to secure its brand of perpetual peace.

 

The article outlines the historical changes that have taken place since the writing of The Federalist Papers and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, up to the present day justification by the Obama administration for continuing the war in Afghanistan. Author David Bromwich likens contemporary America to a hungry empire, rather than the peace-seeking republic its founders sought to create.

 

Robin Dude's comment looks to the nature of civilized societies to explain how America has become a corporatist, corrupt state, or rather, how the values which currently drive our society have become dominant. It is absolutely key to understand that these current values are not essential to human nature. That is to say that things have not always been this way. Even more essential is to understand that the belief that 'things have always been this way', or that 'societies have always gone to war with one another and always will go to war with one another' has the effect of ensuring the United State's current aggressive and abusive imperialism. If we are foolish enough to believe that the values currently saturating our society reflect the values of humankind throughout history, then we have permanently shackled ourselves to the miserable social, economic and individual consequences associated with those values.

 

I repeat: THE CURRENT CONFIGURATION OF VALUES IN OUR SOCIETY IS A PRODUCT OF TEMPORARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND THE EVENTS WHICH PRECEDED THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES. THEY ARE NOT AND WILL NOT BE PERMANENT. THEY CAN BE CHANGED AND THEY SHOULD BE CHANGED BY CONCERNED CITIZENS WHO SEE THROUGH THE FOG IMPOSED BY SOCIETY'S ELITE. THE FUNCTION OF THIS FOG IS TO ENSURE THE CONTINUATION OF A VALUE SYSTEM THAT FAVORS THEIR INTERESTS. UNLESS YOU CONDONE PROSPERITY FOR THE FEW AND MISERY FOR THE MANY, THEIR INTERESTS ARE NOT YOUR INTERESTS.

 

Read the note, read the excerpt, and if you're intrigued, I urge you to read the whole article. This is essential understanding for anyone ambitious enough to attempt that 'Change' stuff we see so very little of yet hear so much about.

 

Included is the link to the original article.

 

Enjoy.

 

---------------------------------------------------------

 

From Robin Dude:

 

Values are preferred ends & preferred means. Hierarchically structured societies - that is, civilizations built upon economically divided class systems - dictate values from the top, not the bottom or middle, & therefore those values favor persons at the top & the relatively small cadres of managers needed to serve them & their causes. The first & perpetual task of those in this upper company is to make everyone below them believe that whatever is dictated is true, necessary, just & intended by the haves to better the lives of those with less. To achieve this task religion, ideology, morality, education, politics, business, police & the military must continuously work together toward one end throughout the whole population, which is conformity of beliefs regarding the economy & consequent business practices, & of course that includes suppression of dissent. Every schoolboy & girl learns that failure to be absolutely possessed by their betters leads to Hell for themselves.

 

Lest one imagine there is some evil genius behind all this, it is not needless to add that the betters are themselves equally bamboozled by what greed & their wealth bred in their minds & hearts during the 10,000 years since cities - civilizations - were made possible by the Agricultural revolution.

 

Scholars continue to study, converse & teach even after they appear to others to have learned everything about their subject, because they know a number of things, such as: "All that can be known" is only a grammatical, not a real, fancy; & what is even more important, study is the mind's match (it both lights & puts in contest the contents & respective worth of some number of one's memories).

 

The scholarly & accurate article below is all about values now being dictated in the United States. Thus, it is a telescope, & at moments a microscope, through which the planned American future can be clearly foreseen. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Only everyone could stop it, & the values needed to bring that about are not only not being dictated, but are taboo & lead to Hell.

 

As I said many times in the past, George Orwell's "1984" is being used as a political science handbook.

 

... If someone reading this has the decency to engage within a community of workers & intellectuals to devise & build a different kind of society & make a place for it to exist, now is the time to begin. The dictators are not afraid of dreamers, & will not stop them. In fact, it is certain that some dictators will join & contribute, & the others will find this harmless & amusing.

 

NB: Bracketed comments added by Robin Dude.

 

------------------------------

 

tomdispatch.com/post/175098/david_bromwich_america_s_seri...

 

EXCERPTS: On July 16, in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the "central question" for the defense of the United States was how the military should be "organized, equipped -- and funded -- in the years ahead, to win the wars we are in while being prepared for threats on or beyond the horizon." The phrase beyond the horizon ought to sound ominous. Was Gates telling his audience of civic-minded business leaders to spend more money on defense in order to counter threats whose very existence no one could answer for? Given the public acceptance of American militarism, he could speak in the knowledge that the awkward challenge would never be posed.

 

We have begun to talk casually about our wars; and this should be surprising for several reasons. To begin with, in the history of the United States war has never been considered the normal state of things. For two centuries, Americans were taught to think war itself an aberration, and "wars" in the plural could only have seemed doubly aberrant. Younger generations of Americans, however, are now being taught to expect no end of war -- and no end of wars.

 

.... A very different view of war was taken by America's founders. One of their steadiest hopes -- manifest in the scores of pamphlets they wrote against the British Empire and the checks against war powers built into the Constitution itself -- was that a democracy like the United States would lead irresistibly away from the conduct of wars. They supposed that wars were an affair of kings, waged in the interest of aggrandizement, and also an affair of the hereditary landed aristocracy in the interest of augmented privilege and unaccountable wealth. In no respect could wars ever serve the interest of the people. Machiavelli, an analyst of power whom the founders read with care, had noticed that "the people desire to be neither commanded nor oppressed," whereas "the powerful desire to command and oppress." Only an appetite for command and oppression could lead someone to adopt an ethic of continuous wars.

East Village, Manhattan

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was constructed in 1891-2 as a refuge for homeless girls by the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). Designed by renowned architect Calvert Vaux in a picturesque, High Victorian Gothic style in brick and sandstone with a Dutch-influenced stepped gable, this building was one of approximately twelve that the architect created for this organization in the 1880s and 90s. It was the only lodging house designed for girls and one of only a few surviving CAS buildings. The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 to help New York’s poorest children improve their lives through education and the advantages of “home-like” living quarters. Brace believed that it was necessary to remove poor children from the bad influences of their environment, where they often had no one to care for them and no opportunities for education, in order to improve their lives and alleviate the crushing poverty of the city.

 

He was able to enlist many wealthy supporters and established a strong organization that continues to exist for the benefit of children and their families today. The Children’s Aid Society employed several approaches to achieve its goals, including sending orphan children to homes in the Midwest where they could enjoy the “benefits” of a home in a more rural setting, lodging houses for homeless children and industrial schools where they were trained for trades and employment. The Children’s Aid Society ran the Elizabeth Home in this building until 1930 when it was sold to Benjamin Lust, a practitioner of a natural “water cure” for illnesses, who coined the term naturopathy. In 1946, the building was purchased by the Florence Crittendon League and used again as a residence for girls without other places to live, called Barrett House. In 1984, the building changed ownership again and was converted to co-op apartments.

 

Its picturesque façade is significant for its architecture and as an evocation of the working class history of the Lower East Side.

 

Development of the East Village Area

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area was populated by bands of Native Americans from the Lenape tribe. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. The main trail ran the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Inwood following the course of Broadway adjacent to present day City Hall Park before veering east toward the area now known as Foley Square. It then ran north with major branches leading to habitations in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side at a place called Rechtauck or Naghtogack in the vicinity of Corlears Hook. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods.2

 

Under the Dutch, most inhabitants of New Amsterdam lived south of Fulton Street, where they could be close to each other for protection and close to the harbor for the essential shipping activities on which the colony depended. North of the settlement, many wealthy families owned large estates, used as farms and plantations and as country retreats, especially for those recurring times when epidemics threatened the crowded population on the island’s tip. The area now known as the Lower East Side and the East Village was divided into a series of large farms, which by the mid-eighteenth century were owned by three families: the Stuyvesants, Rutgers and De Lanceys.

 

The Rutgers property ran from Chatham Square to Montgomery Street between the East River shore and Division Street. The De Lancey holdings consisted of two large parcels (approximately 340 acres) abutting the Rutgers property on the north and east, acquired by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey around 1741. Peter Stuyvesant, who came to the colony in 1647, owned a large working farm he called his Bowerie. It lay between present day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth Avenue to the East River.3 He owned about 40 slaves, most employed in farm work. This property remained in the ownership of Stuyvesant’s descendents for many years. By the mid-nineteenth century, Peter Stuyvesant’s grandson Gerardus still lived in the original family house. Gerardus’ sons, Petrus and Nicholas lived nearby and divided the property between them. Nicholas called his section Bowery while his brother’s was called Petersfield, and this area included the property on which the Elizabeth Home was constructed.

 

After slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827, many former slaves settled in several black enclaves, including that near the Bowery, another in Greenwich Village, and still another in the growing slum area that came to be known as Five Points. During the eighteenth century Greenwich Village had been a small rural hamlet, but also was the site of a number of summer estates for wealthy families from downtown Manhattan. Its population swelled during the large cholera and yellow fever epidemics that struck in the early nineteenth century. The 1830s brought a huge economic boom to New York, attracting many more people and a great need for more commercial space as well as housing. African-Americans and other poor people were forced northward as more land was opened to development for the upper classes.

 

The areas around Great Jones, Bleecker and Bond Streets were all being paved and built up with “genteel residences”4 while Lafayette Place and St. Mark’s Place developed into some of the city’s most fashionable addresses. Seeking to take advantage of this boom, Petrus Stuyvesant began to subdivide his property in the 1830s and sell lots for development in the 1840s. Many of the buyers of these lots were large landholders who purchased extensive property and built speculative homes here, waiting for the housing need to catch up. These individual houses were first rented, and then sold to middle class families.5 Middle class residents however, did not stay too long in this section.

 

By the 1850s, the population of New York soared, due primarily to an influx of European immigrants as well as newly-freed African-Americans who were drawn to Manhattan because of the availability of jobs.6 Immigrants had been arriving in New York continuously and already by 1825, over one fifth of the population of New York was foreign born. In the 1840s, many of these immigrants were Irish who started coming in large numbers looking for work after the collapse of Irish agriculture and the rapid industrialization that displaced many workers.

 

Germans had always had a strong presence in New York, but after the failed revolutions of 1848, 70,000 more arrived in New York, fleeing “land shortages, unemployment, famine and political and religious oppression.”7 Many were poor and unskilled and tried to find housing in Manhattan’s notorious slum known as Five Points but the Irish and free Blacks who were already there did not welcome them. Although they were all classified as German, this name covered a multitude of ethnicities, and people tended to subdivide themselves, preferring to live among others who came from the same native communities and regions. The German immigrants first congregated in the five-block span between Canal and Rivington Streets, but the newcomers were forced to look elsewhere as landlords continued to crowd more and more people into inhuman living conditions.

 

They moved northward, up the eastern side of Manhattan island, pushing out existing residents of this area, including the African-Americans who had been there.8 Some of the existing homes in what is now the East Village9 were subdivided or changed into boardinghouses, while others were torn down to make way for tenement buildings, constructed to fit more people into the same space. Eventually the area north of Division Street up to 18th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River filled with German immigrants until it became the third largest concentration of German speakers in the world.10 This section came to be known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, Dutchtown, or Deutschlandle and was “the first large immigrant neighborhood in American history that spoke a foreign language” and remained the major German-American center in the United States for the rest of the century.11

 

German businesses congregated near Broadway creating a lively commercial strip, while various German groups created institutions to remind them of home and to help ease their way in their new lives. The Staats-Zeitung was the most popular of many German language newspapers. The German Dispensary (a designated New York City Landmark) helped with the health needs of the community, while the Ottendorfer Branch of the Free Circulating Library (a designated New York City Landmark) provided books in their native tongue. Social and other support organizations (vereins) organized around a place of origin or a particular outlook or activity. German shooting clubs became popular12 as did clubs for music, such as the Aschenbroechel Verein. Beer gardens and dance halls such as Scheffel Hall (a designated New York City Landmark) provided places for lively entertainment.13

 

The City’s Poor

 

The poor German immigrants who lived in Kleindeutschland did not have the wherewithal to take advantage of these institutions. They could barely find a place to sleep and a way to feed their families.

 

Since its earliest years, New York has dealt with the poor and helpless among its population with a combination of benevolence and disdain. When the Dutch West India Company sent a group of Dutch orphans to the colony “to be bound out as apprentices and servants” in 1656, Peter Stuyvesant established the first public home for orphans and an “Orphan Masters’ Court.”14 Generally however, under the Dutch, religious organizations were expected to care for the city’s poor. Under the English, in 1693, the Common Council passed its first “poor rate” tax to enable them to distribute fuel, clothes, food and cash to the “deserving” poor and established an almshouse on Broad Street for those who were unable to care for themselves.15 A two-story brick building was constructed on the Common in 1736, housing a mix of the city’s poor along with the unruly as well as convicted criminals, all of whom were required to attend prayer services and work if they were physically able, so they would not be a “Burthen to the Publick.”

 

With time, the gap between the rich and poor grew, and increasing numbers of people needed financial help to overcome problems that were sometimes created by illness or the death of a spouse. The city provided more and more “outdoor relief” and also had to build more almshouses to accommodate the growing need. Religious and philanthropic organizations also helped, their efforts usually involving “education in the habits of self-discipline and the self-reliance necessary to survive in a wage-based economy… to instill prudence, decency, sobriety, thrift, punctuality” since poverty was usually seen as “moral turpitude, not misfortune.”17 In 1806, the Isabella Graham Society for the Relief of Poor Widows opened an orphanage where poor children “could be brought up to lead productive lives,” that eventually led to the formation of the Orphan Asylum Society.18

 

By the early nineteenth century, only half of all children in New York attended school even though the traditional apprenticeship system for learning trades and behavior no longer existed. Many children were caught stealing or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior and the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents began in 1823 to try to deal with these problems. The first New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 to house children under sixteen years old, and the authorities used religion and education to try to redeem the children brought there.19

 

By the 1850s, conditions for the poor were only getting worse. The huge numbers of immigrants coming into New York increased the competition for jobs and housing, and crowded conditions led to higher rates of illness and crime. Efforts of groups such as the American Tract Society were comprised of preaching and giving away bibles, while the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was able to attract the interest and donations of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens. They managed to get more needy people into almshouses on Blackwell’s Island, build a new one for the able-bodied poor, and get a new truancy law passed that enabled the police to round up delinquent children to get them off the streets.20

 

Children’s Aid Society

 

The Children’s Aid Society, another in a wide variety of efforts to deal with the problem of poor and uneducated children, was started by Charles Loring Brace (1826­1890) in 1853 and continued under his leadership for the next 37 years. Brace graduated from Yale University and studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary. After a trip to Europe, during which he traveled in England with Frederick Law Olmsted,21 Brace began serving with Rev. Pease at the Five Points Mission in 1852. He was discouraged that the traditional methods of outreach were not helping change the lives of the people he saw. He also was struck by the large numbers of boys and girls who apparently had nothing useful to do and no one to look after them, and who seemed to be headed only for lives of crime. He decided that the most effective way to change conditions for the poor was to reach these children and try to change their circumstances

 

He wanted to “help the helpless, neglected children of the city to help themselves to become good and useful citizens.”23 Typically, their families could not care for them and they were sent out on the streets to fend for themselves, or to find some way to bring money or food back home.24 Because they were small, they were often preyed on by unsavory types who sent them out to steal, or they sold things on the streets or helped organ grinders in their trade. Boys would steal, sell newspapers or hawk matches, while many girls were forced into prostitution. 25 Street gangs developed to offer some protection for these wretched children who often slept on steam grates or in the remains of burned out buildings.

 

Brace believed that if he could show these children that someone cared about them, educate them to have good habits such as industry and self-control, and help them achieve some basic skills, they could get jobs and improve their lives. He felt that “home life was better than institutions and that self-help was better than alms.”26

 

From its beginning, the work of the Children’s Aid Society involved several separate efforts. The most radical and well-known was “placing out.” Over the course of the first forty years, the organization took 97,738 children from New York, (some orphans, others from difficult home situations) and sent them by train (“the Orphan Trains”) to situations away from New York City, usually with “Christian families” in the Midwest where they were supposed to enjoy the benefits of a good home life in a rural setting. While some did in fact become essentially members of these families and benefitted from the experience, others were put to work in stores and on farms, in conditions close to indentured servitude. Brace felt that this effort was very positive because he believed that it was important to completely change the circumstances of these children’s lives in order to have a positive impact.

 

“The effort to place the children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see.”27

 

Since Brace could not remove every poor child from the bad influences of the city, he also made local efforts. These included the development of a series of lodging houses and industrial schools located around the city. The lodging houses were places a homeless child could come so he or she did not have to sleep on the street, with separate facilities for boys and girls. A young person could stay for a night or two if his difficulty was temporary, or he could stay for extended periods, and be assured of receiving food and a bath, as well as shelter. If they could pay, the children were asked for a small amount so that they felt they were paying their own way, rather than accepting charity, or they were asked to help with certain chores. These lodging houses eventually offered evening or morning classes to help the children with reading and writing, and specific skills that could help them gain employment.

 

The Newsboys’ Lodging House was opened in a building at Fulton and Nassau streets in 1854. The liveliness and ingenuity of the newsboys had a special resonance with Brace, who admired these qualities but felt they needed to be channeled into some productive enterprise. By 1928, the Children’s Aid Society ran seven lodging houses, located throughout the city.28

 

Brace saw that many poor children did not attend public school, either because they could not afford proper clothes, or because they had to work to help their families, so Brace established the Industrial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society to educate these children.29 The Industrial Schools taught reading and writing and character building, as well as skills such as carpentry for boys and cooking and laundering for girls. They also trained children to work on machines that might help them gain employment, such as sewing machines and typewriters, filling a gap left by the public schools. They provided clothes if needed, as well as a hot meal, and were non-sectarian. The Children’s Aid Society found that different groups had different needs, so they organized specific schools for Italian, German and “Colored” children, and later started medical and dental clinics for these children as well.

 

They became active in legislative efforts to promote their cause, such as working for the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of 1874. They started mothers’ groups to train them for this most important task, and day care centers for those who had to work. They eventually opened homes for sick and convalescing children, a school for crippled children, kindergartens, summer camps and playgrounds. While the Children’s Aid Society no longer runs lodging houses and schools, it continues to exist today, providing a variety of social services to New York children and their families.

 

Elizabeth Wheeler Home for Girls

 

The first lodging house for girls, called “The Girls’ Temporary Home,” was opened at 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1863 and during its first nine months, this building served 597 girls. The intention of this facility was to be “a resting place, a temporary home for any girl without friend or family in the city . . . to gain time to seek reputable employment” as well as a place where they could get help and advice.30 The Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society of 1889 called this girls’ home “one of the most successful and economical of all the branches of the Society,” but noted that there was a great need for an additional building for this facility.31 In the Annual Report of the following year (1890) the writer was even more adamant. “. . . we feel deeply the lack of accommodations, and look forward earnestly to the time when, with increased facilities, much more can be accomplished.”32

 

They reported that during the previous year, there had been 15,533 lodgings in the house, 49,324 meals served, 45 girls trained on typewriters and 72 girls trained on sewing machines, with 178 girls sent to situations and employment.33

 

In July 1891, the property at 307 East 12th Street was purchased by Emily Wheeler and conveyed by her to the Children’s Aid Society.34 The home was given by Mary B. Wheeler, Mary B. Ceccarini and Emily B. Wheeler in memory of Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler.35 The Elizabeth Home was designed by the preeminent architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.36 The home opened with a festive dedication in 1892, and included dormitories as well as single bedrooms for girls, sitting rooms, a reading room, office, dining rooms and kitchen, and rooms fitted with sewing machines and typewriters.

 

Calvert Vaux

 

Calvert Vaux (1824-1895)37 was one of the most prolific and influential architects working in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. His picturesque buildings and romantic landscape designs were constructed in numerous cities and towns and his books had a wide-ranging audience, contributing to the vogue during this period for interesting and picturesquely styled buildings. Vaux, trained in architecture, landscape design and planning, came from England to the United States in 1850 to work with A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York as a partner in his Bureau of Architecture. They specialized in the creation of picturesque English country houses and also began the planning of the grounds around many government buildings in Washington, D.C. After Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux began a partnership with Frank Clarke Withers, with whom he designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse (1874-77, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

Vaux’s book of house designs, Villas and Cottages (published originally 1857) was modeled on Downing’s highly popular Cottage Residences and became a standard for the genre.

 

Vaux relocated to New York City where, in 1858, he and Frederick Law Olmsted entered the competition for Central Park with their plan for a “Greensward,” the first public park in the country (a designated New York City Scenic Landmark). Their design, based on the tradition of English landscape gardening, became a major influence in the development of public parks throughout the country. Vaux was responsible for the design of many of the architectural features of the park, including the bridges, and the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain. He went on to design numerous projects with Olmsted under the auspices of the landscape firm, Olmsted, Vaux and Company (1865-72). These included Prospect Park in Brooklyn (1865, a designated New York City Scenic Landmark), Riverside, Illinois (1868-70), Morningside Park (1887-94, from earlier plans), and Riverside Park (1873-88).

 

Vaux designed many public buildings, institutions and grounds in various cities. These included the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut (1865, with Olmsted), Hudson River State Hospital and Grounds (1867-72), the Grounds for Gallaudet College in Washington (1866), the grounds of Parliament buildings in Ottawa (1873-79), and the park system for Buffalo, NY. With Jacob Wrey Mould, who had come earlier from England and contributed many designs for Central Park, Vaux developed a Master Plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1874-80) and the American Museum of Natural History (1874-77, both designated New York City Landmarks).

 

Around 1873, Vaux began a partnership with George Kent Radford (dates undetermined), a civil engineer, that was to last for eighteen years. This partnership was formalized as the architectural division of Vaux & Co., Landscape Architects in 1876. In addition to numerous designs for the Children’s Aid Society during the last part of his career, Vaux designed a High Victorian Gothic townhouse for Samuel J. Tilden in New York (1881-4) and the grounds for Tilden’s country estate, Greystone, in Yonkers, New York (1879-80). Vaux had a long and varied career, from private homes for the wealthy to model tenements for the poor, from the landscape of individual estates, to the layout for entire cities. His designs helped establish the standard aesthetic of the late nineteenth century, both in building and landscaping and he is known as one of the founders of the field of landscape architecture.

 

Calvert Vaux and the Children’s Aid Society

 

Vaux became increasingly interested in the way architecture could be used to better the lives of unfortunate members of society and devoted much of the last part of his career to this cause. He was a careful observer of the first model tenement competition in 1879, sponsored by the journal, Plumber & Sanitary Engineer. In 1880, he designed a block of model tenements on First Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets for the Improved Dwellings Association. These apartments had windows in each room, central courtyards for improved air circulation and roof-top gardens for the residents.38

 

Calvert Vaux was a friend of Charles Loring Brace who lived in a house Vaux designed in Hastings, New York. By the late 1870s, Brace’s organization was successful and well-funded enough to want to construct its own lodging houses, in order to create the exact type of structure they needed. In 1879, Vaux designed their first purpose-built building, the East Side Boys’ Lodging House and Industrial School on East Broadway and Gouveneur Street (demolished). The picturesquely designed, 3 ½ story, brick and brownstone building had steeply pitched roofs and held dormitories, classrooms, and a well-furnished reading room as well as a dispensary and sick room. The free-standing building was a far cry from the dingy tenements of the area and was hailed in the press as “Christianity solidified in brick and mortar.”39

 

Vaux went on to design more than a dozen buildings for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, a very important part of his work. These included four lodging houses, among them the West Side Lodging House at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street (1883, demolished) and the Tompkins Square Lodging House and Industrial School at 8th Street and Avenue B (1885, a designated New York City Landmark), and five industrial schools that had similar facilities without the beds. This latter type included the Mott Street Industrial School at 256-258 Mott Street (1888, a designated New York City Landmark), and the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School (1888-89, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

The 44th Street Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School (1888-9, demolished) was the first to display a large, front-facing, stepped gable. According to the Society’s 46th Annual Report of 1888, this element came from “an old Nuremburg house called the ‘Petersen’ building, [which] is one of the most picturesque in the city.”40 This lodging house was marked by steep gables, dormer windows and oriole towers, in keeping with Vaux’s intentions to create a home-like and visually interesting composition, but also was “appropriately reminiscent of the city’s Dutch heritage.”41 Most of Vaux’s buildings that were built in the following years employed this design element.

 

The Children’s Aid Society buildings were both domestic and institutional, intended to be an ornament to a part of the city the ugliness of which is particularly in need of some relief. It is a fortunate circumstance that the objects of the Children’s Aid Society require it to undertake its building operations in quarters where, but for its efforts, it is unlikely that there would be any architecture worth looking at or discussing.42

They were usually free-standing structures, with highly varied rooflines that provided visual interest and variety. Vaux believed that,

In any architectural design, the separate groups of forms may be, in themselves, attractive, or the building may be splendid in its general conception of masses, or rich in its varied and charming detail, but it will be defective as an architectural composition if it fails in its sky-line.43

 

Vaux’s rooflines were usually faced with slate or tile, and consisted of mansard roofs with steeply pitched towers, conical roofs or front-facing stepped gables. These buildings were built of brick and sandstone, common and inexpensive materials that were deemed to give a picturesque effect. Vaux tried to site them on corner lots because he felt that two perspectives gave him a chance to create a more interesting design. He used projecting oriels, large windows, dormers and chimneys in an attempt to create a home-like atmosphere for the neglected children who came here. Faithful to his earliest design theories, Vaux worked to evoke the imagery of a snug country inn in the middle of New York City.44 By varying the placement of the entrance as well as the size and placement of the window openings, he created a lively façade, ornamented solely with decorative brickwork such as string courses and recessed panels.

 

Design of the Elizabeth Home for Girls

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, the last of this group designed by Vaux has the picturesque characteristics common to Vaux’s other designs although its 40-foot-wide, mid-block site required a more restrained composition. It has two asymmetrical sections, with the entrance sited off center, in the western side. The eastern section is topped by the typical stepped gable while the western side has a mansard roof with two dormer windows, a reverse arrangement from that of the House of Reception on West 23rd Street (1890, demolished). The windows are placed along continuous sills, providing some unity in a façade of varied window sizes, shapes and groupings. Unlike many of the other CAS buildings, this one has no projecting oriel window, but here the entrance is given special emphasis by its projecting surround topped by a balustraded balcony.

 

While not as elaborate as some of the other CAS buildings, the Elizabeth Home is a distinctive building that would have provided the sense of “hominess” so desired by both the architect and the organization. Located on a block of brick-fronted rowhouses, this building is obviously different, but not enough to be jarring. Rather, it continues to add interest and variety to the streetscape.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1895, the Children’s Aid Society hired architects Clinton & Russell to create a two-story addition on the north of the building to house a laundry.45 Another alteration, in 1915, added bedrooms in three floors above this addition.46 In 1901, the Children’s Aid Society acquired the adjacent property at No. 311 East 12th Street and converted it into an addition to the Elizabeth Home.47

 

In 1930, the Society moved its operations to West 134th Street and sold both of these buildings to Dr. Benedict Lust, a promoter of natural healing.”48 Lust, a German immigrant with degrees in osteopathy and medicine, believed in natural healing, including a “water cure” and organized the Naturopathic Society of America. He established the American School of Naturopathy which offered a post-graduate curriculum in naturopathy, chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.49

 

Upon Lust’s death, the buildings were purchased by the Florence Crittenton League and remodeled and reopened in 1948 as a private shelter for girls aged 16-21, called Barrett House.50 The Crittendon League was started in 1883 by Charles N. Crittenton, a wealthy New York drug supply manufacturer.51 Originally called the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls and Night Mission for Fallen Women (later the National Florence Crittenton Foundation), it was named after his late daughter and was established as a shelter for troubled and runaway young girls, many of whom were orphaned, and as a mission for women of ill repute. In the late 1880s, the group started a shelter and mission on Bleecker Street that gained renown for its midnight gospel readings. By the turn-of-the-century, the Crittenton Foundation operated in many large

 

U.S. cities and was expanding its services in New York. In 1913, the group relocated its headquarters to West 27th Street and in 1946 purchased the former Children’s Aid Society buildings in order to be able to care for more residents and offer expanded services. The home’s residents were generally referred there by courts, clinics and private agencies and given a variety of therapies to help them emotionally, while keeping them out of the House of Detention.

 

In 1982, the building was sold to a developer and in 1984 it was re-opened as co­op apartments.

 

Description

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls is a four story brick-faced building set on a raised basement. Built originally on a street of townhouses (East 12th Street), the forty-foot-wide façade blends in by appearing to be two buildings. The western section is two bays wide and holds the building’s main entrance, in the eastern bay of the first story. The raised basement has a pair of large windows framed by a sandstone lintel and watertable and fronted by an iron grille, while the areaway is marked by a non-historic iron fence. The entrance, reached by a short concrete stairway with non-historic iron railings is emphasized by a projecting brick enframement embellished by small, terra-cotta ornament, string courses and globe lights. It is capped by a projecting hood supported on stone brackets. The entrance consists of a paneled door with a large glass light flanked by paneled side sections.

 

A plain, sandstone lintel separates it from the large, round-headed glass transom that is subdivided into small squares. A pair of plain rectangular windows on a continuous sill is in the western bay of the first story. The second story has a single window in the western bay and, in the eastern bay, is a double multi-light, non-historic door that leads to a small, balustraded balcony formed by the projecting hood over the entranceway. At the third story, two pairs of narrow, rectangular windows share a common sill and a smooth sandstone lintel. A simple, corbelled brick cornice separates the roof from the floor below. This section has a mansard roof pierced by two dormer windows with bell-shaped roofs and flanked on the western side by a stepped parapet wall that projects above the roof.

 

A tall, prominent chimney rises between the two sections. Its plain brick facing is marked by several narrow string courses. The section on the east is topped by a stepped, front-facing gable with a decorative sandstone molding that echoes the steps. Each floor contains grouped window openings linked by continuous sills and sometimes lintels. The fourth story has three, round-headed windows capped by a continuous, rounded brick molding. The third story has four evenly-spaced windows under a plain, continuous stone lintel, while the second story has two pairs of windows under stone lintels and a sill that runs across the entire section. There are five windows with transoms and a continuous stone sill and lintel at the first story, and two individual windows fronted by iron grilles at the basement level. A third window (on the eastern bay) has been converted to an entrance, with a non-historic door and light.

 

A broad sandstone lintel and watertable is located at the top of the basement level, creating a strong distinction between it and the rest of the building. A non-historic iron fence shields the areaway.

 

- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Forbids what exactly? There are times when it's better not to use your imagination. Many Victorian municipal cemeteries seem to have rudimentary urinals for gentlemen although, as far as I've ever noticed, there are never equivalent amenities for ladies. Usually they consist of nothing more than a perforated cast-iron screen and a length of guttering, with no protection from the elements. This little plaque was inside such a facility at Greenbank Cemetery, Bristol. Monday 10th October 1983.

East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was constructed in 1891-2 as a refuge for homeless girls by the Children’s Aid Society . Designed by renowned architect Calvert Vaux in a picturesque, High Victorian Gothic style in brick and sandstone with a Dutch-influenced stepped gable, this building was one of approximately twelve that the architect created for this organization in the 1880s and 90s. It was the only lodging house designed for girls and one of only a few surviving CAS buildings. The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 to help New York’s poorest children improve their lives through education and the advantages of “home-like” living quarters. Brace believed that it was necessary to remove poor children from the bad influences of their environment, where they often had no one to care for them and no opportunities for education, in order to improve their lives and alleviate the crushing poverty of the city.

 

He was able to enlist many wealthy supporters and established a strong organization that continues to exist for the benefit of children and their families today. The Children’s Aid Society employed several approaches to achieve its goals, including sending orphan children to homes in the Midwest where they could enjoy the “benefits” of a home in a more rural setting, lodging houses for homeless children and industrial schools where they were trained for trades and employment. The Children’s Aid Society ran the Elizabeth Home in this building until 1930 when it was sold to Benjamin Lust, a practitioner of a natural “water cure” for illnesses, who coined the term naturopathy. In 1946, the building was purchased by the Florence Crittendon League and used again as a residence for girls without other places to live, called Barrett House. In 1984, the building changed ownership again and was converted to co-op apartments.

 

Its picturesque façade is significant for its architecture and as an evocation of the working class history of the Lower East Side.

 

Development of the East Village Area

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area was populated by bands of Native Americans from the Lenape tribe. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. The main trail ran the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Inwood following the course of Broadway adjacent to present day City Hall Park before veering east toward the area now known as Foley Square. It then ran north with major branches leading to habitations in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side at a place called Rechtauck or Naghtogack in the vicinity of Corlears Hook. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods.2

 

Under the Dutch, most inhabitants of New Amsterdam lived south of Fulton Street, where they could be close to each other for protection and close to the harbor for the essential shipping activities on which the colony depended. North of the settlement, many wealthy families owned large estates, used as farms and plantations and as country retreats, especially for those recurring times when epidemics threatened the crowded population on the island’s tip. The area now known as the Lower East Side and the East Village was divided into a series of large farms, which by the mid-eighteenth century were owned by three families: the Stuyvesants, Rutgers and De Lanceys.

 

The Rutgers property ran from Chatham Square to Montgomery Street between the East River shore and Division Street. The De Lancey holdings consisted of two large parcels abutting the Rutgers property on the north and east, acquired by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey around 1741. Peter Stuyvesant, who came to the colony in 1647, owned a large working farm he called his Bowerie. It lay between present day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth Avenue to the East River.3 He owned about 40 slaves, most employed in farm work. This property remained in the ownership of Stuyvesant’s descendents for many years. By the mid-nineteenth century, Peter Stuyvesant’s grandson Gerardus still lived in the original family house. Gerardus’ sons, Petrus and Nicholas lived nearby and divided the property between them. Nicholas called his section Bowery while his brother’s was called Petersfield, and this area included the property on which the Elizabeth Home was constructed.

 

After slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827, many former slaves settled in several black enclaves, including that near the Bowery, another in Greenwich Village, and still another in the growing slum area that came to be known as Five Points. During the eighteenth century Greenwich Village had been a small rural hamlet, but also was the site of a number of summer estates for wealthy families from downtown Manhattan. Its population swelled during the large cholera and yellow fever epidemics that struck in the early nineteenth century. The 1830s brought a huge economic boom to New York, attracting many more people and a great need for more commercial space as well as housing. African-Americans and other poor people were forced northward as more land was opened to development for the upper classes.

 

The areas around Great Jones, Bleecker and Bond Streets were all being paved and built up with “genteel residences”4 while Lafayette Place and St. Mark’s Place developed into some of the city’s most fashionable addresses. Seeking to take advantage of this boom, Petrus Stuyvesant began to subdivide his property in the 1830s and sell lots for development in the 1840s. Many of the buyers of these lots were large landholders who purchased extensive property and built speculative homes here, waiting for the housing need to catch up. These individual houses were first rented, and then sold to middle class families.5 Middle class residents however, did not stay too long in this section.

 

By the 1850s, the population of New York soared, due primarily to an influx of European immigrants as well as newly-freed African-Americans who were drawn to Manhattan because of the availability of jobs.6 Immigrants had been arriving in New York continuously and already by 1825, over one fifth of the population of New York was foreign born. In the 1840s, many of these immigrants were Irish who started coming in large numbers looking for work after the collapse of Irish agriculture and the rapid industrialization that displaced many workers.

 

Germans had always had a strong presence in New York, but after the failed revolutions of 1848, 70,000 more arrived in New York, fleeing “land shortages, unemployment, famine and political and religious oppression.”7 Many were poor and unskilled and tried to find housing in Manhattan’s notorious slum known as Five Points but the Irish and free Blacks who were already there did not welcome them. Although they were all classified as German, this name covered a multitude of ethnicities, and people tended to subdivide themselves, preferring to live among others who came from the same native communities and regions. The German immigrants first congregated in the five-block span between Canal and Rivington Streets, but the newcomers were forced to look elsewhere as landlords continued to crowd more and more people into inhuman living conditions.

 

They moved northward, up the eastern side of Manhattan island, pushing out existing residents of this area, including the African-Americans who had been there.8 Some of the existing homes in what is now the East Village9 were subdivided or changed into boardinghouses, while others were torn down to make way for tenement buildings, constructed to fit more people into the same space. Eventually the area north of Division Street up to 18th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River filled with German immigrants until it became the third largest concentration of German speakers in the world.10 This section came to be known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, Dutchtown, or Deutschlandle and was “the first large immigrant neighborhood in American history that spoke a foreign language” and remained the major German-American center in the United States for the rest of the century.11

 

German businesses congregated near Broadway creating a lively commercial strip, while various German groups created institutions to remind them of home and to help ease their way in their new lives. The Staats-Zeitung was the most popular of many German language newspapers. The German Dispensary helped with the health needs of the community, while the Ottendorfer Branch of the Free Circulating Library provided books in their native tongue. Social and other support organizations organized around a place of origin or a particular outlook or activity. German shooting clubs became popular12 as did clubs for music, such as the Aschenbroechel Verein. Beer gardens and dance halls such as Scheffel Hall provided places for lively entertainment.13

 

The City’s Poor

 

The poor German immigrants who lived in Kleindeutschland did not have the wherewithal to take advantage of these institutions. They could barely find a place to sleep and a way to feed their families.

 

Since its earliest years, New York has dealt with the poor and helpless among its population with a combination of benevolence and disdain. When the Dutch West India Company sent a group of Dutch orphans to the colony “to be bound out as apprentices and servants” in 1656, Peter Stuyvesant established the first public home for orphans and an “Orphan Masters’ Court.”14 Generally however, under the Dutch, religious organizations were expected to care for the city’s poor. Under the English, in 1693, the Common Council passed its first “poor rate” tax to enable them to distribute fuel, clothes, food and cash to the “deserving” poor and established an almshouse on Broad Street for those who were unable to care for themselves.15 A two-story brick building was constructed on the Common in 1736, housing a mix of the city’s poor along with the unruly as well as convicted criminals, all of whom were required to attend prayer services and work if they were physically able, so they would not be a “Burthen to the Publick.”

 

With time, the gap between the rich and poor grew, and increasing numbers of people needed financial help to overcome problems that were sometimes created by illness or the death of a spouse. The city provided more and more “outdoor relief” and also had to build more almshouses to accommodate the growing need. Religious and philanthropic organizations also helped, their efforts usually involving “education in the habits of self-discipline and the self-reliance necessary to survive in a wage-based economy… to instill prudence, decency, sobriety, thrift, punctuality” since poverty was usually seen as “moral turpitude, not misfortune.”17 In 1806, the Isabella Graham Society for the Relief of Poor Widows opened an orphanage where poor children “could be brought up to lead productive lives,” that eventually led to the formation of the Orphan Asylum Society.18

 

By the early nineteenth century, only half of all children in New York attended school even though the traditional apprenticeship system for learning trades and behavior no longer existed. Many children were caught stealing or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior and the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents began in 1823 to try to deal with these problems. The first New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 to house children under sixteen years old, and the authorities used religion and education to try to redeem the children brought there.19

 

By the 1850s, conditions for the poor were only getting worse. The huge numbers of immigrants coming into New York increased the competition for jobs and housing, and crowded conditions led to higher rates of illness and crime. Efforts of groups such as the American Tract Society were comprised of preaching and giving away bibles, while the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was able to attract the interest and donations of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens. They managed to get more needy people into almshouses on Blackwell’s Island, build a new one for the able-bodied poor, and get a new truancy law passed that enabled the police to round up delinquent children to get them off the streets.20

 

Children’s Aid Society

 

The Children’s Aid Society, another in a wide variety of efforts to deal with the problem of poor and uneducated children, was started by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 and continued under his leadership for the next 37 years. Brace graduated from Yale University and studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary. After a trip to Europe, during which he traveled in England with Frederick Law Olmsted,21 Brace began serving with Rev. Pease at the Five Points Mission in 1852. He was discouraged that the traditional methods of outreach were not helping change the lives of the people he saw. He also was struck by the large numbers of boys and girls who apparently had nothing useful to do and no one to look after them, and who seemed to be headed only for lives of crime. He decided that the most effective way to change conditions for the poor was to reach these children and try to change their circumstances

 

He wanted to “help the helpless, neglected children of the city to help themselves to become good and useful citizens.”23 Typically, their families could not care for them and they were sent out on the streets to fend for themselves, or to find some way to bring money or food back home.24 Because they were small, they were often preyed on by unsavory types who sent them out to steal, or they sold things on the streets or helped organ grinders in their trade. Boys would steal, sell newspapers or hawk matches, while many girls were forced into prostitution. 25 Street gangs developed to offer some protection for these wretched children who often slept on steam grates or in the remains of burned out buildings.

 

Brace believed that if he could show these children that someone cared about them, educate them to have good habits such as industry and self-control, and help them achieve some basic skills, they could get jobs and improve their lives. He felt that “home life was better than institutions and that self-help was better than alms.”26

 

From its beginning, the work of the Children’s Aid Society involved several separate efforts. The most radical and well-known was “placing out.” Over the course of the first forty years, the organization took 97,738 children from New York, and sent them by train to situations away from New York City, usually with “Christian families” in the Midwest where they were supposed to enjoy the benefits of a good home life in a rural setting. While some did in fact become essentially members of these families and benefitted from the experience, others were put to work in stores and on farms, in conditions close to indentured servitude. Brace felt that this effort was very positive because he believed that it was important to completely change the circumstances of these children’s lives in order to have a positive impact.

 

“The effort to place the children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see.”27

 

Since Brace could not remove every poor child from the bad influences of the city, he also made local efforts. These included the development of a series of lodging houses and industrial schools located around the city. The lodging houses were places a homeless child could come so he or she did not have to sleep on the street, with separate facilities for boys and girls. A young person could stay for a night or two if his difficulty was temporary, or he could stay for extended periods, and be assured of receiving food and a bath, as well as shelter. If they could pay, the children were asked for a small amount so that they felt they were paying their own way, rather than accepting charity, or they were asked to help with certain chores. These lodging houses eventually offered evening or morning classes to help the children with reading and writing, and specific skills that could help them gain employment.

 

The Newsboys’ Lodging House was opened in a building at Fulton and Nassau streets in 1854. The liveliness and ingenuity of the newsboys had a special resonance with Brace, who admired these qualities but felt they needed to be channeled into some productive enterprise. By 1928, the Children’s Aid Society ran seven lodging houses, located throughout the city.28

 

Brace saw that many poor children did not attend public school, either because they could not afford proper clothes, or because they had to work to help their families, so Brace established the Industrial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society to educate these children.29 The Industrial Schools taught reading and writing and character building, as well as skills such as carpentry for boys and cooking and laundering for girls. They also trained children to work on machines that might help them gain employment, such as sewing machines and typewriters, filling a gap left by the public schools. They provided clothes if needed, as well as a hot meal, and were non-sectarian. The Children’s Aid Society found that different groups had different needs, so they organized specific schools for Italian, German and “Colored” children, and later started medical and dental clinics for these children as well.

 

They became active in legislative efforts to promote their cause, such as working for the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of 1874. They started mothers’ groups to train them for this most important task, and day care centers for those who had to work. They eventually opened homes for sick and convalescing children, a school for crippled children, kindergartens, summer camps and playgrounds. While the Children’s Aid Society no longer runs lodging houses and schools, it continues to exist today, providing a variety of social services to New York children and their families.

 

Elizabeth Wheeler Home for Girls

 

The first lodging house for girls, called “The Girls’ Temporary Home,” was opened at 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1863 and during its first nine months, this building served 597 girls. The intention of this facility was to be “a resting place, a temporary home for any girl without friend or family in the city . . . to gain time to seek reputable employment” as well as a place where they could get help and advice.30 The Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society of 1889 called this girls’ home “one of the most successful and economical of all the branches of the Society,” but noted that there was a great need for an additional building for this facility.31 In the Annual Report of the following year the writer was even more adamant. “. . . we feel deeply the lack of accommodations, and look forward earnestly to the time when, with increased facilities, much more can be accomplished.”32

 

They reported that during the previous year, there had been 15,533 lodgings in the house, 49,324 meals served, 45 girls trained on typewriters and 72 girls trained on sewing machines, with 178 girls sent to situations and employment.33

 

In July 1891, the property at 307 East 12th Street was purchased by Emily Wheeler and conveyed by her to the Children’s Aid Society.34 The home was given by Mary B. Wheeler, Mary B. Ceccarini and Emily B. Wheeler in memory of Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler.35 The Elizabeth Home was designed by the preeminent architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.36 The home opened with a festive dedication in 1892, and included dormitories as well as single bedrooms for girls, sitting rooms, a reading room, office, dining rooms and kitchen, and rooms fitted with sewing machines and typewriters.

 

Calvert Vaux

 

Calvert Vaux 37 was one of the most prolific and influential architects working in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. His picturesque buildings and romantic landscape designs were constructed in numerous cities and towns and his books had a wide-ranging audience, contributing to the vogue during this period for interesting and picturesquely styled buildings. Vaux, trained in architecture, landscape design and planning, came from England to the United States in 1850 to work with A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York as a partner in his Bureau of Architecture. They specialized in the creation of picturesque English country houses and also began the planning of the grounds around many government buildings in Washington, D.C. After Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux began a partnership with Frank Clarke Withers, with whom he designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse .

 

Vaux’s book of house designs, Villas and Cottages was modeled on Downing’s highly popular Cottage Residences and became a standard for the genre.

 

Vaux relocated to New York City where, in 1858, he and Frederick Law Olmsted entered the competition for Central Park with their plan for a “Greensward,” the first public park in the country . Their design, based on the tradition of English landscape gardening, became a major influence in the development of public parks throughout the country. Vaux was responsible for the design of many of the architectural features of the park, including the bridges, and the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain. He went on to design numerous projects with Olmsted under the auspices of the landscape firm, Olmsted, Vaux and Company . These included Prospect Park in Brooklyn , Riverside, Illinois , Morningside Park , and Riverside Park .

 

Vaux designed many public buildings, institutions and grounds in various cities. These included the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut , Hudson River State Hospital and Grounds , the Grounds for Gallaudet College in Washington , the grounds of Parliament buildings in Ottawa , and the park system for Buffalo, NY. With Jacob Wrey Mould, who had come earlier from England and contributed many designs for Central Park, Vaux developed a Master Plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History .

 

Around 1873, Vaux began a partnership with George Kent Radford , a civil engineer, that was to last for eighteen years. This partnership was formalized as the architectural division of Vaux & Co., Landscape Architects in 1876. In addition to numerous designs for the Children’s Aid Society during the last part of his career, Vaux designed a High Victorian Gothic townhouse for Samuel J. Tilden in New York and the grounds for Tilden’s country estate, Greystone, in Yonkers, New York . Vaux had a long and varied career, from private homes for the wealthy to model tenements for the poor, from the landscape of individual estates, to the layout for entire cities. His designs helped establish the standard aesthetic of the late nineteenth century, both in building and landscaping and he is known as one of the founders of the field of landscape architecture.

 

Calvert Vaux and the Children’s Aid Society

 

Vaux became increasingly interested in the way architecture could be used to better the lives of unfortunate members of society and devoted much of the last part of his career to this cause. He was a careful observer of the first model tenement competition in 1879, sponsored by the journal, Plumber & Sanitary Engineer. In 1880, he designed a block of model tenements on First Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets for the Improved Dwellings Association. These apartments had windows in each room, central courtyards for improved air circulation and roof-top gardens for the residents.38

 

Calvert Vaux was a friend of Charles Loring Brace who lived in a house Vaux designed in Hastings, New York. By the late 1870s, Brace’s organization was successful and well-funded enough to want to construct its own lodging houses, in order to create the exact type of structure they needed. In 1879, Vaux designed their first purpose-built building, the East Side Boys’ Lodging House and Industrial School on East Broadway and Gouveneur Street . The picturesquely designed, 3 ½ story, brick and brownstone building had steeply pitched roofs and held dormitories, classrooms, and a well-furnished reading room as well as a dispensary and sick room. The free-standing building was a far cry from the dingy tenements of the area and was hailed in the press as “Christianity solidified in brick and mortar.”39

 

Vaux went on to design more than a dozen buildings for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, a very important part of his work. These included four lodging houses, among them the West Side Lodging House at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street and the Tompkins Square Lodging House and Industrial School at 8th Street and Avenue B , and five industrial schools that had similar facilities without the beds. This latter type included the Mott Street Industrial School at 256-258 Mott Street , and the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School .

 

The 44th Street Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School was the first to display a large, front-facing, stepped gable. According to the Society’s 46th Annual Report of 1888, this element came from “an old Nuremburg house called the ‘Petersen’ building, [which] is one of the most picturesque in the city.”40 This lodging house was marked by steep gables, dormer windows and oriole towers, in keeping with Vaux’s intentions to create a home-like and visually interesting composition, but also was “appropriately reminiscent of the city’s Dutch heritage.”41 Most of Vaux’s buildings that were built in the following years employed this design element.

 

The Children’s Aid Society buildings were both domestic and institutional, intended to be an ornament to a part of the city the ugliness of which is particularly in need of some relief. It is a fortunate circumstance that the objects of the Children’s Aid Society require it to undertake its building operations in quarters where, but for its efforts, it is unlikely that there would be any architecture worth looking at or discussing.42

They were usually free-standing structures, with highly varied rooflines that provided visual interest and variety. Vaux believed that,

In any architectural design, the separate groups of forms may be, in themselves, attractive, or the building may be splendid in its general conception of masses, or rich in its varied and charming detail, but it will be defective as an architectural composition if it fails in its sky-line.43

 

Vaux’s rooflines were usually faced with slate or tile, and consisted of mansard roofs with steeply pitched towers, conical roofs or front-facing stepped gables. These buildings were built of brick and sandstone, common and inexpensive materials that were deemed to give a picturesque effect. Vaux tried to site them on corner lots because he felt that two perspectives gave him a chance to create a more interesting design. He used projecting oriels, large windows, dormers and chimneys in an attempt to create a home-like atmosphere for the neglected children who came here. Faithful to his earliest design theories, Vaux worked to evoke the imagery of a snug country inn in the middle of New York City.44 By varying the placement of the entrance as well as the size and placement of the window openings, he created a lively façade, ornamented solely with decorative brickwork such as string courses and recessed panels.

 

Design of the Elizabeth Home for Girls

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, the last of this group designed by Vaux has the picturesque characteristics common to Vaux’s other designs although its 40-foot-wide, mid-block site required a more restrained composition. It has two asymmetrical sections, with the entrance sited off center, in the western side. The eastern section is topped by the typical stepped gable while the western side has a mansard roof with two dormer windows, a reverse arrangement from that of the House of Reception on West 23rd Street . The windows are placed along continuous sills, providing some unity in a façade of varied window sizes, shapes and groupings. Unlike many of the other CAS buildings, this one has no projecting oriel window, but here the entrance is given special emphasis by its projecting surround topped by a balustraded balcony.

 

While not as elaborate as some of the other CAS buildings, the Elizabeth Home is a distinctive building that would have provided the sense of “hominess” so desired by both the architect and the organization. Located on a block of brick-fronted rowhouses, this building is obviously different, but not enough to be jarring. Rather, it continues to add interest and variety to the streetscape.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1895, the Children’s Aid Society hired architects Clinton & Russell to create a two-story addition on the north of the building to house a laundry.45 Another alteration, in 1915, added bedrooms in three floors above this addition.46 In 1901, the Children’s Aid Society acquired the adjacent property at No. 311 East 12th Street and converted it into an addition to the Elizabeth Home.47

 

In 1930, the Society moved its operations to West 134th Street and sold both of these buildings to Dr. Benedict Lust, a promoter of natural healing.”48 Lust, a German immigrant with degrees in osteopathy and medicine, believed in natural healing, including a “water cure” and organized the Naturopathic Society of America. He established the American School of Naturopathy which offered a post-graduate curriculum in naturopathy, chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.49

 

Upon Lust’s death, the buildings were purchased by the Florence Crittenton League and remodeled and reopened in 1948 as a private shelter for girls aged 16-21, called Barrett House.50 The Crittendon League was started in 1883 by Charles N. Crittenton, a wealthy New York drug supply manufacturer.51 Originally called the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls and Night Mission for Fallen Women , it was named after his late daughter and was established as a shelter for troubled and runaway young girls, many of whom were orphaned, and as a mission for women of ill repute. In the late 1880s, the group started a shelter and mission on Bleecker Street that gained renown for its midnight gospel readings. By the turn-of-the-century, the Crittenton Foundation operated in many large

 

U.S. cities and was expanding its services in New York. In 1913, the group relocated its headquarters to West 27th Street and in 1946 purchased the former Children’s Aid Society buildings in order to be able to care for more residents and offer expanded services. The home’s residents were generally referred there by courts, clinics and private agencies and given a variety of therapies to help them emotionally, while keeping them out of the House of Detention.

 

In 1982, the building was sold to a developer and in 1984 it was re-opened as co­op apartments.

 

Description

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls is a four story brick-faced building set on a raised basement. Built originally on a street of townhouses , the forty-foot-wide façade blends in by appearing to be two buildings. The western section is two bays wide and holds the building’s main entrance, in the eastern bay of the first story. The raised basement has a pair of large windows framed by a sandstone lintel and watertable and fronted by an iron grille, while the areaway is marked by a non-historic iron fence. The entrance, reached by a short concrete stairway with non-historic iron railings is emphasized by a projecting brick enframement embellished by small, terra-cotta ornament, string courses and globe lights. It is capped by a projecting hood supported on stone brackets. The entrance consists of a paneled door with a large glass light flanked by paneled side sections.

 

A plain, sandstone lintel separates it from the large, round-headed glass transom that is subdivided into small squares. A pair of plain rectangular windows on a continuous sill is in the western bay of the first story. The second story has a single window in the western bay and, in the eastern bay, is a double multi-light, non-historic door that leads to a small, balustraded balcony formed by the projecting hood over the entranceway. At the third story, two pairs of narrow, rectangular windows share a common sill and a smooth sandstone lintel. A simple, corbelled brick cornice separates the roof from the floor below. This section has a mansard roof pierced by two dormer windows with bell-shaped roofs and flanked on the western side by a stepped parapet wall that projects above the roof.

 

A tall, prominent chimney rises between the two sections. Its plain brick facing is marked by several narrow string courses. The section on the east is topped by a stepped, front-facing gable with a decorative sandstone molding that echoes the steps. Each floor contains grouped window openings linked by continuous sills and sometimes lintels. The fourth story has three, round-headed windows capped by a continuous, rounded brick molding. The third story has four evenly-spaced windows under a plain, continuous stone lintel, while the second story has two pairs of windows under stone lintels and a sill that runs across the entire section. There are five windows with transoms and a continuous stone sill and lintel at the first story, and two individual windows fronted by iron grilles at the basement level. A third window has been converted to an entrance, with a non-historic door and light.

 

A broad sandstone lintel and watertable is located at the top of the basement level, creating a strong distinction between it and the rest of the building. A non-historic iron fence shields the areaway.

 

- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

"Is that disgusting. Yes, and it's not just the people, although Lord knows that's bad enough. Even doggies and cats can't be trusted - underneath their fur .... completely NAKED."

 

('Sam the Eagle' / Podium with book by Palisades Toys)

 

Stage by RK

BEAUTY OF FORM AND BEAUTY OF MIND

By Christian Andersen

 

THERE was once a sculptor, named Alfred, who having won the large gold medal and obtained a traveling scholarship, went to Italy, and then came back to his native land. He was young at that time- indeed, he is young still, although he is ten years older than he was then.

  

On his return, he went to visit one of the little towns in the island of Zealand. The whole town knew who the stranger was; and one of the richest men in the place gave a party in his honor, and all who were of any consequence, or who possessed some property, were invited. It was quite an event, and all the town knew of it, so that it was not necessary to announce it by beat of drum.

 

Apprentice-boys, children of the poor, and even the poor people themselves, stood before the house, watching the lighted windows; and the watchman might easily fancy he was giving a party also, there were so many people in the streets. There was quite an air of festivity about it, and the house was full of it; for Mr. Alfred, the sculptor, was there.

 

He talked and told anecdotes, and every one listened to him with pleasure, not unmingled with awe; but none felt so much respect for him as did the elderly widow of a naval officer.

 

She seemed, so far as Mr. Alfred was concerned, to be like a piece of fresh blotting-paper that absorbed all he said and asked for more. She was very appreciative, and incredibly ignorant- a kind of female Gaspar Hauser.

  

"I should like to see Rome," she said; "it must be a lovely city, or so many foreigners would not be constantly arriving there. Now, do give me a description of Rome. How does the city look when you enter in at the gate?"

  

"I cannot very well describe it," said the sculptor; "but you enter on a large open space, in the centre of which stands an obelisk, which is a thousand years old."

  

"An organist!" exclaimed the lady, who had never heard the word ''''obelisk.'''' Several of the guests could scarcely forbear laughing, and the sculptor would have had some difficulty in keeping his countenance, but the smile on his lips faded away; for he caught sight of a pair of dark-blue eyes close by the side of the inquisitive lady. They belonged to her daughter; and surely no one who had such a daughter could be silly.

 

The mother was like a fountain of questions; and the daughter, who listened but never spoke, might have passed for the beautiful maid of the fountain. How charming she was! She was a study for the sculptor to contemplate, but not to converse with; for she did not speak, or, at least, very seldom.

  

"Has the pope a great family?" inquired the lady.

 

The young man answered considerately, as if the question had been a different one, "No; he does not come from a great family."

  

"That is not what I asked," persisted the widow; "I mean, has he a wife and children?"

 

"The pope is not allowed to marry," replied the gentleman.

 

"I don''''t like that," was the lady''''s remark.

 

She certainly might have asked more sensible questions; but if she had not been allowed to say just what she liked, would her daughter have been there, leaning so gracefully on her shoulder, and looking straight before her, with a smile that was almost mournful on her face?

  

Mr. Alfred again spoke of Italy, and of the glorious colors in Italian scenery; the purple hills, the deep blue of the Mediterranean, the azure of southern skies, whose brightness and glory could only be surpassed in the north by the deep-blue eyes of a maiden; and he said this with a peculiar intonation; but she who should have understood his meaning looked quite unconscious of it, which also was charming.

 

"Beautiful Italy!" sighed some of the guests.

 

"Oh, to travel there!" exclaimed others.

 

"Charming! Charming!" echoed from every voice.

  

"I may perhaps win a hundred thousand dollars in the lottery," said the naval officer''''s widow; "and if I do, we will travel- I and my daughter; and you, Mr. Alfred, must be our guide. We can all three travel together, with one or two more of our good friends." And she nodded in such a friendly way at the company, that each imagined himself to be the favored person who was to accompany them to Italy. "Yes, we must go," she continued; "but not to those parts where there are robbers. We will keep to Rome. In the public roads one is always safe."

  

The daughter sighed very gently; and how much there may be in a sigh, or attributed to it! The young man attributed a great deal of meaning to this sigh. Those deep-blue eyes, which had been lit up this evening in honor of him, must conceal treasures, treasures of heart and mind, richer than all the glories of Rome; and so when he left the party that night, he had lost it completely to the young lady.

 

The house of the naval officer''''s widow was the one most constantly visited by Mr. Alfred, the sculptor. It was soon understood that his visits were not intended for that lady, though they were the persons who kept up the conversation. He came for the sake of the daughter. They called her Kaela. Her name was really Karen Malena, and these two names had been contracted into the one name Kaela. She was really beautiful; but some said she was rather dull, and slept late of a morning.

  

"She has been accustomed to that," her mother said. "She is a beauty, and they are always easily tired. She does sleep rather late; but that makes her eyes so clear."

  

What power seemed to lie in the depths of those dark eyes! The young man felt the truth of the proverb, "Still waters run deep:" and his heart had sunk into their depths. He often talked of his adventures, and the mamma was as simple and eager in her questions as on the first evening they met. It was a pleasure to hear Alfred describe anything. He showed them colored plates of Naples, and spoke of excursions to Mount Vesuvius, and the eruptions of fire from it. The naval officer''''s widow had never heard of them before.

  

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed. "So that is a burning mountain; but is it not very dangerous to the people who live near it?"

  

"Whole cities have been destroyed," he replied; "for instance, Herculaneum and Pompeii."

 

"Oh, the poor people! And you saw all that with your own eyes?"

  

"No; I did not see any of the eruptions which are represented in those pictures; but I will show you a sketch of my own, which represents an eruption I once saw."

  

He placed a pencil sketch on the table; and mamma, who had been over-powered with the appearance of the colored plates, threw a glance at the pale drawing and cried in astonishment, "What, did you see it throw up white fire?"

  

For a moment, Alfred''''s respect for Kaela''''s mamma underwent a sudden shock, and lessened considerably; but, dazzled by the light which surrounded Kaela, he soon found it quite natural that the old lady should have no eye for color. After all, it was of very little consequence; for Kaela''''s mamma had the best of all possessions; namely, Kaela herself.

  

Alfred and Kaela were betrothed, which was a very natural result; and the betrothal was announced in the newspaper of the little town. Mama purchased thirty copies of the paper, that she might cut out the paragraph and send it to friends and acquaintances. The betrothed pair were very happy, and the mother was happy too. She said it seemed like connecting herself with Thorwalsden.

  

"You are a true successor of Thorwalsden," she said to Alfred; and it seemed to him as if, in this instance, mamma had said a clever thing. Kaela was silent; but her eyes shone, her lips smiled, every movement was graceful,- in fact, she was beautiful; that cannot be repeated too often. Alfred decided to take a bust of Kaela as well as of her mother. They sat to him accordingly, and saw how he moulded and formed the soft clay with his fingers.

  

"I suppose it is only on our account that you perform this common-place work yourself, instead of leaving it to your servant to do all that sticking together."

  

"It is really necessary that I should mould the clay myself," he replied.

  

"Ah, yes, you are always so polite," said mamma, with a smile; and Kaela silently pressed his hand, all soiled as it was with the clay.

  

Then he unfolded to them both the beauties of Nature, in all her works; he pointed out to them how, in the scale of creation, inanimate matter was inferior to animate nature; the plant above the mineral, the animal above the plant, and man above them all. He strove to show them how the beauty of the mind could be displayed in the outward form, and that it was the sculptor''''s task to seize upon that beauty of expression, and produce it in his works.

 

Kaela stood silent, but nodded in approbation of what he said, while mamma-in-law made the following confession:-

 

"It is difficult to follow you; but I go hobbling along after you with my thoughts, though what you say makes my head whirl round and round. Still I contrive to lay hold on some of it."

  

Kaela''''s beauty had a firm hold on Alfred; it filled his soul, and held a mastery over him. Beauty beamed from Kaela''''s every feature, glittered in her eyes, lurked in the corners of her mouth, and pervaded every movement of her agile fingers. Alfred, the sculptor, saw this. He spoke only to her, thought only of her, and the two became one; and so it may be said she spoke much, for he was always talking to her; and he and she were one.

 

Such was the betrothal, and then came the wedding, with bride''''s-maids and wedding presents, all duly mentioned in the wedding speech. Mamma-in-law had set up Thorwalsden''''s bust at the end of the table, attired in a dressing-gown; it was her fancy that he should be a guest. Songs were sung, and cheers given; for it was a gay wedding, and they were a handsome pair. "Pygmalion loved his Galatea," said one of the songs.

  

"Ah, that is some of your mythologies," said mamma-in-law.

  

Next day the youthful pair started for Copenhagen, where they were to live; mamma-in-law accompanied them, to attend to the "coarse work," as she always called the domestic arrangements. Kaela looked like a doll in a doll''''s house, for everything was bright and new, and so fine. There they sat, all three; and as for Alfred, a proverb may describe his position- he looked like a swan amongst the geese.

 

The magic of form had enchanted him; he had looked at the casket without caring to inquire what it contained, and that omission often brings the greatest unhappiness into married life. The casket may be injured, the gilding may fall off, and then the purchaser regrets his bargain.

  

In a large party it is very disagreeable to find a button giving way, with no studs at hand to fall back upon; but it is worse still in a large company to be conscious that your wife and mother-in-law are talking nonsense, and that you cannot depend upon yourself to produce a little ready wit to carry off the stupidity of the whole affair.

  

The young married pair often sat together hand in hand; he would talk, but she could only now and then let fall a word in the same melodious voice, the same bell-like tones. It was a mental relief when Sophy, one of her friends, came to pay them a visit. Sophy was not, pretty. She was, however, quite free from any physical deformity, although Kaela used to say she was a little crooked; but no eye, save an intimate acquaintance, would have noticed it.

 

She was a very sensible girl, yet it never occurred to her that she might be a

dangerous person in such a house. Her appearance created a new atmosphere in the doll''''s house, and air was really required, they all owned that. They felt the want of a change of air, and consequently the young couple and their mother travelled to Italy.

  

"Thank heaven we are at home again within our own four walls," said mamma-in-law and daughter both, on their return after a year''''s absence.

  

"There is no real pleasure in travelling," said mamma; "to tell the truth, it''''s very wearisome; I beg pardon for saying so. I was soon very tired of it, although I had my children with me; and, besides, it''''s very expensive work travelling, very expensive. And all those galleries one is expected to see, and the quantity of things you are obliged to run after!

  

It must be done, for very shame; you are sure to be asked when you come back if you have seen everything, and will most likely be told that you''''ve omitted to see what was best worth seeing of all. I got tired at last of those endless Madonnas; I began to think I was turning into a Madonna myself."

  

"And then the living, mamma," said Kaela.

  

"Yes, indeed," she replied, "no such a thing as a respectable meat soup- their cookery is miserable stuff."

  

The journey had also tired Kaela; but she was always fatigued, that was the worst of it. So they sent for Sophy, and she was taken into the house to reside with them, and her presence there was a great advantage. Mamma-in-law acknowledged that Sophy was not only a clever housewife, but well-informed and accomplished, though that could hardly be expected in a person of her limited means.

  

She was also a generous-hearted, faithful girl; she showed that thoroughly while Kaela lay sick, fading away. When the casket is everything, the casket should be strong, or else all is over. And all was over with the casket, for Kaela died.

  

"She was beautiful," said her mother; "she was quite different from the beauties they call ''''antiques,'''' for they are so damaged. A beauty ought to be perfect, and Kaela was a perfect beauty."

  

Alfred wept, and mamma wept, and they both wore mourning. The black dress suited mamma very well, and she wore mourning the longest. She had also to experience another grief in seeing Alfred marry again, marry Sophy, who was nothing at all to look at.

  

"He''''s gone to the very extreme," said mamma-in-law; "he has gone from the most beautiful to the ugliest, and he has forgotten his first wife. Men have no constancy. My husband was a very different man,- but then he died before me."

  

"''''Pygmalion loved his Galatea,'''' was in the song they sung at my first wedding," said Alfred; "I once fell in love with a beautiful statue, which awoke to life in my arms; but the kindred soul, which is a gift from heaven, the angel who can feel and sympathize with and elevate us, I have not found and won till now. You came, Sophy, not in the glory of outward beauty, though you are even fairer than is necessary. The chief thing still remains. You came to teach the sculptor that his work is but dust and clay only, an outward form made of a material that decays, and that what we should seek to obtain is the ethereal essence of mind and spirit.

 

Poor Kaela! our life was but as a meeting by the way-side; in yonder world, where we shall know each other from a union of mind, we shall be but mere acquaintances."

  

"That was not a loving speech," said Sophy, "nor spoken like a Christian. In a future state, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, but where, as you say, souls are attracted to each other by sympathy; there everything beautiful develops itself, and is raised to a higher state of existence: her soul will acquire such completeness that it may harmonize with yours, even more than mine, and you will then once more utter your first rapturous exclamation of your love, ''''Beautiful, most beautiful!''''"

  

~~ THE END~~~~

   

<b>Bai Maleiha''''s Reflection:</b>

 

Men adore physical beauty for human eyes are weak to temptation. More often

than not, man battles his internal desire for pleasure while he tries to balance the

quality of his choices and decisions.

 

A beautiful form and face will not last as nature has a timetable for the freshness

of beauty. It is important therefore that the genuine focus of appreciating an individual is to look beyond the eyes..for the <b>heart sees beyond the eyes</b>.

  

Learn more good info

Peats 'World of Electronics' - Statement

 

02.04.2012

 

It is with deep sadness and regret that the family owned business of Peats ‘World of Electronics’, the long established and well-known Dublin electronics retail company is to seek the appointment of a Liquidator in an upcoming voluntary creditor’s liquidation.

 

The Chairman of the business, Ben Peat, briefed the company’s 75-staff today at the company’s head-office store in Parnell St and told staff that the company could not continue to trade in light of its current financial constraints confirming that the company’s eleven stores around Dublin have closed with immediate effect.

 

Mr Peat told staff that a combination of recession impacts, unsustainably high rental costs and a changing marketplace in which online shopping was eating into high street retailing, meant that the business cannot continue to trade going into the upcoming lean summer. Mr Peat said that “the business generated 60% of its annual sales in the period November to January, and that a summer’s spend could not carry the business, to allow it to continue. It is evident in our experience that consumers have little discretionary spend at this time and sales volumes are up to 50% down on peak 2007 spend, while in parallel it has not been possible to achieve appropriate rental adjustment to enable a profit margin to be achieved to sustain business viability. The sector in which we operate has been disproportionately affected by the downturn, if we don’t close now our capacity to settle our affairs to best effect will only further deteriorate”, Mr Peat said.

 

Mr Peat told staff that “Trade hit its peak in 2007, with turnover that year of €24m, it has since re-trenched to less than half for the current year” and thanking staff, customers and suppliers, he continued, “the Company had a fine heritage for quality, decency and value, it became a popular name on the Dublin retail landscape and it’s departure from the high-street will be a loss to the tradition of family retailing in Dublin. Thanking customers he said, it is with deep regret that we have to close the doors of our ‘world of electronics business’, - we have tried very hard to establish solutions with suppliers and landlords that could have brought balance and sustainability back into our business. We have implemented extensive cost-reduction at all levels including payroll and terms of employment, but unfortunately it is beyond our power to continue in operation and we have to protect our staff, creditors, debtors and legal interests to best possible effect and do right by all concerned as far as is both humanly and financially possible. We cannot allow our situation to deteriorate further – as we do not want to compromise our capacity to secure the best possible outcome for all out of what is a difficult situation”

 

Thanking staff for their support and loyalty in a number of cases for over thirty years, Mr Peat said that staff will be paid their entitlements and redundancy due in full, and asked for their support for both colleagues and the business in the coming days, while the business settled its affairs to the very best of its ability to do so. He commented that over the years Peat’s staff have always been exceptional, there was one big extended family within which three generations of the Peat family still currently work.

 

Peats began life in Parnell Street in 1934 when Brigit and William Peat set up shop to sell wet cell batteries, bicycles, furniture and prams. All six of their children joined the business and their youngest son, Ben Peat is the current chairman. In its early years the company began to develop the electronics side of the business selling radiograms, followed by three-in-one hi-fi systems and contemporary products including repair services, to the present day sales of an assembly of electronic home entertainment products including flat screen TV’s, cameras, computer laptops and accessories.

 

Peats’ eleven stores are located throughout Dublin, with its head office in Parnell St; the Company also has stores in Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, College Green, Rathmines, Swords and in the Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge. It also operated a number of Sony Centre shops under the Sony Centre identity. These outlets are located in the Jervis Shopping Centre, on O’Connell St, in Dun Laoghaire, in the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre and also on Stephen’s Green, close to the Shelbourne Hotel.

 

All stores have now been closed and telephone calls will automatically be directed to a call centre to accommodate any enquiries arising, so that they can be logged and dealt with as efficiently and as soon as possible.

 

In making enquiries customers are invited to call 01-9023718 or to Email: admin@peats.com

CREATURE: The Mulshians are a race of physically basic but technologically and culturally sophisticated humanoids native to the planet Ergnoplis in the Beta Octant near the Equator of the Prime Galaxy, and mostly restricted to it by choice. They are distinguished by small, thorny horns on their tops and crest markings on their foreheads. Nicknamed "Egg People" due to their superficial resemblance to cracked eggs, they are a fully civilized and mostly peaceful race with an exceptionally high racial potential for both ambition and useful mutation. Although the relative rate of mutants within the population is very low, the mutants the Mulshian race has produced have all proven to be truly exceptional individuals.

HEIGHT RANGE: 1.2–1.8 Meters.

WEIGHT RANGE: 90–140 lb.

DURABILITY VALUE: 400–700

 

(Custodian's Note: The following entry was written in Age 770, when the Eggmen were still alive and active, hence its referral to them in the present tense. This will be updated eventually.)

  

GROUP: INDIVIDUALS (5): The Eggmen Super Team is an illustrious five–man mercenary team consisting of five Mulshians born with bizarre mutant powers enabling the harnessing of basic elements. They are known by the names Fire–Egg, Water–Egg, Plant–Egg, Electric–Egg and Wind–Egg. Only Plant–Egg's "normal" given name is known; Fire–Egg and Electric–Egg never revealed theirs, and Water–Egg and Wind–Egg never had any other names. The Eggmen have gone on countless adventures throughout the Prime Galaxy, working with numerous clients up to and including angelic entities. Despite being "mercenaries", they rarely end up actually being paid for anything they do, but they don't mind this much because they have a genuine, shared enthusiasm for adventure and doing heroic deeds. It is said that they have visited almost every inhabited planet in the Prime Galaxy, and they are not only by far the most notable members of the Mulshian race, but among the most notable mortals of all time altogether. Originally, the group was simply known as the "Eggmen". The name changed to "Eggmen Super Team" only when all five members had joined together.

 

• Wind–Egg is the only female Eggmen member. Abandoned by her xenophobic parents for being a mutant, she was found and raised by an advanced cult under the control of a lesser Primal Deity, Ket'Spallus, by whom she was named a “champion” and served as an interplanetary ninja assassin for years before encountering Fire–Egg and Water–Egg, whom she had been tasked to kill but who convinced her to join them. The trio returned to Wind–Egg’s master and vanquished him along with his cult. Due to her upbringing, Wind–Egg has dabbled in the Primal Arts and has developed the unique power to create “wind–familiars” from the elemental Primal Energies. She is usually (see below) the most level–headed of the group and is frequently on the receiving end of one–sided romantic advances by the idiotic Water–Egg.

In Age 750, Wind–Egg had a traumatic near–death experience that made her go crazy and caused her to leave the Eggmen and become a nun, believing that this was the true and only way to atone for her past sins and avoid damnation. Three years later, an attack on her church by invading Skellen finally knocked the sense back into her, and Wind–Egg defeated them before seeking out and rejoining the Eggmen.

 

• Fire–Egg is the official leader and “founder” of the Eggmen Super Team. He is a ruthless pragmatist, social elitist (though he usually ends up helping those he looks down upon anyway) and tactical genius whose leadership has helped win multiple wars (such as the Third Skellen Wars), and his immunity to all types of fire damage including explosion blasts has proved quite useful. Fire–Egg was born into and raised by a successful business couple, who were brutally killed by Oseeron of the (not yet formed as of then) Dynamo Legion, beginning the legendary conflict between the two groups. He was the first to take up the group’s current profession as an adventurer and mercenary, and first met Water–Egg in Age 746 on a mission to kill an Ohgroid on the loose in South Egg City. Water–Egg helped Fire–Egg destroy the foul beast and afterward was taken up as his sidekick and apprentice, coining the name of “The Eggmen” which initially referred to them as a duo.

 

• Electric–Egg is a psychopath and former violent criminal who was sentenced to death for multiple murders, but saved by the other four Eggmen in order to recruit him after the ill–advised first attempt to kill him via electric chair (which caused the entire prison block to explode). Later, he largely reformed under their guidance and learned to take out his rage only on the evil. This makes Electric–Egg by far the most brutal of the group, never sparing an opponent when the choice is his and having a penchant for electrocution from the inside–out. His love of killing has even proved to be an inconvenience on a few occasions when the other Eggmen needed to take a foe alive for questioning. Plant–Egg loves creating new weapons for Electric–Egg for the express purpose of seeing the creative and brutal ways in which he will use them.

 

• Turvalom, better known as Plant–Egg, is a freakish genius with an IQ of over three hundred, who was the last member to join. For the first three decades of his life, he lived on the isolated island nation of Wrenchaii to the North of Ergnoplis' main continent. There, he utilized the limited local resources as best as he possibly could to create technology for the technologically–impaired general population of Wrenchaii. Due to the island's seclusion, he remained unaware of the other Eggmen's existence even when they were famed across the planet (excluding Wrenchaii). That finally changed in Age 753 when the Skellen attacked all populated areas on the planet, including Wrenchaii, and Plant–Egg left his homeland to help the people of the main continent with his intellect, inventions and powers. This led to him meeting Fire–Egg there and then joining him.

Plant–Egg is the team’s in–house inventor, and was the one responsible for the schematic planning of their legendary base of operations. It is generally agreed that these skills are on the whole more useful than his actual elemental powers, which are mainly limited to the manipulation of existing plants, something that is rarely convenient. In addition, Plant–Egg has also created most if not all of the group’s weapons, vehicles and other gadgets, some of which have gone on to benefit Mulshian society as a whole. His tactical genius is a complement to that of Fire–Egg’s and the two are often partners in this regard. For this reason he is considered the second–in–command of the group, although at times Plant–Egg’s over–reliance on logic can work to his detriment. He was the last member to join, and was responsible for the team's moving on to interplanetary adventures.

 

• Water–Egg is a mentally stunted and unstable individual disowned by his true parents due to his retardation, given up for adoption and raised by a poor old couple in the slums of the planet until he was recruited by Fire–Egg and taken under his wing. He is kindhearted to the point of naiveté and is in love with Wind–Egg, who has never reciprocated his feelings for her due to his stupidity even though he once saved her life outright. Water–Egg’s potential powers are probably the greatest out of all the Eggmen’s, water being an omnipresent force, however they are handicapped by his limited intelligence. Numerous attempts to “cure” his mental condition have never worked. Nonetheless, he more then proved his worth to the group and to the Prime Galaxy itself when he was the one to slay the evil Puvivlar, the elusive leader of the Dynamo Legion. Overall, Water–Egg is living proof that retards are people too, and more importantly that they can kick your ass. Ones with mutant powers, at least. In particular, he becomes far more powerful and competent when angered.

 

INDIVIDUALS (2): Below are two famously evil Mulshian individuals who were both stopped and killed by members of the Eggmen:

 

• Yunk McMonkBur (679–746): The single most vile, depraved, despicable Mulshian who ever lived. Yunk McMonkBur served as the president of South Egg City, one of the four capital cities of Ergnoplis, for more than twenty years, starting in Age 723 and ending with his 100%–deserved brutal murder in Age 746. He was a master of deception, and used a convincing facade of decency in order to attain the position of president through standard means, winning the vote by which he was elected with a healthy 63% of all ballots cast. In reality, however, McMonkBur was a sociopathic, deranged worshipper of Genome whose chosen goal in life was to cause and perpetuate as much mass suffering as possible. While he did communicate with Genome on several occasions, there is no evidence that the Dark Lord of Corruption at any point possessed or forcibly corrupted him; rather, it would appear, by all accounts, that McMonkBur was simply that evil entirely of his own nature and accord, which many have found hard to believe, both at the time and to this day. While president, Yunk McMonkBur saw to it that conditions in South Egg City, which already had severe problems of poverty and class division before he took office, only got worse for the poor. Throughout his reign, he orchestrated several disastrous events, such as fires and bombings, to occur in the city (mainly its impoverished Eastern side), which were the only problems he ever made any effort to solve among the numerous ones that plagued South Egg. These staged acts of support, along with his charisma, allowed McMonkBur to continue passing himself off throughout the years as a decent man who was genuinely struggling and trying to do his best. While a majority of people recognized Yunk McMonkBur as a rather poor leader throughout most of his reign, few had any idea that he was actually evil until his heinous crimes were revealed following his death. Those who did suspect anything significant were generally silenced; McMonkBur personally committed more than a dozen murders, and besides that, he usually had his will enforced by others via a complex web of lies and blackmailing. Very few people were directly aware of McMonkBur's true colors, and the handful of individuals in this "inner circle" of his were all corrupt to the extent that they allowed his monstrous deeds to continue in exchange for bloated sums of money. After McMonkBur's death, every one of his accomplices either were executed or committed suicide.

In Age 746, Yunk McMonkBur enacted his most depraved plot yet by releasing an Ohgroid, which he managed to summon through a Genomist ritual, into the Eastern side of South Egg City. After letting the demon run rampant for some time, he eventually had the then–up–and–coming mutant hero known as Fire–Egg hired to destroy the monster, underestimating Fire–Egg's strength and willpower. While seeking out the Ohgroid, Fire–Egg met Water–Egg, thus leading to the founding of the Eggmen, and after they killed the vile creature, Fire–Egg demanded that President McMonkBur bring reform to his city, leading to a confrontation during which the flame mutant discovered that Yunk McMonkBur himself had sent the Ohgroid and subsequently subjected the president to a slow, painful death. Afterwards, Fire–Egg assisted in reforming South Egg and its government, eventually revealing McMonkBur's atrocities to the public. Following this revelation, the evil president swiftly came to be recognized as the most hated figure in Mulshian history, and a symbol of pure evil in Ergnoplian culture.

 

• Rahrahler (697–750): A ruthless anarchist terrorist who was nowhere near as flagrantly monstrous as McMonkBur (due to having more of a motive for his actions, which was actually brought about as a result of McMonkBur's wrongdoing) but has become nearly as notorious, though less actively hated, since the incident involving him. Rahrahler was an initially latent psychopath who grew up under poor living conditions in South Egg City, which only got worse after Yunk McMonkBur took office. Though his childhood and the worst of his personal struggles were well past him when the evil president came to power, Rahrahler still bore firsthand witness to the increasingly terrible standards of living in his city throughout the period of McMonkBur's "leadership", and became increasingly bitter and disgruntled as a result. When McMonkBur was killed and it was revealed that all the suffering that took place under his leadership had been deliberately caused and perpetuated by him, Rahrahler snapped, became convinced that all political leaders were evil, and determined to destroy South Egg City's government, plunging the city into a state of anarchy and disorder where everyone would suffer more or less equally, thus establishing fairness in Rahrahler's warped mind. Over the next four years, Rahrahler would seek out and recruit others from across Ergnoplis who agreed with his twisted cause, including a deformed, albino strongman named Bobbert, who became the terrorist's right hand man and primary enforcer, and meticulously develop a plot to bring South Egg to its knees, one involving high explosives covertly placed beneath the city's capital building. Towards the end of making these preparations, Rahrahler and his followers encountered the Guardian Primal Deity Wepon'Shoup, from whom they eventually received a great deal of weaponry before using that very same weaponry to destroy Wepon'Shoup for his four powerful artifact weapons. Rahrahler, however, was severely injured by the deity in the process, being punched in the face by his lethally mighty fist. Rahrahler lost his right eye and proper function of his mouth from this blow, and as a result received mechanical augmentations to these parts, which would define his image in the minds of the Mulshian population once he showed himself.

Not long after turning on Wepon'Shoup, Rahrahler and his men made their move, occupying a large apartment building in South Egg and holding its inhabitants hostage, with the intent of drawing all the law enforcement officials to the location of the building, from which they could witness the destruction of the city's capital building when Rahrahler detonated the bombs. The terrorist leader could have triggered the activation device for the explosives at any point, but he was determined to make as great a spectacle of the capital building's destruction as possible, as well as to lure all of South Egg's police to one place so that he and his men could kill them with their superior weaponry, thus leaving no one to maintain or restore order. And when the Eggmen, consisting, at the time, of Fire–Egg, Water–Egg, Wind–Egg and Electric–Egg, arrived on the scene, Rahrahler made it an additional priority and self–imposed prerequisite for activating the bombs to kill them. This ultimately proved to be his undoing, as the mutant heroes managed to fight their way up the floors of the apartment building through all of his minions and, ultimately, him himself, leaving few alive; of those few, Rahrahler was not one. He was killed brutally by Electric–Egg, who also successfully destroyed his trigger device and rescued the hostages. The bombs themselves were later removed from beneath South Egg's capital building and disposed of. Wind–Egg, however, was nearly killed during this operation by one of the lesser terrorists, and her resultant near–death experience caused her to leave the team for three years, rejoining the other Eggmen only when faced with the threat of a full–blown Skellen invasion.

Rahrahler's legacy lives on in the minds of the Mulshian population; since his demise he has inspired a number of copycats who generally claim to support his anarchist beliefs, and almost all of whom have been much younger than him and nowhere near as competent or well–prepared in their attempts to cause havoc. These "Wannabe–Rahrahlers" have often worn masks reminiscent of the mouth apparatus worn by their source of inspiration.

East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was constructed in 1891-2 as a refuge for homeless girls by the Children’s Aid Society . Designed by renowned architect Calvert Vaux in a picturesque, High Victorian Gothic style in brick and sandstone with a Dutch-influenced stepped gable, this building was one of approximately twelve that the architect created for this organization in the 1880s and 90s. It was the only lodging house designed for girls and one of only a few surviving CAS buildings. The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 to help New York’s poorest children improve their lives through education and the advantages of “home-like” living quarters. Brace believed that it was necessary to remove poor children from the bad influences of their environment, where they often had no one to care for them and no opportunities for education, in order to improve their lives and alleviate the crushing poverty of the city.

 

He was able to enlist many wealthy supporters and established a strong organization that continues to exist for the benefit of children and their families today. The Children’s Aid Society employed several approaches to achieve its goals, including sending orphan children to homes in the Midwest where they could enjoy the “benefits” of a home in a more rural setting, lodging houses for homeless children and industrial schools where they were trained for trades and employment. The Children’s Aid Society ran the Elizabeth Home in this building until 1930 when it was sold to Benjamin Lust, a practitioner of a natural “water cure” for illnesses, who coined the term naturopathy. In 1946, the building was purchased by the Florence Crittendon League and used again as a residence for girls without other places to live, called Barrett House. In 1984, the building changed ownership again and was converted to co-op apartments.

 

Its picturesque façade is significant for its architecture and as an evocation of the working class history of the Lower East Side.

 

Development of the East Village Area

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area was populated by bands of Native Americans from the Lenape tribe. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. The main trail ran the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Inwood following the course of Broadway adjacent to present day City Hall Park before veering east toward the area now known as Foley Square. It then ran north with major branches leading to habitations in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side at a place called Rechtauck or Naghtogack in the vicinity of Corlears Hook. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods.2

 

Under the Dutch, most inhabitants of New Amsterdam lived south of Fulton Street, where they could be close to each other for protection and close to the harbor for the essential shipping activities on which the colony depended. North of the settlement, many wealthy families owned large estates, used as farms and plantations and as country retreats, especially for those recurring times when epidemics threatened the crowded population on the island’s tip. The area now known as the Lower East Side and the East Village was divided into a series of large farms, which by the mid-eighteenth century were owned by three families: the Stuyvesants, Rutgers and De Lanceys.

 

The Rutgers property ran from Chatham Square to Montgomery Street between the East River shore and Division Street. The De Lancey holdings consisted of two large parcels abutting the Rutgers property on the north and east, acquired by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey around 1741. Peter Stuyvesant, who came to the colony in 1647, owned a large working farm he called his Bowerie. It lay between present day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth Avenue to the East River.3 He owned about 40 slaves, most employed in farm work. This property remained in the ownership of Stuyvesant’s descendents for many years. By the mid-nineteenth century, Peter Stuyvesant’s grandson Gerardus still lived in the original family house. Gerardus’ sons, Petrus and Nicholas lived nearby and divided the property between them. Nicholas called his section Bowery while his brother’s was called Petersfield, and this area included the property on which the Elizabeth Home was constructed.

 

After slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827, many former slaves settled in several black enclaves, including that near the Bowery, another in Greenwich Village, and still another in the growing slum area that came to be known as Five Points. During the eighteenth century Greenwich Village had been a small rural hamlet, but also was the site of a number of summer estates for wealthy families from downtown Manhattan. Its population swelled during the large cholera and yellow fever epidemics that struck in the early nineteenth century. The 1830s brought a huge economic boom to New York, attracting many more people and a great need for more commercial space as well as housing. African-Americans and other poor people were forced northward as more land was opened to development for the upper classes.

 

The areas around Great Jones, Bleecker and Bond Streets were all being paved and built up with “genteel residences”4 while Lafayette Place and St. Mark’s Place developed into some of the city’s most fashionable addresses. Seeking to take advantage of this boom, Petrus Stuyvesant began to subdivide his property in the 1830s and sell lots for development in the 1840s. Many of the buyers of these lots were large landholders who purchased extensive property and built speculative homes here, waiting for the housing need to catch up. These individual houses were first rented, and then sold to middle class families.5 Middle class residents however, did not stay too long in this section.

 

By the 1850s, the population of New York soared, due primarily to an influx of European immigrants as well as newly-freed African-Americans who were drawn to Manhattan because of the availability of jobs.6 Immigrants had been arriving in New York continuously and already by 1825, over one fifth of the population of New York was foreign born. In the 1840s, many of these immigrants were Irish who started coming in large numbers looking for work after the collapse of Irish agriculture and the rapid industrialization that displaced many workers.

 

Germans had always had a strong presence in New York, but after the failed revolutions of 1848, 70,000 more arrived in New York, fleeing “land shortages, unemployment, famine and political and religious oppression.”7 Many were poor and unskilled and tried to find housing in Manhattan’s notorious slum known as Five Points but the Irish and free Blacks who were already there did not welcome them. Although they were all classified as German, this name covered a multitude of ethnicities, and people tended to subdivide themselves, preferring to live among others who came from the same native communities and regions. The German immigrants first congregated in the five-block span between Canal and Rivington Streets, but the newcomers were forced to look elsewhere as landlords continued to crowd more and more people into inhuman living conditions.

 

They moved northward, up the eastern side of Manhattan island, pushing out existing residents of this area, including the African-Americans who had been there.8 Some of the existing homes in what is now the East Village9 were subdivided or changed into boardinghouses, while others were torn down to make way for tenement buildings, constructed to fit more people into the same space. Eventually the area north of Division Street up to 18th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River filled with German immigrants until it became the third largest concentration of German speakers in the world.10 This section came to be known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, Dutchtown, or Deutschlandle and was “the first large immigrant neighborhood in American history that spoke a foreign language” and remained the major German-American center in the United States for the rest of the century.11

 

German businesses congregated near Broadway creating a lively commercial strip, while various German groups created institutions to remind them of home and to help ease their way in their new lives. The Staats-Zeitung was the most popular of many German language newspapers. The German Dispensary helped with the health needs of the community, while the Ottendorfer Branch of the Free Circulating Library provided books in their native tongue. Social and other support organizations organized around a place of origin or a particular outlook or activity. German shooting clubs became popular12 as did clubs for music, such as the Aschenbroechel Verein. Beer gardens and dance halls such as Scheffel Hall provided places for lively entertainment.13

 

The City’s Poor

 

The poor German immigrants who lived in Kleindeutschland did not have the wherewithal to take advantage of these institutions. They could barely find a place to sleep and a way to feed their families.

 

Since its earliest years, New York has dealt with the poor and helpless among its population with a combination of benevolence and disdain. When the Dutch West India Company sent a group of Dutch orphans to the colony “to be bound out as apprentices and servants” in 1656, Peter Stuyvesant established the first public home for orphans and an “Orphan Masters’ Court.”14 Generally however, under the Dutch, religious organizations were expected to care for the city’s poor. Under the English, in 1693, the Common Council passed its first “poor rate” tax to enable them to distribute fuel, clothes, food and cash to the “deserving” poor and established an almshouse on Broad Street for those who were unable to care for themselves.15 A two-story brick building was constructed on the Common in 1736, housing a mix of the city’s poor along with the unruly as well as convicted criminals, all of whom were required to attend prayer services and work if they were physically able, so they would not be a “Burthen to the Publick.”

 

With time, the gap between the rich and poor grew, and increasing numbers of people needed financial help to overcome problems that were sometimes created by illness or the death of a spouse. The city provided more and more “outdoor relief” and also had to build more almshouses to accommodate the growing need. Religious and philanthropic organizations also helped, their efforts usually involving “education in the habits of self-discipline and the self-reliance necessary to survive in a wage-based economy… to instill prudence, decency, sobriety, thrift, punctuality” since poverty was usually seen as “moral turpitude, not misfortune.”17 In 1806, the Isabella Graham Society for the Relief of Poor Widows opened an orphanage where poor children “could be brought up to lead productive lives,” that eventually led to the formation of the Orphan Asylum Society.18

 

By the early nineteenth century, only half of all children in New York attended school even though the traditional apprenticeship system for learning trades and behavior no longer existed. Many children were caught stealing or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior and the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents began in 1823 to try to deal with these problems. The first New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 to house children under sixteen years old, and the authorities used religion and education to try to redeem the children brought there.19

 

By the 1850s, conditions for the poor were only getting worse. The huge numbers of immigrants coming into New York increased the competition for jobs and housing, and crowded conditions led to higher rates of illness and crime. Efforts of groups such as the American Tract Society were comprised of preaching and giving away bibles, while the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was able to attract the interest and donations of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens. They managed to get more needy people into almshouses on Blackwell’s Island, build a new one for the able-bodied poor, and get a new truancy law passed that enabled the police to round up delinquent children to get them off the streets.20

 

Children’s Aid Society

 

The Children’s Aid Society, another in a wide variety of efforts to deal with the problem of poor and uneducated children, was started by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 and continued under his leadership for the next 37 years. Brace graduated from Yale University and studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary. After a trip to Europe, during which he traveled in England with Frederick Law Olmsted,21 Brace began serving with Rev. Pease at the Five Points Mission in 1852. He was discouraged that the traditional methods of outreach were not helping change the lives of the people he saw. He also was struck by the large numbers of boys and girls who apparently had nothing useful to do and no one to look after them, and who seemed to be headed only for lives of crime. He decided that the most effective way to change conditions for the poor was to reach these children and try to change their circumstances

 

He wanted to “help the helpless, neglected children of the city to help themselves to become good and useful citizens.”23 Typically, their families could not care for them and they were sent out on the streets to fend for themselves, or to find some way to bring money or food back home.24 Because they were small, they were often preyed on by unsavory types who sent them out to steal, or they sold things on the streets or helped organ grinders in their trade. Boys would steal, sell newspapers or hawk matches, while many girls were forced into prostitution. 25 Street gangs developed to offer some protection for these wretched children who often slept on steam grates or in the remains of burned out buildings.

 

Brace believed that if he could show these children that someone cared about them, educate them to have good habits such as industry and self-control, and help them achieve some basic skills, they could get jobs and improve their lives. He felt that “home life was better than institutions and that self-help was better than alms.”26

 

From its beginning, the work of the Children’s Aid Society involved several separate efforts. The most radical and well-known was “placing out.” Over the course of the first forty years, the organization took 97,738 children from New York, and sent them by train to situations away from New York City, usually with “Christian families” in the Midwest where they were supposed to enjoy the benefits of a good home life in a rural setting. While some did in fact become essentially members of these families and benefitted from the experience, others were put to work in stores and on farms, in conditions close to indentured servitude. Brace felt that this effort was very positive because he believed that it was important to completely change the circumstances of these children’s lives in order to have a positive impact.

 

“The effort to place the children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see.”27

 

Since Brace could not remove every poor child from the bad influences of the city, he also made local efforts. These included the development of a series of lodging houses and industrial schools located around the city. The lodging houses were places a homeless child could come so he or she did not have to sleep on the street, with separate facilities for boys and girls. A young person could stay for a night or two if his difficulty was temporary, or he could stay for extended periods, and be assured of receiving food and a bath, as well as shelter. If they could pay, the children were asked for a small amount so that they felt they were paying their own way, rather than accepting charity, or they were asked to help with certain chores. These lodging houses eventually offered evening or morning classes to help the children with reading and writing, and specific skills that could help them gain employment.

 

The Newsboys’ Lodging House was opened in a building at Fulton and Nassau streets in 1854. The liveliness and ingenuity of the newsboys had a special resonance with Brace, who admired these qualities but felt they needed to be channeled into some productive enterprise. By 1928, the Children’s Aid Society ran seven lodging houses, located throughout the city.28

 

Brace saw that many poor children did not attend public school, either because they could not afford proper clothes, or because they had to work to help their families, so Brace established the Industrial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society to educate these children.29 The Industrial Schools taught reading and writing and character building, as well as skills such as carpentry for boys and cooking and laundering for girls. They also trained children to work on machines that might help them gain employment, such as sewing machines and typewriters, filling a gap left by the public schools. They provided clothes if needed, as well as a hot meal, and were non-sectarian. The Children’s Aid Society found that different groups had different needs, so they organized specific schools for Italian, German and “Colored” children, and later started medical and dental clinics for these children as well.

 

They became active in legislative efforts to promote their cause, such as working for the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of 1874. They started mothers’ groups to train them for this most important task, and day care centers for those who had to work. They eventually opened homes for sick and convalescing children, a school for crippled children, kindergartens, summer camps and playgrounds. While the Children’s Aid Society no longer runs lodging houses and schools, it continues to exist today, providing a variety of social services to New York children and their families.

 

Elizabeth Wheeler Home for Girls

 

The first lodging house for girls, called “The Girls’ Temporary Home,” was opened at 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1863 and during its first nine months, this building served 597 girls. The intention of this facility was to be “a resting place, a temporary home for any girl without friend or family in the city . . . to gain time to seek reputable employment” as well as a place where they could get help and advice.30 The Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society of 1889 called this girls’ home “one of the most successful and economical of all the branches of the Society,” but noted that there was a great need for an additional building for this facility.31 In the Annual Report of the following year the writer was even more adamant. “. . . we feel deeply the lack of accommodations, and look forward earnestly to the time when, with increased facilities, much more can be accomplished.”32

 

They reported that during the previous year, there had been 15,533 lodgings in the house, 49,324 meals served, 45 girls trained on typewriters and 72 girls trained on sewing machines, with 178 girls sent to situations and employment.33

 

In July 1891, the property at 307 East 12th Street was purchased by Emily Wheeler and conveyed by her to the Children’s Aid Society.34 The home was given by Mary B. Wheeler, Mary B. Ceccarini and Emily B. Wheeler in memory of Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler.35 The Elizabeth Home was designed by the preeminent architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.36 The home opened with a festive dedication in 1892, and included dormitories as well as single bedrooms for girls, sitting rooms, a reading room, office, dining rooms and kitchen, and rooms fitted with sewing machines and typewriters.

 

Calvert Vaux

 

Calvert Vaux 37 was one of the most prolific and influential architects working in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. His picturesque buildings and romantic landscape designs were constructed in numerous cities and towns and his books had a wide-ranging audience, contributing to the vogue during this period for interesting and picturesquely styled buildings. Vaux, trained in architecture, landscape design and planning, came from England to the United States in 1850 to work with A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York as a partner in his Bureau of Architecture. They specialized in the creation of picturesque English country houses and also began the planning of the grounds around many government buildings in Washington, D.C. After Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux began a partnership with Frank Clarke Withers, with whom he designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse .

 

Vaux’s book of house designs, Villas and Cottages was modeled on Downing’s highly popular Cottage Residences and became a standard for the genre.

 

Vaux relocated to New York City where, in 1858, he and Frederick Law Olmsted entered the competition for Central Park with their plan for a “Greensward,” the first public park in the country . Their design, based on the tradition of English landscape gardening, became a major influence in the development of public parks throughout the country. Vaux was responsible for the design of many of the architectural features of the park, including the bridges, and the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain. He went on to design numerous projects with Olmsted under the auspices of the landscape firm, Olmsted, Vaux and Company . These included Prospect Park in Brooklyn , Riverside, Illinois , Morningside Park , and Riverside Park .

 

Vaux designed many public buildings, institutions and grounds in various cities. These included the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut , Hudson River State Hospital and Grounds , the Grounds for Gallaudet College in Washington , the grounds of Parliament buildings in Ottawa , and the park system for Buffalo, NY. With Jacob Wrey Mould, who had come earlier from England and contributed many designs for Central Park, Vaux developed a Master Plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History .

 

Around 1873, Vaux began a partnership with George Kent Radford , a civil engineer, that was to last for eighteen years. This partnership was formalized as the architectural division of Vaux & Co., Landscape Architects in 1876. In addition to numerous designs for the Children’s Aid Society during the last part of his career, Vaux designed a High Victorian Gothic townhouse for Samuel J. Tilden in New York and the grounds for Tilden’s country estate, Greystone, in Yonkers, New York . Vaux had a long and varied career, from private homes for the wealthy to model tenements for the poor, from the landscape of individual estates, to the layout for entire cities. His designs helped establish the standard aesthetic of the late nineteenth century, both in building and landscaping and he is known as one of the founders of the field of landscape architecture.

 

Calvert Vaux and the Children’s Aid Society

 

Vaux became increasingly interested in the way architecture could be used to better the lives of unfortunate members of society and devoted much of the last part of his career to this cause. He was a careful observer of the first model tenement competition in 1879, sponsored by the journal, Plumber & Sanitary Engineer. In 1880, he designed a block of model tenements on First Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets for the Improved Dwellings Association. These apartments had windows in each room, central courtyards for improved air circulation and roof-top gardens for the residents.38

 

Calvert Vaux was a friend of Charles Loring Brace who lived in a house Vaux designed in Hastings, New York. By the late 1870s, Brace’s organization was successful and well-funded enough to want to construct its own lodging houses, in order to create the exact type of structure they needed. In 1879, Vaux designed their first purpose-built building, the East Side Boys’ Lodging House and Industrial School on East Broadway and Gouveneur Street . The picturesquely designed, 3 ½ story, brick and brownstone building had steeply pitched roofs and held dormitories, classrooms, and a well-furnished reading room as well as a dispensary and sick room. The free-standing building was a far cry from the dingy tenements of the area and was hailed in the press as “Christianity solidified in brick and mortar.”39

 

Vaux went on to design more than a dozen buildings for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, a very important part of his work. These included four lodging houses, among them the West Side Lodging House at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street and the Tompkins Square Lodging House and Industrial School at 8th Street and Avenue B , and five industrial schools that had similar facilities without the beds. This latter type included the Mott Street Industrial School at 256-258 Mott Street , and the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School .

 

The 44th Street Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School was the first to display a large, front-facing, stepped gable. According to the Society’s 46th Annual Report of 1888, this element came from “an old Nuremburg house called the ‘Petersen’ building, [which] is one of the most picturesque in the city.”40 This lodging house was marked by steep gables, dormer windows and oriole towers, in keeping with Vaux’s intentions to create a home-like and visually interesting composition, but also was “appropriately reminiscent of the city’s Dutch heritage.”41 Most of Vaux’s buildings that were built in the following years employed this design element.

 

The Children’s Aid Society buildings were both domestic and institutional, intended to be an ornament to a part of the city the ugliness of which is particularly in need of some relief. It is a fortunate circumstance that the objects of the Children’s Aid Society require it to undertake its building operations in quarters where, but for its efforts, it is unlikely that there would be any architecture worth looking at or discussing.42

They were usually free-standing structures, with highly varied rooflines that provided visual interest and variety. Vaux believed that,

In any architectural design, the separate groups of forms may be, in themselves, attractive, or the building may be splendid in its general conception of masses, or rich in its varied and charming detail, but it will be defective as an architectural composition if it fails in its sky-line.43

 

Vaux’s rooflines were usually faced with slate or tile, and consisted of mansard roofs with steeply pitched towers, conical roofs or front-facing stepped gables. These buildings were built of brick and sandstone, common and inexpensive materials that were deemed to give a picturesque effect. Vaux tried to site them on corner lots because he felt that two perspectives gave him a chance to create a more interesting design. He used projecting oriels, large windows, dormers and chimneys in an attempt to create a home-like atmosphere for the neglected children who came here. Faithful to his earliest design theories, Vaux worked to evoke the imagery of a snug country inn in the middle of New York City.44 By varying the placement of the entrance as well as the size and placement of the window openings, he created a lively façade, ornamented solely with decorative brickwork such as string courses and recessed panels.

 

Design of the Elizabeth Home for Girls

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, the last of this group designed by Vaux has the picturesque characteristics common to Vaux’s other designs although its 40-foot-wide, mid-block site required a more restrained composition. It has two asymmetrical sections, with the entrance sited off center, in the western side. The eastern section is topped by the typical stepped gable while the western side has a mansard roof with two dormer windows, a reverse arrangement from that of the House of Reception on West 23rd Street . The windows are placed along continuous sills, providing some unity in a façade of varied window sizes, shapes and groupings. Unlike many of the other CAS buildings, this one has no projecting oriel window, but here the entrance is given special emphasis by its projecting surround topped by a balustraded balcony.

 

While not as elaborate as some of the other CAS buildings, the Elizabeth Home is a distinctive building that would have provided the sense of “hominess” so desired by both the architect and the organization. Located on a block of brick-fronted rowhouses, this building is obviously different, but not enough to be jarring. Rather, it continues to add interest and variety to the streetscape.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1895, the Children’s Aid Society hired architects Clinton & Russell to create a two-story addition on the north of the building to house a laundry.45 Another alteration, in 1915, added bedrooms in three floors above this addition.46 In 1901, the Children’s Aid Society acquired the adjacent property at No. 311 East 12th Street and converted it into an addition to the Elizabeth Home.47

 

In 1930, the Society moved its operations to West 134th Street and sold both of these buildings to Dr. Benedict Lust, a promoter of natural healing.”48 Lust, a German immigrant with degrees in osteopathy and medicine, believed in natural healing, including a “water cure” and organized the Naturopathic Society of America. He established the American School of Naturopathy which offered a post-graduate curriculum in naturopathy, chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.49

 

Upon Lust’s death, the buildings were purchased by the Florence Crittenton League and remodeled and reopened in 1948 as a private shelter for girls aged 16-21, called Barrett House.50 The Crittendon League was started in 1883 by Charles N. Crittenton, a wealthy New York drug supply manufacturer.51 Originally called the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls and Night Mission for Fallen Women , it was named after his late daughter and was established as a shelter for troubled and runaway young girls, many of whom were orphaned, and as a mission for women of ill repute. In the late 1880s, the group started a shelter and mission on Bleecker Street that gained renown for its midnight gospel readings. By the turn-of-the-century, the Crittenton Foundation operated in many large

 

U.S. cities and was expanding its services in New York. In 1913, the group relocated its headquarters to West 27th Street and in 1946 purchased the former Children’s Aid Society buildings in order to be able to care for more residents and offer expanded services. The home’s residents were generally referred there by courts, clinics and private agencies and given a variety of therapies to help them emotionally, while keeping them out of the House of Detention.

 

In 1982, the building was sold to a developer and in 1984 it was re-opened as co­op apartments.

 

Description

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls is a four story brick-faced building set on a raised basement. Built originally on a street of townhouses , the forty-foot-wide façade blends in by appearing to be two buildings. The western section is two bays wide and holds the building’s main entrance, in the eastern bay of the first story. The raised basement has a pair of large windows framed by a sandstone lintel and watertable and fronted by an iron grille, while the areaway is marked by a non-historic iron fence. The entrance, reached by a short concrete stairway with non-historic iron railings is emphasized by a projecting brick enframement embellished by small, terra-cotta ornament, string courses and globe lights. It is capped by a projecting hood supported on stone brackets. The entrance consists of a paneled door with a large glass light flanked by paneled side sections.

 

A plain, sandstone lintel separates it from the large, round-headed glass transom that is subdivided into small squares. A pair of plain rectangular windows on a continuous sill is in the western bay of the first story. The second story has a single window in the western bay and, in the eastern bay, is a double multi-light, non-historic door that leads to a small, balustraded balcony formed by the projecting hood over the entranceway. At the third story, two pairs of narrow, rectangular windows share a common sill and a smooth sandstone lintel. A simple, corbelled brick cornice separates the roof from the floor below. This section has a mansard roof pierced by two dormer windows with bell-shaped roofs and flanked on the western side by a stepped parapet wall that projects above the roof.

 

A tall, prominent chimney rises between the two sections. Its plain brick facing is marked by several narrow string courses. The section on the east is topped by a stepped, front-facing gable with a decorative sandstone molding that echoes the steps. Each floor contains grouped window openings linked by continuous sills and sometimes lintels. The fourth story has three, round-headed windows capped by a continuous, rounded brick molding. The third story has four evenly-spaced windows under a plain, continuous stone lintel, while the second story has two pairs of windows under stone lintels and a sill that runs across the entire section. There are five windows with transoms and a continuous stone sill and lintel at the first story, and two individual windows fronted by iron grilles at the basement level. A third window has been converted to an entrance, with a non-historic door and light.

 

A broad sandstone lintel and watertable is located at the top of the basement level, creating a strong distinction between it and the rest of the building. A non-historic iron fence shields the areaway.

 

- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Washington DC, The Walter E. Washington Convention Center, the afternoon of March 1, 2015. Around one hundred social justice activists affiliated with Code Pink, Jewish Voice For Justice, AVAAZ, US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation, Boycott From Within, Answer Coaltion and other peace and faith groups demonstrate in front of the Convention Center to protest the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) yearly DC meeting. AIPAC is regarded by many as the most powerful lobbying group in town. AIPAC has a policy agenda that's out of step with the values of most Jewish Americans and other participants in civilized society but they call the tune because our corrupt political culture is fueled by money, not decency. In an act of peaceful civil disobedience, five demonstrators, all women, were arrested for failing to obey police orders to remove themselves from the granite in front of one of the Convention Center's many doorways. They were given three warnings before being arrested. I photographed one of women as she was being lead away in plastic handcuffs. "I'm a Jewish mother!" she proclaimed. I gave her the 'thumbs up'.

Most of the DC cops kept their cool but when some of the demonstrators got in their face a brief scuffle ensued. Some of us locked arms and and helped lift up one of the Code Pink ladies who was almost knocked down onto the steps by a DC officer who lost it.

Everyone keeps asking me why it is that I have decided to start eating meat again. It had been well over a decade of my life that I abstained from meat. Was it the taste? No. I have always found meat to be delicious. For the last few years, I have said that I would only eat what I could kill myself. So since I've gone fishing, that meant fish was ok to eat. But looking into the eyes of a cute little cow, and trying to kill it for a meal? That just seemed too hard for me to fathom.

 

Then I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. The book is a great read for anyone who is interested in food politics and ethics. The book's premise is to follow the social, economic and ethical impact of 4 meals in society. The first being a meal from McDonald's, the last being a meal where Pollan hunts for his own meat, and gathers wild vegetables and mushrooms.

 

Some people who have read the book walk away from it and decide to become vegetarian. For me, I read the book and realized that it was ok to eat meat. The choice to be vegetarian for me had always been for ethical reasons, but people kept pointing out that the choice based on ethics is contradictory. How could I be OK with eating fish, but abstain from the meat of cows or pigs? And the one I got all the time, "What about plants? Don't they feel pain as well." Well, yes, true.

 

But the question that came up in my mind was, "Do you owe moral consideration to animals that can feel pain?" For me the answer was, and still is, yes. Animals need to be treated with the same decency and lack of suffering that humans should be treated with as well. That is why Whole Foods has come up with a rather interesting marketing tactic, (if not eventually a standard) for the Animal Compassionate Program, which requires the "animal's physical, emotional and behavioral needs" to be met. Sadly however, Whole Foods has yet to find producers who met these standards.

 

In Pollan's book he discusses the notion of ethical meat farming, but really the struggle for these farmers is the stringent, irrelevant and incredibly burdensome requirements of agencies like the FDA. We can treat animals with compassion and without suffering, but it simply isn't "up to code" by the FDA's standards to do so.

 

So what to do? Move to Europe where the meat industry is regulated in a different way? Possibly. For the time being, I am fascinated by the social elements of eating, and that is what I am doing with my 30 days of pork exploration. Being a vegetarian is exclusionary. Believe me, I know what it is like to get weird looks from grandmothers, boyfriend's parents and co-workers when you say you don't eat meat. You suddenly become less involved in social traditions because you don't know what an In and Out Burger tastes like, or what the big deal is about the turkey everyone is eating at Thanksgiving. I put many people out (who tolerated and respected my food choices with extreme kindness) like my dad who would always make a special meal for me, but who was also so excited about his meat dishes that I couldn't try.

 

So for me, to eat meat is to come back into a social space of sharing experiences with others, and place that priority of participation over the ethics of eating. Don't get me wrong. I'll pick grass-fed, free-range, hormone-free meat any day over the mass produced variety. And if the animal was treated with compassion, even better. But for right now, I want, and need to explore the ritual of eating without the restraints that I have placed on myself for the last 12 years. I may go back to being vegetarian, I may not. Who knows? But I can tell you that this grilled pear and bacon sandwich from Arlequin in Hayes Valley hit the spot for my Saturday mid-day meal.

Peats 'World of Electronics' - Statement

 

02.04.2012

 

It is with deep sadness and regret that the family owned business of Peats ‘World of Electronics’, the long established and well-known Dublin electronics retail company is to seek the appointment of a Liquidator in an upcoming voluntary creditor’s liquidation.

 

The Chairman of the business, Ben Peat, briefed the company’s 75-staff today at the company’s head-office store in Parnell St and told staff that the company could not continue to trade in light of its current financial constraints confirming that the company’s eleven stores around Dublin have closed with immediate effect.

 

Mr Peat told staff that a combination of recession impacts, unsustainably high rental costs and a changing marketplace in which online shopping was eating into high street retailing, meant that the business cannot continue to trade going into the upcoming lean summer. Mr Peat said that “the business generated 60% of its annual sales in the period November to January, and that a summer’s spend could not carry the business, to allow it to continue. It is evident in our experience that consumers have little discretionary spend at this time and sales volumes are up to 50% down on peak 2007 spend, while in parallel it has not been possible to achieve appropriate rental adjustment to enable a profit margin to be achieved to sustain business viability. The sector in which we operate has been disproportionately affected by the downturn, if we don’t close now our capacity to settle our affairs to best effect will only further deteriorate”, Mr Peat said.

 

Mr Peat told staff that “Trade hit its peak in 2007, with turnover that year of €24m, it has since re-trenched to less than half for the current year” and thanking staff, customers and suppliers, he continued, “the Company had a fine heritage for quality, decency and value, it became a popular name on the Dublin retail landscape and it’s departure from the high-street will be a loss to the tradition of family retailing in Dublin. Thanking customers he said, it is with deep regret that we have to close the doors of our ‘world of electronics business’, - we have tried very hard to establish solutions with suppliers and landlords that could have brought balance and sustainability back into our business. We have implemented extensive cost-reduction at all levels including payroll and terms of employment, but unfortunately it is beyond our power to continue in operation and we have to protect our staff, creditors, debtors and legal interests to best possible effect and do right by all concerned as far as is both humanly and financially possible. We cannot allow our situation to deteriorate further – as we do not want to compromise our capacity to secure the best possible outcome for all out of what is a difficult situation”

 

Thanking staff for their support and loyalty in a number of cases for over thirty years, Mr Peat said that staff will be paid their entitlements and redundancy due in full, and asked for their support for both colleagues and the business in the coming days, while the business settled its affairs to the very best of its ability to do so. He commented that over the years Peat’s staff have always been exceptional, there was one big extended family within which three generations of the Peat family still currently work.

 

Peats began life in Parnell Street in 1934 when Brigit and William Peat set up shop to sell wet cell batteries, bicycles, furniture and prams. All six of their children joined the business and their youngest son, Ben Peat is the current chairman. In its early years the company began to develop the electronics side of the business selling radiograms, followed by three-in-one hi-fi systems and contemporary products including repair services, to the present day sales of an assembly of electronic home entertainment products including flat screen TV’s, cameras, computer laptops and accessories.

 

Peats’ eleven stores are located throughout Dublin, with its head office in Parnell St; the Company also has stores in Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, College Green, Rathmines, Swords and in the Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge. It also operated a number of Sony Centre shops under the Sony Centre identity. These outlets are located in the Jervis Shopping Centre, on O’Connell St, in Dun Laoghaire, in the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre and also on Stephen’s Green, close to the Shelbourne Hotel.

 

All stores have now been closed and telephone calls will automatically be directed to a call centre to accommodate any enquiries arising, so that they can be logged and dealt with as efficiently and as soon as possible.

 

In making enquiries customers are invited to call 01-9023718 or to Email: admin@peats.com

The Skyline of Zwijndrecht and Metallurgical Works on the Oude Maas River

 

It is not every day you see recent sunset shots from my camera. There are 2 reasons; I am too exhausted to go out late and I just don't feel safe driving around on my little jalopy after dark with my camera and gear.

Sunday night however I decided to be daring and drove to the Handelskade on the Oude Maasriver in Dordrecht. And just my luck again, I ended up right at the place where the young daredevils were going to hold illegal races! They must've thought granny on the scootmobiel at the races absolutely hilarious. Although I didn't feel threatend at all, I realised that anything could've happened to me, or even worse my camera, and I didn't feel safe enough to wait for blue hour, which was my intention. Besides my back was killing me. At least the guys had the decency not to laugh in my face and to wait until I left before commencing.

Here we see a very flirty Joni "tripping the light fantastic" as she shamelessly poses on the steps of Jersey City's City Hall in New Jersey, while flashing a gartered stocking top for the camera. Actually, this pose wasn't intended for the camera and a Flickr audience as much as it was the guy handling the camera. It seems Joni had travelled north back to New Jersey after Thanksgiving for a Jets game and some personal business and was encamped in a hotel some distance from Jersey City. Looking for something to do on a Saturday night, Joni decided to venture out to a relatively new club in downtown Jersey City which she wasn't aware of when she had lived in New Jersey before relocating to South Carolina. Indeed, it may not have even existed back then. I forget the name, but it was a pretty cool place with multiple floors.

 

As fate would have it, Joni's considerable charms (?) caught the eye of a younger gentleman who hit on Joni. There was conversation and a dance, and he had the decency to buy Joni a drink. The guy was in his 40's and reasonably good looking and he was playing touchy-touchy in the club with his hands and his feet. He made it clear he wanted to take this new friendship to the next level, and he wasn't talking about the upper floor of the club. Having been deprived for a long time during the pandemic, Joni, against her better judgment, caved and began to morph into the teenage nymphomaniaic of her younger years. She was willing.

 

As closing time approached, the gentleman suggested they go some place. Joni suggested her hotel, but he didn't have a car and it would have been impractical for Joni to drive him back and forth in the early morning hours to his apartment which he indicated was only a few blocks from the club. Fine, ''Take me to your apartment." Joni said. "No can do.", he replied. "I have a roommate." ''Well then we have a problem", said Joni, her ardor suddenly beginning to fade. "Maybe we can just park some place and kind of "make out", you know what I mean?" Oh yeah, Joni knew what he meant. "In Jersey City? Where?", she inquired with a measure of skepticism. "Take me to your car. I'll find a place.", he responded with an air of confidence. Joni took him to her car and they drove around as the guy kept trying to find a "place". Unfortunately, the night was getting late and Joni was getting up early the next morning. The guy kept trying to stoke Joni's diminishing flames of passion by massaging Joni's thighs as she drove along with a few bonus kissy-kiss kisses thrown in while stopped at traffic lights. It was nice, but Joni was beginning to sense that she was wasting time and gas as they searched for his "place".

 

Finally, an exasperated Joni pulled the plug and informed the guy that she couldn't wait any longer for him to find that "place". The guy reluctantly agreed it wasn't going to happen and Joni offered to drop him off at his apartment. The guy said that would be fine, but then after a few blocks he asked to be dropped off at a corner on Kennedy Boulevard, a couple of miles away from the club he previously claimed to live nearby. Joni dutifully dumped him off as requested and they exchanged pleasantries, but she wondered as she drove off why so many of the guys who hit on her are so strange? Hopefully for him, Joni wondered if the buses in Jersey City ran in the early morning hours. It was cold out. . . .

 

Getting back to the photo above, Joni asked the guy to take a few quick photos of her with her camera as they passed by the City Hall on their way from the club to her parked car. He was more than willing to accommodate Joni's request as there was still hope in the air at that moment that the guy would find a suitable "place" for them to park and "make out" like teenagers. So Joni wasn't adverse at that moment to tease the young Lothario with a seductive peek at what might lay ahead. . . . Sadly, the logistics don't always work out. Of course, it wasn't a total loss. Joni enjoyed some cheap thrills as her legs and thigh-hi stockings were massaged and groped by the younger gentleman as he methodically worked his way up Joni's legs toward a "promised land" that he, like Moses, never reached, And there were some promising kisses. . . . It just didn't work out! Sometimes, it's like that!

Queens Of The Stone Age and Friends

Natasha Shneider Memorial Benefit show

 

p.s. if you are gonna post my copyrighted images elsewhere on the internet at least have the decency to credit me with them and link them back to here, or i'll probably stop posting them without big watermarks on them.

East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was constructed in 1891-2 as a refuge for homeless girls by the Children’s Aid Society . Designed by renowned architect Calvert Vaux in a picturesque, High Victorian Gothic style in brick and sandstone with a Dutch-influenced stepped gable, this building was one of approximately twelve that the architect created for this organization in the 1880s and 90s. It was the only lodging house designed for girls and one of only a few surviving CAS buildings. The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 to help New York’s poorest children improve their lives through education and the advantages of “home-like” living quarters. Brace believed that it was necessary to remove poor children from the bad influences of their environment, where they often had no one to care for them and no opportunities for education, in order to improve their lives and alleviate the crushing poverty of the city.

 

He was able to enlist many wealthy supporters and established a strong organization that continues to exist for the benefit of children and their families today. The Children’s Aid Society employed several approaches to achieve its goals, including sending orphan children to homes in the Midwest where they could enjoy the “benefits” of a home in a more rural setting, lodging houses for homeless children and industrial schools where they were trained for trades and employment. The Children’s Aid Society ran the Elizabeth Home in this building until 1930 when it was sold to Benjamin Lust, a practitioner of a natural “water cure” for illnesses, who coined the term naturopathy. In 1946, the building was purchased by the Florence Crittendon League and used again as a residence for girls without other places to live, called Barrett House. In 1984, the building changed ownership again and was converted to co-op apartments.

 

Its picturesque façade is significant for its architecture and as an evocation of the working class history of the Lower East Side.

 

Development of the East Village Area

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area was populated by bands of Native Americans from the Lenape tribe. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. The main trail ran the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Inwood following the course of Broadway adjacent to present day City Hall Park before veering east toward the area now known as Foley Square. It then ran north with major branches leading to habitations in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side at a place called Rechtauck or Naghtogack in the vicinity of Corlears Hook. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods.2

 

Under the Dutch, most inhabitants of New Amsterdam lived south of Fulton Street, where they could be close to each other for protection and close to the harbor for the essential shipping activities on which the colony depended. North of the settlement, many wealthy families owned large estates, used as farms and plantations and as country retreats, especially for those recurring times when epidemics threatened the crowded population on the island’s tip. The area now known as the Lower East Side and the East Village was divided into a series of large farms, which by the mid-eighteenth century were owned by three families: the Stuyvesants, Rutgers and De Lanceys.

 

The Rutgers property ran from Chatham Square to Montgomery Street between the East River shore and Division Street. The De Lancey holdings consisted of two large parcels abutting the Rutgers property on the north and east, acquired by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey around 1741. Peter Stuyvesant, who came to the colony in 1647, owned a large working farm he called his Bowerie. It lay between present day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth Avenue to the East River.3 He owned about 40 slaves, most employed in farm work. This property remained in the ownership of Stuyvesant’s descendents for many years. By the mid-nineteenth century, Peter Stuyvesant’s grandson Gerardus still lived in the original family house. Gerardus’ sons, Petrus and Nicholas lived nearby and divided the property between them. Nicholas called his section Bowery while his brother’s was called Petersfield, and this area included the property on which the Elizabeth Home was constructed.

 

After slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827, many former slaves settled in several black enclaves, including that near the Bowery, another in Greenwich Village, and still another in the growing slum area that came to be known as Five Points. During the eighteenth century Greenwich Village had been a small rural hamlet, but also was the site of a number of summer estates for wealthy families from downtown Manhattan. Its population swelled during the large cholera and yellow fever epidemics that struck in the early nineteenth century. The 1830s brought a huge economic boom to New York, attracting many more people and a great need for more commercial space as well as housing. African-Americans and other poor people were forced northward as more land was opened to development for the upper classes.

 

The areas around Great Jones, Bleecker and Bond Streets were all being paved and built up with “genteel residences”4 while Lafayette Place and St. Mark’s Place developed into some of the city’s most fashionable addresses. Seeking to take advantage of this boom, Petrus Stuyvesant began to subdivide his property in the 1830s and sell lots for development in the 1840s. Many of the buyers of these lots were large landholders who purchased extensive property and built speculative homes here, waiting for the housing need to catch up. These individual houses were first rented, and then sold to middle class families.5 Middle class residents however, did not stay too long in this section.

 

By the 1850s, the population of New York soared, due primarily to an influx of European immigrants as well as newly-freed African-Americans who were drawn to Manhattan because of the availability of jobs.6 Immigrants had been arriving in New York continuously and already by 1825, over one fifth of the population of New York was foreign born. In the 1840s, many of these immigrants were Irish who started coming in large numbers looking for work after the collapse of Irish agriculture and the rapid industrialization that displaced many workers.

 

Germans had always had a strong presence in New York, but after the failed revolutions of 1848, 70,000 more arrived in New York, fleeing “land shortages, unemployment, famine and political and religious oppression.”7 Many were poor and unskilled and tried to find housing in Manhattan’s notorious slum known as Five Points but the Irish and free Blacks who were already there did not welcome them. Although they were all classified as German, this name covered a multitude of ethnicities, and people tended to subdivide themselves, preferring to live among others who came from the same native communities and regions. The German immigrants first congregated in the five-block span between Canal and Rivington Streets, but the newcomers were forced to look elsewhere as landlords continued to crowd more and more people into inhuman living conditions.

 

They moved northward, up the eastern side of Manhattan island, pushing out existing residents of this area, including the African-Americans who had been there.8 Some of the existing homes in what is now the East Village9 were subdivided or changed into boardinghouses, while others were torn down to make way for tenement buildings, constructed to fit more people into the same space. Eventually the area north of Division Street up to 18th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River filled with German immigrants until it became the third largest concentration of German speakers in the world.10 This section came to be known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, Dutchtown, or Deutschlandle and was “the first large immigrant neighborhood in American history that spoke a foreign language” and remained the major German-American center in the United States for the rest of the century.11

 

German businesses congregated near Broadway creating a lively commercial strip, while various German groups created institutions to remind them of home and to help ease their way in their new lives. The Staats-Zeitung was the most popular of many German language newspapers. The German Dispensary helped with the health needs of the community, while the Ottendorfer Branch of the Free Circulating Library provided books in their native tongue. Social and other support organizations organized around a place of origin or a particular outlook or activity. German shooting clubs became popular12 as did clubs for music, such as the Aschenbroechel Verein. Beer gardens and dance halls such as Scheffel Hall provided places for lively entertainment.13

 

The City’s Poor

 

The poor German immigrants who lived in Kleindeutschland did not have the wherewithal to take advantage of these institutions. They could barely find a place to sleep and a way to feed their families.

 

Since its earliest years, New York has dealt with the poor and helpless among its population with a combination of benevolence and disdain. When the Dutch West India Company sent a group of Dutch orphans to the colony “to be bound out as apprentices and servants” in 1656, Peter Stuyvesant established the first public home for orphans and an “Orphan Masters’ Court.”14 Generally however, under the Dutch, religious organizations were expected to care for the city’s poor. Under the English, in 1693, the Common Council passed its first “poor rate” tax to enable them to distribute fuel, clothes, food and cash to the “deserving” poor and established an almshouse on Broad Street for those who were unable to care for themselves.15 A two-story brick building was constructed on the Common in 1736, housing a mix of the city’s poor along with the unruly as well as convicted criminals, all of whom were required to attend prayer services and work if they were physically able, so they would not be a “Burthen to the Publick.”

 

With time, the gap between the rich and poor grew, and increasing numbers of people needed financial help to overcome problems that were sometimes created by illness or the death of a spouse. The city provided more and more “outdoor relief” and also had to build more almshouses to accommodate the growing need. Religious and philanthropic organizations also helped, their efforts usually involving “education in the habits of self-discipline and the self-reliance necessary to survive in a wage-based economy… to instill prudence, decency, sobriety, thrift, punctuality” since poverty was usually seen as “moral turpitude, not misfortune.”17 In 1806, the Isabella Graham Society for the Relief of Poor Widows opened an orphanage where poor children “could be brought up to lead productive lives,” that eventually led to the formation of the Orphan Asylum Society.18

 

By the early nineteenth century, only half of all children in New York attended school even though the traditional apprenticeship system for learning trades and behavior no longer existed. Many children were caught stealing or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior and the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents began in 1823 to try to deal with these problems. The first New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 to house children under sixteen years old, and the authorities used religion and education to try to redeem the children brought there.19

 

By the 1850s, conditions for the poor were only getting worse. The huge numbers of immigrants coming into New York increased the competition for jobs and housing, and crowded conditions led to higher rates of illness and crime. Efforts of groups such as the American Tract Society were comprised of preaching and giving away bibles, while the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was able to attract the interest and donations of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens. They managed to get more needy people into almshouses on Blackwell’s Island, build a new one for the able-bodied poor, and get a new truancy law passed that enabled the police to round up delinquent children to get them off the streets.20

 

Children’s Aid Society

 

The Children’s Aid Society, another in a wide variety of efforts to deal with the problem of poor and uneducated children, was started by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 and continued under his leadership for the next 37 years. Brace graduated from Yale University and studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary. After a trip to Europe, during which he traveled in England with Frederick Law Olmsted,21 Brace began serving with Rev. Pease at the Five Points Mission in 1852. He was discouraged that the traditional methods of outreach were not helping change the lives of the people he saw. He also was struck by the large numbers of boys and girls who apparently had nothing useful to do and no one to look after them, and who seemed to be headed only for lives of crime. He decided that the most effective way to change conditions for the poor was to reach these children and try to change their circumstances

 

He wanted to “help the helpless, neglected children of the city to help themselves to become good and useful citizens.”23 Typically, their families could not care for them and they were sent out on the streets to fend for themselves, or to find some way to bring money or food back home.24 Because they were small, they were often preyed on by unsavory types who sent them out to steal, or they sold things on the streets or helped organ grinders in their trade. Boys would steal, sell newspapers or hawk matches, while many girls were forced into prostitution. 25 Street gangs developed to offer some protection for these wretched children who often slept on steam grates or in the remains of burned out buildings.

 

Brace believed that if he could show these children that someone cared about them, educate them to have good habits such as industry and self-control, and help them achieve some basic skills, they could get jobs and improve their lives. He felt that “home life was better than institutions and that self-help was better than alms.”26

 

From its beginning, the work of the Children’s Aid Society involved several separate efforts. The most radical and well-known was “placing out.” Over the course of the first forty years, the organization took 97,738 children from New York, and sent them by train to situations away from New York City, usually with “Christian families” in the Midwest where they were supposed to enjoy the benefits of a good home life in a rural setting. While some did in fact become essentially members of these families and benefitted from the experience, others were put to work in stores and on farms, in conditions close to indentured servitude. Brace felt that this effort was very positive because he believed that it was important to completely change the circumstances of these children’s lives in order to have a positive impact.

 

“The effort to place the children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see.”27

 

Since Brace could not remove every poor child from the bad influences of the city, he also made local efforts. These included the development of a series of lodging houses and industrial schools located around the city. The lodging houses were places a homeless child could come so he or she did not have to sleep on the street, with separate facilities for boys and girls. A young person could stay for a night or two if his difficulty was temporary, or he could stay for extended periods, and be assured of receiving food and a bath, as well as shelter. If they could pay, the children were asked for a small amount so that they felt they were paying their own way, rather than accepting charity, or they were asked to help with certain chores. These lodging houses eventually offered evening or morning classes to help the children with reading and writing, and specific skills that could help them gain employment.

 

The Newsboys’ Lodging House was opened in a building at Fulton and Nassau streets in 1854. The liveliness and ingenuity of the newsboys had a special resonance with Brace, who admired these qualities but felt they needed to be channeled into some productive enterprise. By 1928, the Children’s Aid Society ran seven lodging houses, located throughout the city.28

 

Brace saw that many poor children did not attend public school, either because they could not afford proper clothes, or because they had to work to help their families, so Brace established the Industrial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society to educate these children.29 The Industrial Schools taught reading and writing and character building, as well as skills such as carpentry for boys and cooking and laundering for girls. They also trained children to work on machines that might help them gain employment, such as sewing machines and typewriters, filling a gap left by the public schools. They provided clothes if needed, as well as a hot meal, and were non-sectarian. The Children’s Aid Society found that different groups had different needs, so they organized specific schools for Italian, German and “Colored” children, and later started medical and dental clinics for these children as well.

 

They became active in legislative efforts to promote their cause, such as working for the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of 1874. They started mothers’ groups to train them for this most important task, and day care centers for those who had to work. They eventually opened homes for sick and convalescing children, a school for crippled children, kindergartens, summer camps and playgrounds. While the Children’s Aid Society no longer runs lodging houses and schools, it continues to exist today, providing a variety of social services to New York children and their families.

 

Elizabeth Wheeler Home for Girls

 

The first lodging house for girls, called “The Girls’ Temporary Home,” was opened at 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1863 and during its first nine months, this building served 597 girls. The intention of this facility was to be “a resting place, a temporary home for any girl without friend or family in the city . . . to gain time to seek reputable employment” as well as a place where they could get help and advice.30 The Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society of 1889 called this girls’ home “one of the most successful and economical of all the branches of the Society,” but noted that there was a great need for an additional building for this facility.31 In the Annual Report of the following year the writer was even more adamant. “. . . we feel deeply the lack of accommodations, and look forward earnestly to the time when, with increased facilities, much more can be accomplished.”32

 

They reported that during the previous year, there had been 15,533 lodgings in the house, 49,324 meals served, 45 girls trained on typewriters and 72 girls trained on sewing machines, with 178 girls sent to situations and employment.33

 

In July 1891, the property at 307 East 12th Street was purchased by Emily Wheeler and conveyed by her to the Children’s Aid Society.34 The home was given by Mary B. Wheeler, Mary B. Ceccarini and Emily B. Wheeler in memory of Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler.35 The Elizabeth Home was designed by the preeminent architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.36 The home opened with a festive dedication in 1892, and included dormitories as well as single bedrooms for girls, sitting rooms, a reading room, office, dining rooms and kitchen, and rooms fitted with sewing machines and typewriters.

 

Calvert Vaux

 

Calvert Vaux 37 was one of the most prolific and influential architects working in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. His picturesque buildings and romantic landscape designs were constructed in numerous cities and towns and his books had a wide-ranging audience, contributing to the vogue during this period for interesting and picturesquely styled buildings. Vaux, trained in architecture, landscape design and planning, came from England to the United States in 1850 to work with A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York as a partner in his Bureau of Architecture. They specialized in the creation of picturesque English country houses and also began the planning of the grounds around many government buildings in Washington, D.C. After Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux began a partnership with Frank Clarke Withers, with whom he designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse .

 

Vaux’s book of house designs, Villas and Cottages was modeled on Downing’s highly popular Cottage Residences and became a standard for the genre.

 

Vaux relocated to New York City where, in 1858, he and Frederick Law Olmsted entered the competition for Central Park with their plan for a “Greensward,” the first public park in the country . Their design, based on the tradition of English landscape gardening, became a major influence in the development of public parks throughout the country. Vaux was responsible for the design of many of the architectural features of the park, including the bridges, and the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain. He went on to design numerous projects with Olmsted under the auspices of the landscape firm, Olmsted, Vaux and Company . These included Prospect Park in Brooklyn , Riverside, Illinois , Morningside Park , and Riverside Park .

 

Vaux designed many public buildings, institutions and grounds in various cities. These included the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut , Hudson River State Hospital and Grounds , the Grounds for Gallaudet College in Washington , the grounds of Parliament buildings in Ottawa , and the park system for Buffalo, NY. With Jacob Wrey Mould, who had come earlier from England and contributed many designs for Central Park, Vaux developed a Master Plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History .

 

Around 1873, Vaux began a partnership with George Kent Radford , a civil engineer, that was to last for eighteen years. This partnership was formalized as the architectural division of Vaux & Co., Landscape Architects in 1876. In addition to numerous designs for the Children’s Aid Society during the last part of his career, Vaux designed a High Victorian Gothic townhouse for Samuel J. Tilden in New York and the grounds for Tilden’s country estate, Greystone, in Yonkers, New York . Vaux had a long and varied career, from private homes for the wealthy to model tenements for the poor, from the landscape of individual estates, to the layout for entire cities. His designs helped establish the standard aesthetic of the late nineteenth century, both in building and landscaping and he is known as one of the founders of the field of landscape architecture.

 

Calvert Vaux and the Children’s Aid Society

 

Vaux became increasingly interested in the way architecture could be used to better the lives of unfortunate members of society and devoted much of the last part of his career to this cause. He was a careful observer of the first model tenement competition in 1879, sponsored by the journal, Plumber & Sanitary Engineer. In 1880, he designed a block of model tenements on First Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets for the Improved Dwellings Association. These apartments had windows in each room, central courtyards for improved air circulation and roof-top gardens for the residents.38

 

Calvert Vaux was a friend of Charles Loring Brace who lived in a house Vaux designed in Hastings, New York. By the late 1870s, Brace’s organization was successful and well-funded enough to want to construct its own lodging houses, in order to create the exact type of structure they needed. In 1879, Vaux designed their first purpose-built building, the East Side Boys’ Lodging House and Industrial School on East Broadway and Gouveneur Street . The picturesquely designed, 3 ½ story, brick and brownstone building had steeply pitched roofs and held dormitories, classrooms, and a well-furnished reading room as well as a dispensary and sick room. The free-standing building was a far cry from the dingy tenements of the area and was hailed in the press as “Christianity solidified in brick and mortar.”39

 

Vaux went on to design more than a dozen buildings for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, a very important part of his work. These included four lodging houses, among them the West Side Lodging House at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street and the Tompkins Square Lodging House and Industrial School at 8th Street and Avenue B , and five industrial schools that had similar facilities without the beds. This latter type included the Mott Street Industrial School at 256-258 Mott Street , and the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School .

 

The 44th Street Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School was the first to display a large, front-facing, stepped gable. According to the Society’s 46th Annual Report of 1888, this element came from “an old Nuremburg house called the ‘Petersen’ building, [which] is one of the most picturesque in the city.”40 This lodging house was marked by steep gables, dormer windows and oriole towers, in keeping with Vaux’s intentions to create a home-like and visually interesting composition, but also was “appropriately reminiscent of the city’s Dutch heritage.”41 Most of Vaux’s buildings that were built in the following years employed this design element.

 

The Children’s Aid Society buildings were both domestic and institutional, intended to be an ornament to a part of the city the ugliness of which is particularly in need of some relief. It is a fortunate circumstance that the objects of the Children’s Aid Society require it to undertake its building operations in quarters where, but for its efforts, it is unlikely that there would be any architecture worth looking at or discussing.42

They were usually free-standing structures, with highly varied rooflines that provided visual interest and variety. Vaux believed that,

In any architectural design, the separate groups of forms may be, in themselves, attractive, or the building may be splendid in its general conception of masses, or rich in its varied and charming detail, but it will be defective as an architectural composition if it fails in its sky-line.43

 

Vaux’s rooflines were usually faced with slate or tile, and consisted of mansard roofs with steeply pitched towers, conical roofs or front-facing stepped gables. These buildings were built of brick and sandstone, common and inexpensive materials that were deemed to give a picturesque effect. Vaux tried to site them on corner lots because he felt that two perspectives gave him a chance to create a more interesting design. He used projecting oriels, large windows, dormers and chimneys in an attempt to create a home-like atmosphere for the neglected children who came here. Faithful to his earliest design theories, Vaux worked to evoke the imagery of a snug country inn in the middle of New York City.44 By varying the placement of the entrance as well as the size and placement of the window openings, he created a lively façade, ornamented solely with decorative brickwork such as string courses and recessed panels.

 

Design of the Elizabeth Home for Girls

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, the last of this group designed by Vaux has the picturesque characteristics common to Vaux’s other designs although its 40-foot-wide, mid-block site required a more restrained composition. It has two asymmetrical sections, with the entrance sited off center, in the western side. The eastern section is topped by the typical stepped gable while the western side has a mansard roof with two dormer windows, a reverse arrangement from that of the House of Reception on West 23rd Street . The windows are placed along continuous sills, providing some unity in a façade of varied window sizes, shapes and groupings. Unlike many of the other CAS buildings, this one has no projecting oriel window, but here the entrance is given special emphasis by its projecting surround topped by a balustraded balcony.

 

While not as elaborate as some of the other CAS buildings, the Elizabeth Home is a distinctive building that would have provided the sense of “hominess” so desired by both the architect and the organization. Located on a block of brick-fronted rowhouses, this building is obviously different, but not enough to be jarring. Rather, it continues to add interest and variety to the streetscape.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1895, the Children’s Aid Society hired architects Clinton & Russell to create a two-story addition on the north of the building to house a laundry.45 Another alteration, in 1915, added bedrooms in three floors above this addition.46 In 1901, the Children’s Aid Society acquired the adjacent property at No. 311 East 12th Street and converted it into an addition to the Elizabeth Home.47

 

In 1930, the Society moved its operations to West 134th Street and sold both of these buildings to Dr. Benedict Lust, a promoter of natural healing.”48 Lust, a German immigrant with degrees in osteopathy and medicine, believed in natural healing, including a “water cure” and organized the Naturopathic Society of America. He established the American School of Naturopathy which offered a post-graduate curriculum in naturopathy, chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.49

 

Upon Lust’s death, the buildings were purchased by the Florence Crittenton League and remodeled and reopened in 1948 as a private shelter for girls aged 16-21, called Barrett House.50 The Crittendon League was started in 1883 by Charles N. Crittenton, a wealthy New York drug supply manufacturer.51 Originally called the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls and Night Mission for Fallen Women , it was named after his late daughter and was established as a shelter for troubled and runaway young girls, many of whom were orphaned, and as a mission for women of ill repute. In the late 1880s, the group started a shelter and mission on Bleecker Street that gained renown for its midnight gospel readings. By the turn-of-the-century, the Crittenton Foundation operated in many large

 

U.S. cities and was expanding its services in New York. In 1913, the group relocated its headquarters to West 27th Street and in 1946 purchased the former Children’s Aid Society buildings in order to be able to care for more residents and offer expanded services. The home’s residents were generally referred there by courts, clinics and private agencies and given a variety of therapies to help them emotionally, while keeping them out of the House of Detention.

 

In 1982, the building was sold to a developer and in 1984 it was re-opened as co­op apartments.

 

Description

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls is a four story brick-faced building set on a raised basement. Built originally on a street of townhouses , the forty-foot-wide façade blends in by appearing to be two buildings. The western section is two bays wide and holds the building’s main entrance, in the eastern bay of the first story. The raised basement has a pair of large windows framed by a sandstone lintel and watertable and fronted by an iron grille, while the areaway is marked by a non-historic iron fence. The entrance, reached by a short concrete stairway with non-historic iron railings is emphasized by a projecting brick enframement embellished by small, terra-cotta ornament, string courses and globe lights. It is capped by a projecting hood supported on stone brackets. The entrance consists of a paneled door with a large glass light flanked by paneled side sections.

 

A plain, sandstone lintel separates it from the large, round-headed glass transom that is subdivided into small squares. A pair of plain rectangular windows on a continuous sill is in the western bay of the first story. The second story has a single window in the western bay and, in the eastern bay, is a double multi-light, non-historic door that leads to a small, balustraded balcony formed by the projecting hood over the entranceway. At the third story, two pairs of narrow, rectangular windows share a common sill and a smooth sandstone lintel. A simple, corbelled brick cornice separates the roof from the floor below. This section has a mansard roof pierced by two dormer windows with bell-shaped roofs and flanked on the western side by a stepped parapet wall that projects above the roof.

 

A tall, prominent chimney rises between the two sections. Its plain brick facing is marked by several narrow string courses. The section on the east is topped by a stepped, front-facing gable with a decorative sandstone molding that echoes the steps. Each floor contains grouped window openings linked by continuous sills and sometimes lintels. The fourth story has three, round-headed windows capped by a continuous, rounded brick molding. The third story has four evenly-spaced windows under a plain, continuous stone lintel, while the second story has two pairs of windows under stone lintels and a sill that runs across the entire section. There are five windows with transoms and a continuous stone sill and lintel at the first story, and two individual windows fronted by iron grilles at the basement level. A third window has been converted to an entrance, with a non-historic door and light.

 

A broad sandstone lintel and watertable is located at the top of the basement level, creating a strong distinction between it and the rest of the building. A non-historic iron fence shields the areaway.

 

- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Stick Out Your Tongue

by Ma Jian

Publisher: Chatto & Windus

 

MA JIAN’S Stick Out Your Tongue comes across as a perverted misrepresentation of a deeply spiritual but materially impoverished society, it appears to be a book version of some cheap documentaries filmed with the sole purpose of commercial success by grossly exaggerating the cultural oddity of a besieged society and its idiosyncrasy.

 

In the freeze of the wind-swept and near-barren tundra land where abject poverty is prevalent, this Chinese writer, who is on a self-imposed exile in London, gets accepted into the fetid tents and other forms of humble dwelling of the Tibetans and Chinese soldiers and partake of their hospitality as he goes on a journey of in search of himself and in flee from his own soulless society.

 

Devoid of hardly any worldly possession or the company of fellow men, it doesn’t take much urging before they open up and share their deepest secrets with a stranger who would cross their path once in a lifetime and this stranger is a beatnik writer who at least has the decency to state that divide between fact and fiction gets blurred in the thin air of the high Tibetan altitude.

 

Disclaimer stated, Ma Jian takes liberties of artistic licence to write five short stories of horrifying encounters of rape, repulsive accounts of incest and unbelievable narrations of acts of violence committed in the name of religion.

 

He starts with a vivid description of a sky burial where the body of a 17-year-old pregnant woman with an unborn fetus is hacked into pieces and fed to the vultures and hawks. As if his description of how the body was disposed off wasn’t gross enough, the writer adds more shock elements to the story by revealing that the woman was the lover of Chinese soldier and the wife of two Tibetan brothers. At least, we are spared the conjugal arrangements of what would have been more than a ménage a trios.

 

More vile would be the sad tale of a love lost, of a silversmith who held on to what he could – the wafer-thin, wind-dried corpse of his lover hung on his wall punctured by a hole between the legs.

 

Crassness aside, Ma Jian is a wonderful writer and his translator Flora Drew did remarkably well to keep the substance, style and essence of his writings. He redeems himself with his empathy for the tortured souls of a deprived society, the fear men have for retribution and the longing for the warmth of a woman’s breasts and the need for the fulfillment of coitus.

 

Ma Jian’s most tragic story would be that of the shame of inbreeding, and how a spirit is shattered and sanity is lost when a young girl is stripped of her dignity by her father. Extreme poverty dehumanises and when trust is broken and love is betrayed, a lively girl gets reduced to a street urchin, wondering around half-naked, giving sex to all and sundry until the stench in her private part becomes too off-putting. She now lives on scraps from the butcher’s stalls like the stray dogs in the marketplace.

 

In this one short story, Ma Jian pieces together a tapestry of emotions - from how love turns to lust, how trust is killed by betrayal and how respect degenerates into disdain. His narrative is violent, yet beautiful. His presentation is beautiful, yet gross. And his noble message of how fragile the human spirit is in a perverted tale is indeed a saving grace.

marketplace.secondlife.com/p/CVR-Virgin-of-chastity-on-a-...

Session Americana and Peter Wolf playing at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, MA.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wolf

www.peterwolf.com/

www.facebook.com/PeterWolfMusic?v=wall

Life and career

 

Wolf was born in the Bronx, New York. He planned a career as an artist, but he got a job in the late 1960s as a disc jockey on then-cutting edge Boston FM radio station WBCN and began exploring his interest in blues and rhythm and blues music, giving himself the nickname "the Wolfa Goofa", sometimes expanded to "the Wolfa Goofa with the Green Teeth" (as mentioned in the intro to "Must of Got Lost" on the Blow Your Face Out album). Later as solo artist he called himself Woofa Goofa Mama Toofa. He formed a group called the Hallucinations who performed with The Velvet Underground, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, John Lee Hooker, and Sun Ra. He then saw the J. Geils Blues Band in concert and quickly joined. He was the vocalist and frontman, and often acted as a sort of manager. Wolf was known for his charismatic stage antics of fast-talking quips and "pole-vaulting" with the microphone stand. He and keyboard player Seth Justman were responsible for most of the songwriting. Creative differences followed their Freeze-Frame album, causing the J. Geils Band and Peter Wolf to part ways in 1983.

 

Peter Wolf with the J. Geils Band in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, California Photo: Catharine Anderson

Wolf became a solo artist for the next 15 years, but in 1999 the J. Geils Band reunited for several appearances, with Wolf resuming his duties as lead vocalist. They separated again, and Wolf began touring once more, as a solo act.

Wolf's first solo record, Lights Out (1984) was produced by Michael Jonzun of the Jonzun Crew, features Adrian Belew, and has a somewhat funky, electro sound. The eponymous single became a hit single the same year, peaking at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. He recorded many duets with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Little Milton, John Lee Hooker, Don Covay, and Wilson Pickett to name just a few.

Long Line was co-produced with two musician friends, Johnny A. and a Bob Dylan backup band member, Stu Kimball. Tim Archibald (Bass) and Brian Maes (keys and backing vocals) who are both members of "Ernie And The Automatics", played on the record and Toured in support of "Long Line." His next two solo albums, Fool's Parade and Sleepless (the latter featuring guest appearances from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), were both highly praised by Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone, receiving four-and-a-half and five stars, respectively. Sleepless (2002) was noted as one of the 500 greatest albums of all time in Rolling Stone issue 937. He has performed on stage with such diverse people as Bruce Springsteen and Phil Lesh.

Wolf toured in 2008 with Kid Rock and Rev. Run on The Rock N Roll Revival Tour. He performed "Love Stinks" solo with Kid Rock's band. Then he joined Kid Rock for "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", "Musta Got Lost", "Centerfold" (from the J. Geils album Freeze Frame) and "For What It's Worth".

The J. Geils Band re-united for a series of shows in 2009, including opening night at the Boston House of Blues.

Wolf's 2010 album Midnight Souvenirs won Album of the Year at the Boston Music Awards.[2][3]

 

www.facebook.com/pages/Session-Americana/53199003969

 

www.sessionamericana.com

www.myspace.com/sessionamericana

www.hi-n-dry.com/session_americana

www.exploitboston.com/music-musings/grab-new-music-from-s...

Session Americana - www.sessionamericana.com

 

This ad hoc acoustic supergroup started around a table at a small pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Conway, Sean Staples, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting and other friends gathered to swap songs and stories. Their lively performances and inspired versions of tunes from the dusty backroads of America's past were such a hit with fans that they decided to take their musical conversation into the studio. The two-CD debut Tabletop People ups the ante with stellar appearances by folksinger Rose Polenzani, Twinemen's Laurie Sargent, Dennis Brennan, Asa Brebner, Merrie Amsterburg, Dan Kellar, Presidents of the United States' Chris Ballew, Jabe Beyer, Tim Gearon and other luminaries. And the 18 gritty, funny, soulful performances included span a gamut of emotions and tastes that should please both adult and younger listeners.

 

"Genius ... Jaw-dropping vocals ... Session Americana is blessed in this regard:...musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston

and vocals that do the same"

— Performer Magazine

 

Session Americana sit tightly around a small cafe table, ambient mics tuned to catch the whole sound of the voices and instruments. A suit-case drum kit, an old electric bass, a bunch of acoustic instruments, a field organ: This format feels very theatrical and though the musicians face each other, the audience feels drawn into the circle by the warmth, joy and camaraderie that emanate outwards by the all star cast of characters seated around the table. What keeps you coming back show after show is the same thing that any audience member longs for, great songs performed by a great band. The six core members of the band have brought enviable careers worth of experience to the “table”, featuring (current and former) members of Treat Her Right, Patty Griffin, Lori McKenna, The The, Dennis Brennan, Kris Delmhorst. The group has grown from a rag tag jam at a local pub to a regional institution, playing gigs from church coee houses to urban nightclubs to regional festival tents to large halls.

 

Band: Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Beard, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting, Sean Staples and Jon Bistline.

 

*Winner “2005 Best Folk Act” - The Boston Music Awards

*Winner “Best Roots Act 2006” - Improper Bostonian “Best of Boston” Issue

*Winner “Best CD” 2007 - Improper Bostonian

*Nominated “Best Roots Act” 2007 - WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll

*Nominated Best Live Act 2007 - The Boston Music Awards

*Nominated Best Americana Act 2008 - The Boston Music Awards

 

“Genius ... Jaw-dropping vocals ... Session Americana is blessed in this regard: ...musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston and vocals that do the same”

— NE Performer Magazine

 

“No egos, no big production, just some great songs stripped down to their bare essentials and performed with a real genuineness of spirit and emotional authenticity... it’s beautiful.” (Brian Mosher)

— The Noise

 

“An eclectic, swinging tour de force” — The Boston Globe

 

“[This] local country-folk megagroup’s double CD is one of the most loose, spontaneous, warm, and homespun acts of community and decency since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

 

— The Boston Phoenix

“the cream of the Somerville/Cambridge community" - No Depression (read less)

 

... or at least have the decency to leave some chips.

 

[Adjustments: standard raw file edits]

Session Americana and Peter Wolf playing at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, MA.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wolf

www.peterwolf.com/

www.facebook.com/PeterWolfMusic?v=wall

Life and career

 

Wolf was born in the Bronx, New York. He planned a career as an artist, but he got a job in the late 1960s as a disc jockey on then-cutting edge Boston FM radio station WBCN and began exploring his interest in blues and rhythm and blues music, giving himself the nickname "the Wolfa Goofa", sometimes expanded to "the Wolfa Goofa with the Green Teeth" (as mentioned in the intro to "Must of Got Lost" on the Blow Your Face Out album). Later as solo artist he called himself Woofa Goofa Mama Toofa. He formed a group called the Hallucinations who performed with The Velvet Underground, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, John Lee Hooker, and Sun Ra. He then saw the J. Geils Blues Band in concert and quickly joined. He was the vocalist and frontman, and often acted as a sort of manager. Wolf was known for his charismatic stage antics of fast-talking quips and "pole-vaulting" with the microphone stand. He and keyboard player Seth Justman were responsible for most of the songwriting. Creative differences followed their Freeze-Frame album, causing the J. Geils Band and Peter Wolf to part ways in 1983.

 

Peter Wolf with the J. Geils Band in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, California Photo: Catharine Anderson

Wolf became a solo artist for the next 15 years, but in 1999 the J. Geils Band reunited for several appearances, with Wolf resuming his duties as lead vocalist. They separated again, and Wolf began touring once more, as a solo act.

Wolf's first solo record, Lights Out (1984) was produced by Michael Jonzun of the Jonzun Crew, features Adrian Belew, and has a somewhat funky, electro sound. The eponymous single became a hit single the same year, peaking at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. He recorded many duets with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Little Milton, John Lee Hooker, Don Covay, and Wilson Pickett to name just a few.

Long Line was co-produced with two musician friends, Johnny A. and a Bob Dylan backup band member, Stu Kimball. Tim Archibald (Bass) and Brian Maes (keys and backing vocals) who are both members of "Ernie And The Automatics", played on the record and Toured in support of "Long Line." His next two solo albums, Fool's Parade and Sleepless (the latter featuring guest appearances from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), were both highly praised by Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone, receiving four-and-a-half and five stars, respectively. Sleepless (2002) was noted as one of the 500 greatest albums of all time in Rolling Stone issue 937. He has performed on stage with such diverse people as Bruce Springsteen and Phil Lesh.

Wolf toured in 2008 with Kid Rock and Rev. Run on The Rock N Roll Revival Tour. He performed "Love Stinks" solo with Kid Rock's band. Then he joined Kid Rock for "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", "Musta Got Lost", "Centerfold" (from the J. Geils album Freeze Frame) and "For What It's Worth".

The J. Geils Band re-united for a series of shows in 2009, including opening night at the Boston House of Blues.

Wolf's 2010 album Midnight Souvenirs won Album of the Year at the Boston Music Awards.[2][3]

 

www.facebook.com/pages/Session-Americana/53199003969

 

www.sessionamericana.com

www.myspace.com/sessionamericana

www.hi-n-dry.com/session_americana

www.exploitboston.com/music-musings/grab-new-music-from-s...

Session Americana - www.sessionamericana.com

 

This ad hoc acoustic supergroup started around a table at a small pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Conway, Sean Staples, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting and other friends gathered to swap songs and stories. Their lively performances and inspired versions of tunes from the dusty backroads of America's past were such a hit with fans that they decided to take their musical conversation into the studio. The two-CD debut Tabletop People ups the ante with stellar appearances by folksinger Rose Polenzani, Twinemen's Laurie Sargent, Dennis Brennan, Asa Brebner, Merrie Amsterburg, Dan Kellar, Presidents of the United States' Chris Ballew, Jabe Beyer, Tim Gearon and other luminaries. And the 18 gritty, funny, soulful performances included span a gamut of emotions and tastes that should please both adult and younger listeners.

 

"Genius ... Jaw-dropping vocals ... Session Americana is blessed in this regard:...musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston

and vocals that do the same"

— Performer Magazine

 

Session Americana sit tightly around a small cafe table, ambient mics tuned to catch the whole sound of the voices and instruments. A suit-case drum kit, an old electric bass, a bunch of acoustic instruments, a field organ: This format feels very theatrical and though the musicians face each other, the audience feels drawn into the circle by the warmth, joy and camaraderie that emanate outwards by the all star cast of characters seated around the table. What keeps you coming back show after show is the same thing that any audience member longs for, great songs performed by a great band. The six core members of the band have brought enviable careers worth of experience to the “table”, featuring (current and former) members of Treat Her Right, Patty Griffin, Lori McKenna, The The, Dennis Brennan, Kris Delmhorst. The group has grown from a rag tag jam at a local pub to a regional institution, playing gigs from church coee houses to urban nightclubs to regional festival tents to large halls.

 

Band: Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Beard, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting, Sean Staples and Jon Bistline.

 

*Winner “2005 Best Folk Act” - The Boston Music Awards

*Winner “Best Roots Act 2006” - Improper Bostonian “Best of Boston” Issue

*Winner “Best CD” 2007 - Improper Bostonian

*Nominated “Best Roots Act” 2007 - WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll

*Nominated Best Live Act 2007 - The Boston Music Awards

*Nominated Best Americana Act 2008 - The Boston Music Awards

 

“Genius ... Jaw-dropping vocals ... Session Americana is blessed in this regard: ...musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston and vocals that do the same”

— NE Performer Magazine

 

“No egos, no big production, just some great songs stripped down to their bare essentials and performed with a real genuineness of spirit and emotional authenticity... it’s beautiful.” (Brian Mosher)

— The Noise

 

“An eclectic, swinging tour de force” — The Boston Globe

 

“[This] local country-folk megagroup’s double CD is one of the most loose, spontaneous, warm, and homespun acts of community and decency since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

 

— The Boston Phoenix

“the cream of the Somerville/Cambridge community" - No Depression (read less)

 

Session Americana and Peter Wolf playing at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, MA.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wolf

www.peterwolf.com/

www.facebook.com/PeterWolfMusic?v=wall

Life and career

 

Wolf was born in the Bronx, New York. He planned a career as an artist, but he got a job in the late 1960s as a disc jockey on then-cutting edge Boston FM radio station WBCN and began exploring his interest in blues and rhythm and blues music, giving himself the nickname "the Wolfa Goofa", sometimes expanded to "the Wolfa Goofa with the Green Teeth" (as mentioned in the intro to "Must of Got Lost" on the Blow Your Face Out album). Later as solo artist he called himself Woofa Goofa Mama Toofa. He formed a group called the Hallucinations who performed with The Velvet Underground, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, John Lee Hooker, and Sun Ra. He then saw the J. Geils Blues Band in concert and quickly joined. He was the vocalist and frontman, and often acted as a sort of manager. Wolf was known for his charismatic stage antics of fast-talking quips and "pole-vaulting" with the microphone stand. He and keyboard player Seth Justman were responsible for most of the songwriting. Creative differences followed their Freeze-Frame album, causing the J. Geils Band and Peter Wolf to part ways in 1983.

 

Peter Wolf with the J. Geils Band in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, California Photo: Catharine Anderson

Wolf became a solo artist for the next 15 years, but in 1999 the J. Geils Band reunited for several appearances, with Wolf resuming his duties as lead vocalist. They separated again, and Wolf began touring once more, as a solo act.

Wolf's first solo record, Lights Out (1984) was produced by Michael Jonzun of the Jonzun Crew, features Adrian Belew, and has a somewhat funky, electro sound. The eponymous single became a hit single the same year, peaking at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. He recorded many duets with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Little Milton, John Lee Hooker, Don Covay, and Wilson Pickett to name just a few.

Long Line was co-produced with two musician friends, Johnny A. and a Bob Dylan backup band member, Stu Kimball. Tim Archibald (Bass) and Brian Maes (keys and backing vocals) who are both members of "Ernie And The Automatics", played on the record and Toured in support of "Long Line." His next two solo albums, Fool's Parade and Sleepless (the latter featuring guest appearances from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), were both highly praised by Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone, receiving four-and-a-half and five stars, respectively. Sleepless (2002) was noted as one of the 500 greatest albums of all time in Rolling Stone issue 937. He has performed on stage with such diverse people as Bruce Springsteen and Phil Lesh.

Wolf toured in 2008 with Kid Rock and Rev. Run on The Rock N Roll Revival Tour. He performed "Love Stinks" solo with Kid Rock's band. Then he joined Kid Rock for "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", "Musta Got Lost", "Centerfold" (from the J. Geils album Freeze Frame) and "For What It's Worth".

The J. Geils Band re-united for a series of shows in 2009, including opening night at the Boston House of Blues.

Wolf's 2010 album Midnight Souvenirs won Album of the Year at the Boston Music Awards.[2][3]

 

www.facebook.com/pages/Session-Americana/53199003969

 

www.sessionamericana.com

www.myspace.com/sessionamericana

www.hi-n-dry.com/session_americana

www.exploitboston.com/music-musings/grab-new-music-from-s...

Session Americana - www.sessionamericana.com

 

This ad hoc acoustic supergroup started around a table at a small pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Conway, Sean Staples, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting and other friends gathered to swap songs and stories. Their lively performances and inspired versions of tunes from the dusty backroads of America's past were such a hit with fans that they decided to take their musical conversation into the studio. The two-CD debut Tabletop People ups the ante with stellar appearances by folksinger Rose Polenzani, Twinemen's Laurie Sargent, Dennis Brennan, Asa Brebner, Merrie Amsterburg, Dan Kellar, Presidents of the United States' Chris Ballew, Jabe Beyer, Tim Gearon and other luminaries. And the 18 gritty, funny, soulful performances included span a gamut of emotions and tastes that should please both adult and younger listeners.

 

"Genius ... Jaw-dropping vocals ... Session Americana is blessed in this regard:...musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston

and vocals that do the same"

— Performer Magazine

 

Session Americana sit tightly around a small cafe table, ambient mics tuned to catch the whole sound of the voices and instruments. A suit-case drum kit, an old electric bass, a bunch of acoustic instruments, a field organ: This format feels very theatrical and though the musicians face each other, the audience feels drawn into the circle by the warmth, joy and camaraderie that emanate outwards by the all star cast of characters seated around the table. What keeps you coming back show after show is the same thing that any audience member longs for, great songs performed by a great band. The six core members of the band have brought enviable careers worth of experience to the “table”, featuring (current and former) members of Treat Her Right, Patty Griffin, Lori McKenna, The The, Dennis Brennan, Kris Delmhorst. The group has grown from a rag tag jam at a local pub to a regional institution, playing gigs from church coee houses to urban nightclubs to regional festival tents to large halls.

 

Band: Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Beard, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting, Sean Staples and Jon Bistline.

 

*Winner “2005 Best Folk Act” - The Boston Music Awards

*Winner “Best Roots Act 2006” - Improper Bostonian “Best of Boston” Issue

*Winner “Best CD” 2007 - Improper Bostonian

*Nominated “Best Roots Act” 2007 - WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll

*Nominated Best Live Act 2007 - The Boston Music Awards

*Nominated Best Americana Act 2008 - The Boston Music Awards

 

“Genius ... Jaw-dropping vocals ... Session Americana is blessed in this regard: ...musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston and vocals that do the same”

— NE Performer Magazine

 

“No egos, no big production, just some great songs stripped down to their bare essentials and performed with a real genuineness of spirit and emotional authenticity... it’s beautiful.” (Brian Mosher)

— The Noise

 

“An eclectic, swinging tour de force” — The Boston Globe

 

“[This] local country-folk megagroup’s double CD is one of the most loose, spontaneous, warm, and homespun acts of community and decency since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

 

— The Boston Phoenix

“the cream of the Somerville/Cambridge community" - No Depression (read less)

 

Here's YouTube video of the speech.

 

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama

"A More Perfect Union"

Constitution Center

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

   

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands

across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple

words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers

and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean

to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration

of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the

spring of 1787.

   

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately

unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery,

a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a

stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to

continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final

resolution to future generations.

   

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded

within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the

ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised

its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should

be perfected over time.

   

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves

from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their

full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What

would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were

willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the

streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience

and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of

our ideals and the reality of their time.

   

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this

campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a

march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more

prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment

in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the

challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we

perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories,

but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not

have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same

direction – towards a better future for of children and our

grandchildren.

   

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and

generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own

American story.

   

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.

I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a

Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white

grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth

while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in

America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married

to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and

slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.

I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of

every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for

as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on

Earth is my story even possible.

   

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But

it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that

this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we

are truly one.

   

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to

the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this

message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through

a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some

of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where

the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of

African Americans and white Americans.

   

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign.

At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me

either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions

bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina

primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest

evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black,

but black and brown as well.

   

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the

discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive

turn.

   

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my

candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's

based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial

reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former

pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express

views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but

views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our

nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

   

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of

Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging

questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic

of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear

him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in

church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political

views? Absolutely – just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks

from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly

disagreed.

   

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply

controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to

speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a

profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white

racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above

all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts

in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart

allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful

ideologies of radical Islam.

   

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive,

divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when

we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two

wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care

crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are

neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that

confront us all.

   

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals,

there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation

are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the

first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I

confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets

of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television

and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the

caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that

I would react in much the same way

   

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I

met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my

Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love

one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man

who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured

at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and

who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by

doing God's work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering

to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison

ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

   

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of

my first service at Trinity:

   

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out,

a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters….And

in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of

that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I

imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories

of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's

den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and

freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had

spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church,

on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a

people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials

and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than

black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a

means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame

about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with

which we could start to rebuild."

   

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly

black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black

community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model

student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches,

Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy

humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting

that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in

full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the

shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the

bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

   

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright.

As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He

strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my

children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk

about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom

he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains

within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the

community that he has served diligently for so many years.

   

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can

no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who

helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a

woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a

woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on

the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or

ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

   

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this

country that I love.

   

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that

are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the

politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just

hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright

as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine

Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some

deep-seated racial bias.

   

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to

ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend

Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and

stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts

reality.

   

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that

have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race

in this country that we've never really worked through – a part of our

union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we

simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to

come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or

the need to find good jobs for every American.

   

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at

this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and

buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here

the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to

remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the

African-American community today can be directly traced to

inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under

the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

   

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't

fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the

inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the

pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

   

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through

violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to

African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access

FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police

force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass

any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history

helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and

the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of

today's urban and rural communities.

   

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and

frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family,

contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare

policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic

services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play

in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code

enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and

neglect that continue to haunt us.

   

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other

African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the

late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the

law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.

What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of

discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds;

how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who

would come after them.

   

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of

the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it – those who

were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination.

That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those

young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street

corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for

the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race,

and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways.

For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of

humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger

and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed

in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does

find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times,

that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial

lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

   

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in

the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are

surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons

simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in

American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always

productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving

real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in

our condition, and prevents the African-American community from

forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the

anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn

it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of

misunderstanding that exists between the races.

   

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white

community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel

that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their

experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned,

no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've

worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped

overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are

anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in

an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to

be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.

So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town;

when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in

landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice

that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their

fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced,

resentment builds over time.

   

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't

always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the

political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and

affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians

routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk

show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers

unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate

discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political

correctness or reverse racism.

   

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these

white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the

middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing,

questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington

dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that

favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of

white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without

recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens

the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

   

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been

stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics,

black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can

get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a

single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

   

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my

faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working

together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in

fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more

perfect union.

   

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the

burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means

continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of

American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances –

for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the

larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to

break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the

immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full

responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and

spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and

teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination

in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism;

they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

   

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative –

notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's

sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is

that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that

society can change.

   

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke

about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was

static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a

country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run

for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and

black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still

irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have

seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this

nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to

hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

   

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means

acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not

just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of

discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less

overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just

with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our

communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness

in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with

ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.

It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to

come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health,

welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will

ultimately help all of America prosper.

   

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing

less, than what all the world's great religions demand – that we do

unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's

keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us

find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our

politics reflect that spirit as well.

   

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that

breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only

as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy,

as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly

news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every

day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only

question in this campaign whether or not the American people think

that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that

she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men

will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of

his policies.

   

We can do that.

   

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be

talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then

another one. And nothing will change.

   

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come

together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about

the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children

and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native

American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that

tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look

like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not

those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in

a 21st century economy. Not this time.

   

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room

are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health

care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special

interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it

together.

   

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided

a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale

that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region,

every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the

real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take

your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas

for nothing more than a profit.

   

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and

creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under

the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home

from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've

been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by

caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they

have earned.

   

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my

heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this

country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after

generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today,

whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this

possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the

young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have

already made history in this election.

   

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with

today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr.

King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

   

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia

who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had

been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the

beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable

discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they

were there.

   

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got

cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and

lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's

when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

   

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so

Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really

wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish

sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

   

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told

everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was

so that she could help the millions of other children in the country

who want and need to help their parents too.

   

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told

her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks

who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming

into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in

her fight against injustice.

   

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and

asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have

different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And

finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there

quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he

does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or

the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say

that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone

in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

   

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of

recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is

not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs

to the jobless, or education to our children.

   

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And

as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the

two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that

document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

  

My comments which are based on my own specific experience do not in any way refer to to current dispute at Dunnes or any other company currently operating in Ireland.

 

Up until recently I had believed that zero-hour contracts had been banned in Ireland as a result of previous abuses.

 

Many years ago I was a manager with a large turnkey operation that, after having been bought out by a US based multi-national, decided to introduce what was a new idea at the time ‘zero-hour contracts’. Actually it was called a ‘Zero Fifty’ contract … employees were expected to work up to 50 hours at a flat rate [no overtime rates] but were they were not guaranteed any hours in any given week. Local management were horrified by the concept and within months most had moved on.

 

What was once a wonderful working environment became a living hell.

 

As I was a senior manager I was not on a zero-hour contract but it did impact very negatively on my staff and the performance of my department so after about six months I decided to leave. Fortunately all of my staff managed to find alternative employment.

 

Back in 1989 there was an additional down-side for the workers and it was as follows. If you worked for a company and you were on short time [worked only three days per week] you [at the time a working week was assumed to be six days] could claim dole for the days that they did not work but under the system operated by my employer they were unable to claim dole as they did not have advance warning as to what days there was work for them. I do not know if this particular problem still exists.

  

A zero-hour contract is the name given to a type of contract, where the employer purports to have the discretion to vary the employee's working hours, usually anywhere from full-time to "zero hours". These clauses spread widely in the United Kingdom after the global financial crisis, although under UK labour law they are of doubtful legality because it undermines the employee's reasonable expectation to a stable income.

 

The employer typically asserts that they have no obligation to provide work for the employee. The employee may sign an agreement to be available for work as and when required, so that no particular number of hours or times of work are specified. The employee is expected to be on call and receives compensation only for hours worked.

UN staff in New York gather at the “Knotted Gun” sculpture at the UN Visitor’s Centre entrance at 12:00 noon on Wednesday 15 March to call for an end to the six years of conflict in Syria. Staff held signs with photos of six year old Syrian children with the hashtag #notatarget as part of their action to stand in solidarity with the people of Syria.

 

UN Staff Statement: We, the staff of the United Nations wish to express our profound concern and outrage over the suffering of the people and especially the children of Syria.

 

The crucible of war continues to hold the people, and especially the children of Syria, hostage. For six years, Syrians have experienced appalling violence and flagrant disregard for human life. For six years, the world has watched in horror. Human decency and conscience demands that we end the carnage now.

 

The United Nations was founded on principles of human rights and respect for humanitarian values. It is our duty as individuals and as a collective to uphold these principles. We therefore stand in solidarity with the civilians and particularly the children who are suffering from abuses, indignity and destruction caused by ongoing violations of international norms. We stand united in solidarity with the people and especially the children of Syria.

 

We call upon the Member States of the United Nations, in particular the Security Council, to take urgent action to end the bloodshed in Syria.

 

Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown

 

Oh dear, who do i apologize to for this little liberty? For the sake of decency and politeness to the chap in question he looks nothing like this! He's not green for a start!

Sikhism originated in the 15th century, in the Punjab region by Guru Nanak, who preached ideas that were radical for his age: he denounced Hinduism's oppressive caste system and Islam's gender discrimination, preaching that all people can commune with the divine equally, without the intervention of rituals or priests. The Sikh faith is a monotheistic religion, meaning Sikhs worship one God. The three core pillars of Sikhism are: vaṇḍ chakkō (sharing with others, helping those in need, as well as participating as part of a community), kirat karō (earning/making a living honestly, without exploitation or fraud, and speaking the truth at all times) and naam japna (meditating on God’s name to live a life of decency and humility).

The temporary distractions of the material world are seen as an illusion. The qualities of ego, anger, greed, attachment and lust are known as the Five Thieves that rob a person of their ability to realize their oneness with God and creation. Sikhs work to counteract the temptations of these qualities through the values of service, equality, and seeking justice for all. Sikhs also believe that one’s form on Earth is only a temporary vessel for the eternal soul. Thus, the death of the physical body is a natural part of the life cycle, while the soul remains. Death is not an end, but merely the progression of the soul on its journey toward God.

Nine more gurus succeeded Guru Nanak (Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das, Arjan, Har Gobind, Har Rai, Har Krishan, Tegh Bahadur, and Gobind Singh), and continued to spread his teachings across the world.

The last guru, Guru Gobind Singh, named the Sikh sacred text, the Guru Granth Sahib, to be the eternal Guru that would guide the Sikhs going forward. It consists of 1,430 Anks, or pages, and 6,000 Sabads, or line compositions, all are written in poetic verse and are aligning to the rhythmic forms of ancient north Indian classical music. At the core of the Guru Granth Sahib is a yearning for a world governed by divine justice, without oppression of any kind.

The final living guru, Gobind Singh, also established the Khalsa, or order of Sikh soldier-saints. They are recognizable by "The 5 k's," their physical articles of faith: Kesh (unshorn hair and beard), Kirpan (ceremonial sword), Kangha (comb), Kara (steel bracelet) and Kachha (drawers). The Dastar, or turban, is considered a spiritual crown, a token of remembrance of the Sikh principles.

 

Subathu, Himachal Pradesh, India

Estoy aquí y le doy de comer a los cisnes. Exactamente después de 5 minutos, vuelve a aparecer un espía del servicio secreto de Alemania Occidental y (como siempre) comienza a filmar con mi teléfono inteligente. Justo en mi cara. Funciona todos los días. La mujer tiene una cara estúpida, unos 45 años, ojos azules, cabello rubio oscuro y delgado. Se bebe con vino caliente.

La comida decorativa para pájaros está hecha para cisnes, pero no tiene cisnes en el envase, sino flamencos que no viven aquí. Las gaviotas de cabeza negra ya no pueden sentarse en el muelle de vapor porque la sociedad de vapor es demasiado vaga y tiene bandas de aleteo colgadas allí. Pero no hacen nada contra los manifestantes de los padres del estado.

Gaviotas de cabeza negra, patos silvestres, palomas, gansos de ganso silvestre y cisnes se comen aquí. Pero los cisnes también están alimentando a otros ciudadanos ordenados que no están aquí como espías y espían a las personas. Los cisnes están hartos hoy, pero tienen que llenarse porque saben que habrá menos comederos nuevamente.

Llega una mujer hermosa y me sonríe, lo que creo que es genial. Ella es rubia y tiene lentes.

Los autobuses y tranvías están llenos y muchos de ellos son estúpidos porque dejan espacio sin decencia. ¿Por qué tengo una tarjeta de suscripción cuando no puedo ir conmigo?

De lo contrario, las personas son socialmente poco atractivas y aburridas. Solo les interesa mostrar cosas y autos con vino caliente. Te miran como si no fueras uno de ellos. Un niño está arrasando contra una bicicleta de alquiler.

 

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Ich bin hier unf füttere Ziervogelfutter für die Schwäne. Exakt nach 5 Minuten kommt wieder ein Spitzel vom Westdeutschen Geheimdienst und fängt (wie immer) mich gleich an mit dem Smartphone an zu filmen. Direkt in mein Gesicht. Jeden Tag geht das. Die Frau hat ein dümmliches Gesicht, 45 Jahre alt ungefähr, blaue Augen, dünnes, dunkelblondes Haar. Betrinkt sich mit Glühwein.

Das Ziervogelfutter ist für Schwäne gemacht, hat aber keine Schwäne auf der Verpackung, sondern Flamingos, die hier nicht leben. Die Lachmöven können nicht mehr Dampferkai sitzen, weil die Dampfergesellschaft zu faul ist und dort Flatterbänder aufgehängt hat. Gegen Randalierer von Staatseltern machen die aber nichts.

Lachmöven, Stockenten, Stadttauben, Graugänse und Schwäne essen sich durch mich hier satt. Aber auch andere, ordentliche Bürger, die nicht hier als Spitzel stehen und die Leute feindlich ausspähen, füttern die Schwäne heute auch. Die Schwäne sind heute satt, aber müssen sich vollstopfen, weil sie wissen, dass es dann wieder weniger Fütterer geben wird.

Eine schöne Frau kommt an und lächelt mich an, was ich toll finde. Sie ist blond und hat eine Brille.

Die Busse und Straßenbahnen sind voll und dazu sind viele von denen Dumm, weil ohne Anstand Platz zu machen. Wozu hat man eine Abo-Karte, wenn man nicht mitfahren kann?

Sonst sind die Leute sehr sozial unattraktiv und langweilig. Die interessieren sich nur für das Zeigen von Sachen und Autos mit Glühwein. Die schauen einen an, als wenn man nicht zu denen gehören würde. Ein Kind tritt randalierend voll gegen ein Leihfahrrad.

 

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Я здесь и кормлю птицу кормом для лебедей. Ровно через 5 минут снова приходит шпион из западногерманской секретной службы и (как всегда) начинает снимать меня с моего смартфона. Прямо в моем лице. Это работает каждый день. У женщины глупое лицо, около 45 лет, голубые глаза, тонкие темные светлые волосы. Пьет сам с глинтвейном.

Декоративная пища для птиц сделана для лебедей, но на упаковке нет лебедей, а есть фламинго, которые здесь не живут. Черноголовые чайки больше не могут сидеть на причале парохода, потому что пароходное общество слишком лениво и там повешены трепетные полосы. Но они ничего не делают против мятежников государственных родителей.

Черноголовые чайки, кряквы, голуби, серые гуси и лебеди питаются здесь. Но лебеди также кормят других простых граждан, которые здесь не шпионы и не шпионят за людьми. Сегодня лебедям надоело, но им приходится набивать себя, потому что они знают, что кормушек снова будет меньше.

Приходит красивая женщина и улыбается мне, что я считаю великолепным. Она блондинка и носит очки.

Автобусы и трамваи переполнены, и многие из них глупы, потому что они освобождают место без приличия. Почему у меня есть подписная карточка, когда я не могу пойти со мной?

Иначе люди очень социально непривлекательны и скучны. Их интересует только показ вещей и машин с глинтвейном. Они смотрят на тебя, как будто ты не один из них. Ребенок неистовствует против проката велосипедов.

 

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我在这里为天鹅喂鸟饲料。恰好5分钟之后，西德情报局的一名间谍再次出现，并且（一如既往）开始用我的智能手机拍摄我。就在我脸上这个女人每天都有工作，这个女人有一张愚蠢的面孔，大约45岁，蓝眼睛，稀疏的金色金发。用热红酒喝酒。

装饰性鸟类食品是为天鹅制成的，但包装上没有天鹅，但这里不生活着火烈鸟。黑头鸥不能再坐在轮船码头上了，因为轮船社会太懒惰了，那里悬挂着颤动的带子。但是他们并没有对暴动的州亲父母做任何事情。

黑头鸥，野鸭，鸽子，灰雁和天鹅在这里吃饱。但是天鹅也养活了其他普通民众，他们不是这里的间谍和间谍。天鹅今天已经受够了，但是不得不塞满自己，因为他们知道再有更少的饲养者。

一个美丽的女人到来并对我微笑，我认为这很棒。她是金发，戴着眼镜。

公共汽车和有轨电车已满，许多人愚蠢，因为他们腾出的空间不雅致。为什么我不能和我一起去时有订阅卡？

否则，人们在社交上就没有吸引力并且很无聊。他们只对展示带有甜酒的东西和汽车感兴趣。他们看着你，好像你不是其中之一。一个孩子正对出租自行车狂奔。

 

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나는 여기에 백조를 위해 새 사료를 먹입니다. 정확히 5 분 후에 서독 비밀 서비스의 스파이가 다시 와서 항상 스마트 폰으로 나를 촬영하기 시작합니다. 내 얼굴에 여자는 약 45 세의 멍청한 얼굴, 파란 눈, 얇고 어두운 금발 머리를 가지고 있습니다. mulled 와인으로 자신을 마신다.

장식용 새 음식은 백조를 위해 만들어졌지만 포장에 백조가 없지만 여기에 살지 않는 홍학이 있습니다. 기선 사회가 너무 게으르고 설레는 띠가 있기 때문에 검은 머리 갈매기는 더 이상 기선 부두에 앉을 수 없습니다. 그러나 그들은 주 부모들의 폭동에 대해 아무것도하지 않습니다.

검은 머리 갈매기, 청둥 오리, 비둘기, greylag 거위 및 백조가 이곳에서 먹습니다. 그러나 백조는 또한 스파이와 스파이로 여기에없는 다른 일반 시민들에게 먹이를주고 있습니다. 백조는 오늘 먹이를 먹지만 피더가 더 적을 것이라는 것을 알고 있기 때문에 스스로 먹어야합니다.

아름다운 여인이 도착하고 미소를지었습니다. 그녀는 금발이며 안경이 있습니다.

버스와 시가 전차는 가득 차 있고, 많은 사람들은 고요함없이 방을 만들기 때문에 바보입니다. 나와 함께 갈 수 없는데 왜 가입 카드가 있습니까?

그렇지 않으면 사람들은 사회적으로 매력적이지 않고 지루합니다. 그들은 mulled 와인으로 사물과 자동차를 보여주는 데에만 관심이 있습니다. 그들은 당신이 그들 중 하나가 아닌 것처럼 당신을 봅니다. 어린이가 자전거 대여에 반대하고 있습니다.

 

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I am here and feed the bird feed for the swans. Exactly after 5 minutes a spy from the West German secret service comes again and (as always) starts filming me with my smartphone. Right in my face. It works every day. The woman has a stupid face, about 45 years old, blue eyes, thin, dark blonde hair. Drinks himself with mulled wine.

The decorative bird food is made for swans, but has no swans on the packaging, but flamingos that do not live here. The black-headed gulls can no longer sit on the steamer quay because the steamer society is too lazy and has flutter bands hung there. But they don't do anything against rioters of state parents.

Black-headed gulls, mallards, pigeons, greylag geese and swans eat their fill here. But the swans are also feeding other ordinary citizens who are not here as spies and spy on people. The swans are fed up today, but have to stuff themselves because they know that there will be fewer feeders again.

A beautiful woman arrives and smiles at me, which I think is great. She is blonde and has glasses.

The buses and trams are full and many of them are stupid because they make room without decency. Why do I have a subscription card when I can't go with me?

Otherwise people are very socially unattractive and boring. They are only interested in showing things and cars with mulled wine. They look at you as if you weren't one of them. A child is rampaging against a rental bike.

 

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私はここにいて、白鳥のために鳥の餌を食べます。ちょうど5分後、西ドイツのシークレットサービスからのスパイが再び来て、（いつものように）スマートフォンで私を撮影し始めます。私の顔に。女性は、約45歳、青い目、細い、暗いブロンドの髪の愚かな顔をしています。グリューワインを飲みます。

装飾的な鳥の餌は白鳥用に作られていますが、包装には白鳥はありませんが、ここには生息しないフラミンゴがいます。汽船社会はあまりにも怠zyであり、そこにフラッターバンドがぶら下がっているので、黒頭カモメはもはや汽船岸壁に座ることができません。しかし、彼らは州の両親の暴徒に対して何もしません。

黒頭のカモメ、マガモ、ハト、ハイイロガン、白鳥がここで食べます。しかし、白鳥はまた、ここにいない他の普通の市民にスパイや人をスパイしている。白鳥は今日うんざりしているが、彼らは再びより少ないフィーダーがあることを知っているので、自分で詰めなければならない。

美しい女性が到着し、私に微笑みます。それは素晴らしいと思います。彼女は金髪で、眼鏡をかけています。

バスと路面電車は満員であり、それらの多くは愚かさのない部屋を作るので愚かです。一緒に行けないのに、なぜサブスクリプションカードを持っているのですか？

そうでなければ、人々は非常に社会的に魅力的で退屈です。彼らは、グリューワインのあるものや車を見せることにのみ興味を持っています。彼らはあなたを彼らの一人ではないかのように見ます。子供がレンタル自転車に暴れ回っている。

President Obama has spent many days now consulting with Congress and talking with leaders around the world about the situation in Syria. And last night, the President asked all of us on his national security team to consult with the leaders of Congress as well, including the leadership of the Congressional national security committees. And he asked us to consult about what we know regarding the horrific chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs last week. I will tell you that as someone who has spent nearly three decades in the United States Congress, I know that that consultation is the right way for a president to approach a decision of when and how and if to use military force. And it’s important to ask the tough questions and get the tough answers before taking action, not just afterwards.

   

And I believe, as President Obama does, that it is also important to discuss this directly with the American people. That’s our responsibility, to talk with the citizens who have entrusted all of us in the Administration and the Congress with the responsibility for their security. That’s why this morning’s release of our government’s unclassified estimate of what took place in Syria is so important. Its findings are as clear as they are compelling. I’m not asking you to take my word for it. Read for yourself, everyone, those listening. All of you, read for yourselves the evidence from thousands of sources, evidence that is already publicly available, and read for yourselves the verdict reached by our intelligence community about the chemical weapons attack the Assad regime inflicted on the opposition and on opposition-controlled or contested neighborhoods in the Damascus suburbs on the early morning of August 21st.

   

Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed information regarding this attack, and I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment. Accordingly, we have taken unprecedented steps to declassify and make facts available to people who can judge for themselves. But still, in order to protect sources and methods, some of what we know will only be released to members of Congress, the representatives of the American people. That means that some things we do know we can’t talk about publicly.

   

So what do we really know that we can talk about? Well, we know that the Assad regime has the largest chemical weapons program in the entire Middle East. We know that the regime has used those weapons multiple times this year and has used them on a smaller scale, but still it has used them against its own people, including not very far from where last Wednesday’s attack happened. We know that the regime was specifically determined to rid the Damascus suburbs of the opposition, and it was frustrated that it hadn’t succeeded in doing so.

   

We know that for three days before the attack the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons personnel were on the ground in the area making preparations. And we know that the Syrian regime elements were told to prepare for the attack by putting on gas masks and taking precautions associated with chemical weapons. We know that these were specific instructions. We know where the rockets were launched from and at what time. We know where they landed and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and went only to opposition-controlled or contested neighborhoods.

   

And we know, as does the world, that just 90 minutes later all hell broke loose in the social media. With our own eyes we have seen the thousands of reports from 11 separate sites in the Damascus suburbs. All of them show and report victims with breathing difficulties, people twitching with spasms, coughing, rapid heartbeats, foaming at the mouth, unconsciousness and death.

   

And we know it was ordinary Syrian citizens who reported all of these horrors. And just as important, we know what the doctors and the nurses who treated them didn’t report – not a scratch, not a shrapnel wound, not a cut, not a gunshot wound. We saw rows of dead lined up in burial shrouds, the white linen unstained by a single drop of blood. Instead of being tucked safely in their beds at home, we saw rows of children lying side by side sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad’s gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate.

   

The United States Government now knows that at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in this attack, including at least 426 children. Even the first responders, the doctors, nurses, and medics who tried to save them, they became victims themselves. We saw them gasping for air, terrified that their own lives were in danger.

   

This is the indiscriminate, inconceivable horror of chemical weapons. This is what Assad did to his own people.

   

We also know many disturbing details about the aftermath. We know that a senior regime official who knew about the attack confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime, reviewed the impact, and actually was afraid that they would be discovered. We know this.

   

And we know what they did next. I personally called the Foreign Minister of Syria and I said to him, “If, as you say, your nation has nothing to hide, then let the United Nations in immediately and give the inspectors the unfettered access so they have the opportunity to tell your story.” Instead, for four days they shelled the neighborhood in order to destroy evidence, bombarding block after block at a rate four times higher than they had over the previous 10 days. And when the UN inspectors finally gained access, that access, as we now know, was restricted and controlled.

   

In all of these things that I have listed, in all of these things that we know, all of them, the American intelligence community has high confidence, high confidence. This is common sense. This is evidence. These are facts.

   

So the primary question is really no longer: What do we know? The question is: What are we – we collectively – what are we in the world going to do about it?

   

As previous storms in history have gathered, when unspeakable crimes were within our power to stop them, we have been warned against the temptations of looking the other way. History is full of leaders who have warned against inaction, indifference, and especially against silence when it mattered most. Our choices then in history had great consequences and our choice today has great consequences. It matters that nearly a hundred years ago, in direct response to the utter horror and inhumanity of World War I, that the civilized world agreed that chemical weapons should never be used again.

   

That was the world’s resolve then, and that began nearly a century of effort to create a clear redline for the international community. It matters today that we are working as an international community to rid the world of the worst weapons. That’s why we signed agreements like the START Treaty, the New START Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which more than 180 countries, including Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, have signed on to.

   

It matters to our security and the security of our allies. It matters to Israel. It matters to our close friends Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon – all of whom live just a stiff breeze away from Damascus. It matters to all of them where the Syrian chemical weapons are. And if unchecked, they can cause even greater death and destruction to those friends. And it matters deeply to the credibility and the future interests of the United States of America and our allies.

   

It matters because a lot of other countries, whose polices challenges these international norms, are watching. They are watching. They want to see whether the United States and our friends mean what we say. It is directly related to our credibility and whether countries still believe the United States when it says something. They are watching to see if Syria can get away with it, because then maybe they too can put the world at greater risk.

   

And make no mistake, in an increasingly complicated world of sectarian and religious extremist violence, what we choose to do or not do matters in real ways to our own security. Some cite the risk of doing things, but we need to ask, what is the risk of doing nothing?

   

It matters because if we choose to live in a world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity, even after the United States and our allies said no, and then the world does nothing about it, there will be no end to the test of our resolve and the dangers that will flow from those others who believe that they can do as they will.

   

This matters also beyond the limits of Syria’s borders. It is about whether Iran, which itself has been a victim of chemical weapons attacks, will now feel emboldened, in the absence of action, to obtain nuclear weapons. It is about Hezbollah, and North Korea, and every other terrorist group or dictator that might ever again contemplate the use of weapons of mass destruction. Will they remember that the Assad regime was stopped from those weapons’ current or future use, or will they remember that the world stood aside and created impunity?

   

So our concern is not just about some far off land oceans away. That’s not what this is about. Our concern with the cause of the defenseless people of Syria is about choices that will directly affect our role in the world and our interests in the world. It is also profoundly about who we are. We are the United States of America. We are the country that has tried, not always successfully, but always tried to honor a set of universal values around which we have organized our lives and our aspirations. This crime against conscience, this crime against humanity, this crime against the most fundamental principles of international community, against the norm of the international community, this matters to us. And it matters to who we are. And it matters to leadership and to our credibility in the world. My friends, it matters here if nothing is done. It matters if the world speaks out in condemnation and then nothing happens.

   

America should feel confident and gratified that we are not alone in our condemnation, and we are not alone in our will to do something about it and to act. The world is speaking out, and many friends stand ready to respond. The Arab League pledged, quote, “to hold the Syrian regime fully responsible for this crime.” The Organization for Islamic Cooperation condemned the regime and said we needed, quote, “to hold the Syrian Government legally and morally accountable for this heinous crime.” Turkey said there is no doubt that the regime is responsible. Our oldest ally, the French, said the regime, quote, “committed this vile action, and it is an outrage to use weapons that the community has banned for the last 90 years in all international conventions.” The Australian Prime Minister said he didn’t want history to record that we were, quote, “a party to turning such a blind eye.”

   

So now that we know what we know, the question we must all be asking is: What will we do? Let me emphasize – President Obama, we in the United States, we believe in the United Nations. And we have great respect for the brave inspectors who endured regime gunfire and obstructions to their investigation. But as Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General, has said again and again, the UN investigation will not affirm who used these chemical weapons. That is not the mandate of the UN investigation. They will only affirm whether such weapons were used. By the definition of their own mandate, the UN can’t tell us anything that we haven’t shared with you this afternoon or that we don’t already know. And because of the guaranteed Russian obstructionism of any action through the UN Security Council, the UN cannot galvanize the world to act as it should.

   

So let me be clear. We will continue talking to the Congress, talking to our allies, and most importantly, talking to the American people. President Obama will ensure that the United States of America makes our own decisions on our own timelines based on our values and our interests.

 

Now, we know that after a decade of conflict, the American people are tired of war. Believe me, I am, too. But fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility. Just longing for peace does not necessarily bring it about. And history would judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turned a blind eye to a dictator’s wanton use of weapons of mass destruction against all warnings, against all common understanding of decency. These things we do know.

   

We also know that we have a President who does what he says that he will do. And he has said very clearly that whatever decision he makes in Syria, it will bear no resemblance to Afghanistan, Iraq, or even Libya. It will not involve any boots on the ground. It will not be open-ended. And it will not assume responsibility for a civil war that is already well underway. The President has been clear: Any action that he might decide to take will be a limited and tailored response to ensure that a despot’s brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons is held accountable. And ultimately, ultimately, we are committed – we remain committed, we believe it’s the primary objective – is to have a diplomatic process that can resolve this through negotiation, because we know there is no ultimate military solution. It has to be political. It has to happen at the negotiating table, and we are deeply committed to getting there.

   

So that is what we know. That’s what the leaders of Congress now know. And that’s what the American people need to know. And that is at the core of the decisions that must now be made for the security of our country and for the promise of a planet where the world’s most heinous weapons must never again be used against the world’s most vulnerable people.

   

Thank you very much.

   

# # #

August 30, 2013

 

Treaty Room

 

Washington, D.C.

  

East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was constructed in 1891-2 as a refuge for homeless girls by the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). Designed by renowned architect Calvert Vaux in a picturesque, High Victorian Gothic style in brick and sandstone with a Dutch-influenced stepped gable, this building was one of approximately twelve that the architect created for this organization in the 1880s and 90s. It was the only lodging house designed for girls and one of only a few surviving CAS buildings. The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 to help New York’s poorest children improve their lives through education and the advantages of “home-like” living quarters. Brace believed that it was necessary to remove poor children from the bad influences of their environment, where they often had no one to care for them and no opportunities for education, in order to improve their lives and alleviate the crushing poverty of the city.

 

He was able to enlist many wealthy supporters and established a strong organization that continues to exist for the benefit of children and their families today. The Children’s Aid Society employed several approaches to achieve its goals, including sending orphan children to homes in the Midwest where they could enjoy the “benefits” of a home in a more rural setting, lodging houses for homeless children and industrial schools where they were trained for trades and employment. The Children’s Aid Society ran the Elizabeth Home in this building until 1930 when it was sold to Benjamin Lust, a practitioner of a natural “water cure” for illnesses, who coined the term naturopathy. In 1946, the building was purchased by the Florence Crittendon League and used again as a residence for girls without other places to live, called Barrett House. In 1984, the building changed ownership again and was converted to co-op apartments.

 

Its picturesque façade is significant for its architecture and as an evocation of the working class history of the Lower East Side.

 

Development of the East Village Area

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area was populated by bands of Native Americans from the Lenape tribe. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. The main trail ran the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Inwood following the course of Broadway adjacent to present day City Hall Park before veering east toward the area now known as Foley Square. It then ran north with major branches leading to habitations in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side at a place called Rechtauck or Naghtogack in the vicinity of Corlears Hook. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods.2

 

Under the Dutch, most inhabitants of New Amsterdam lived south of Fulton Street, where they could be close to each other for protection and close to the harbor for the essential shipping activities on which the colony depended. North of the settlement, many wealthy families owned large estates, used as farms and plantations and as country retreats, especially for those recurring times when epidemics threatened the crowded population on the island’s tip. The area now known as the Lower East Side and the East Village was divided into a series of large farms, which by the mid-eighteenth century were owned by three families: the Stuyvesants, Rutgers and De Lanceys.

 

The Rutgers property ran from Chatham Square to Montgomery Street between the East River shore and Division Street. The De Lancey holdings consisted of two large parcels (approximately 340 acres) abutting the Rutgers property on the north and east, acquired by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey around 1741. Peter Stuyvesant, who came to the colony in 1647, owned a large working farm he called his Bowerie. It lay between present day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth Avenue to the East River.3 He owned about 40 slaves, most employed in farm work. This property remained in the ownership of Stuyvesant’s descendents for many years. By the mid-nineteenth century, Peter Stuyvesant’s grandson Gerardus still lived in the original family house. Gerardus’ sons, Petrus and Nicholas lived nearby and divided the property between them. Nicholas called his section Bowery while his brother’s was called Petersfield, and this area included the property on which the Elizabeth Home was constructed.

 

After slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827, many former slaves settled in several black enclaves, including that near the Bowery, another in Greenwich Village, and still another in the growing slum area that came to be known as Five Points. During the eighteenth century Greenwich Village had been a small rural hamlet, but also was the site of a number of summer estates for wealthy families from downtown Manhattan. Its population swelled during the large cholera and yellow fever epidemics that struck in the early nineteenth century. The 1830s brought a huge economic boom to New York, attracting many more people and a great need for more commercial space as well as housing. African-Americans and other poor people were forced northward as more land was opened to development for the upper classes.

 

The areas around Great Jones, Bleecker and Bond Streets were all being paved and built up with “genteel residences”4 while Lafayette Place and St. Mark’s Place developed into some of the city’s most fashionable addresses. Seeking to take advantage of this boom, Petrus Stuyvesant began to subdivide his property in the 1830s and sell lots for development in the 1840s. Many of the buyers of these lots were large landholders who purchased extensive property and built speculative homes here, waiting for the housing need to catch up. These individual houses were first rented, and then sold to middle class families.5 Middle class residents however, did not stay too long in this section.

 

By the 1850s, the population of New York soared, due primarily to an influx of European immigrants as well as newly-freed African-Americans who were drawn to Manhattan because of the availability of jobs.6 Immigrants had been arriving in New York continuously and already by 1825, over one fifth of the population of New York was foreign born. In the 1840s, many of these immigrants were Irish who started coming in large numbers looking for work after the collapse of Irish agriculture and the rapid industrialization that displaced many workers.

 

Germans had always had a strong presence in New York, but after the failed revolutions of 1848, 70,000 more arrived in New York, fleeing “land shortages, unemployment, famine and political and religious oppression.”7 Many were poor and unskilled and tried to find housing in Manhattan’s notorious slum known as Five Points but the Irish and free Blacks who were already there did not welcome them. Although they were all classified as German, this name covered a multitude of ethnicities, and people tended to subdivide themselves, preferring to live among others who came from the same native communities and regions. The German immigrants first congregated in the five-block span between Canal and Rivington Streets, but the newcomers were forced to look elsewhere as landlords continued to crowd more and more people into inhuman living conditions.

 

They moved northward, up the eastern side of Manhattan island, pushing out existing residents of this area, including the African-Americans who had been there.8 Some of the existing homes in what is now the East Village9 were subdivided or changed into boardinghouses, while others were torn down to make way for tenement buildings, constructed to fit more people into the same space. Eventually the area north of Division Street up to 18th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River filled with German immigrants until it became the third largest concentration of German speakers in the world.10 This section came to be known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, Dutchtown, or Deutschlandle and was “the first large immigrant neighborhood in American history that spoke a foreign language” and remained the major German-American center in the United States for the rest of the century.11

 

German businesses congregated near Broadway creating a lively commercial strip, while various German groups created institutions to remind them of home and to help ease their way in their new lives. The Staats-Zeitung was the most popular of many German language newspapers. The German Dispensary (a designated New York City Landmark) helped with the health needs of the community, while the Ottendorfer Branch of the Free Circulating Library (a designated New York City Landmark) provided books in their native tongue. Social and other support organizations (vereins) organized around a place of origin or a particular outlook or activity. German shooting clubs became popular12 as did clubs for music, such as the Aschenbroechel Verein. Beer gardens and dance halls such as Scheffel Hall (a designated New York City Landmark) provided places for lively entertainment.13

 

The City’s Poor

 

The poor German immigrants who lived in Kleindeutschland did not have the wherewithal to take advantage of these institutions. They could barely find a place to sleep and a way to feed their families.

 

Since its earliest years, New York has dealt with the poor and helpless among its population with a combination of benevolence and disdain. When the Dutch West India Company sent a group of Dutch orphans to the colony “to be bound out as apprentices and servants” in 1656, Peter Stuyvesant established the first public home for orphans and an “Orphan Masters’ Court.”14 Generally however, under the Dutch, religious organizations were expected to care for the city’s poor. Under the English, in 1693, the Common Council passed its first “poor rate” tax to enable them to distribute fuel, clothes, food and cash to the “deserving” poor and established an almshouse on Broad Street for those who were unable to care for themselves.15 A two-story brick building was constructed on the Common in 1736, housing a mix of the city’s poor along with the unruly as well as convicted criminals, all of whom were required to attend prayer services and work if they were physically able, so they would not be a “Burthen to the Publick.”

 

With time, the gap between the rich and poor grew, and increasing numbers of people needed financial help to overcome problems that were sometimes created by illness or the death of a spouse. The city provided more and more “outdoor relief” and also had to build more almshouses to accommodate the growing need. Religious and philanthropic organizations also helped, their efforts usually involving “education in the habits of self-discipline and the self-reliance necessary to survive in a wage-based economy… to instill prudence, decency, sobriety, thrift, punctuality” since poverty was usually seen as “moral turpitude, not misfortune.”17 In 1806, the Isabella Graham Society for the Relief of Poor Widows opened an orphanage where poor children “could be brought up to lead productive lives,” that eventually led to the formation of the Orphan Asylum Society.18

 

By the early nineteenth century, only half of all children in New York attended school even though the traditional apprenticeship system for learning trades and behavior no longer existed. Many children were caught stealing or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior and the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents began in 1823 to try to deal with these problems. The first New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 to house children under sixteen years old, and the authorities used religion and education to try to redeem the children brought there.19

 

By the 1850s, conditions for the poor were only getting worse. The huge numbers of immigrants coming into New York increased the competition for jobs and housing, and crowded conditions led to higher rates of illness and crime. Efforts of groups such as the American Tract Society were comprised of preaching and giving away bibles, while the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was able to attract the interest and donations of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens. They managed to get more needy people into almshouses on Blackwell’s Island, build a new one for the able-bodied poor, and get a new truancy law passed that enabled the police to round up delinquent children to get them off the streets.20

 

Children’s Aid Society

 

The Children’s Aid Society, another in a wide variety of efforts to deal with the problem of poor and uneducated children, was started by Charles Loring Brace (1826­1890) in 1853 and continued under his leadership for the next 37 years. Brace graduated from Yale University and studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary. After a trip to Europe, during which he traveled in England with Frederick Law Olmsted,21 Brace began serving with Rev. Pease at the Five Points Mission in 1852. He was discouraged that the traditional methods of outreach were not helping change the lives of the people he saw. He also was struck by the large numbers of boys and girls who apparently had nothing useful to do and no one to look after them, and who seemed to be headed only for lives of crime. He decided that the most effective way to change conditions for the poor was to reach these children and try to change their circumstances

 

He wanted to “help the helpless, neglected children of the city to help themselves to become good and useful citizens.”23 Typically, their families could not care for them and they were sent out on the streets to fend for themselves, or to find some way to bring money or food back home.24 Because they were small, they were often preyed on by unsavory types who sent them out to steal, or they sold things on the streets or helped organ grinders in their trade. Boys would steal, sell newspapers or hawk matches, while many girls were forced into prostitution. 25 Street gangs developed to offer some protection for these wretched children who often slept on steam grates or in the remains of burned out buildings.

 

Brace believed that if he could show these children that someone cared about them, educate them to have good habits such as industry and self-control, and help them achieve some basic skills, they could get jobs and improve their lives. He felt that “home life was better than institutions and that self-help was better than alms.”26

 

From its beginning, the work of the Children’s Aid Society involved several separate efforts. The most radical and well-known was “placing out.” Over the course of the first forty years, the organization took 97,738 children from New York, (some orphans, others from difficult home situations) and sent them by train (“the Orphan Trains”) to situations away from New York City, usually with “Christian families” in the Midwest where they were supposed to enjoy the benefits of a good home life in a rural setting. While some did in fact become essentially members of these families and benefitted from the experience, others were put to work in stores and on farms, in conditions close to indentured servitude. Brace felt that this effort was very positive because he believed that it was important to completely change the circumstances of these children’s lives in order to have a positive impact.

 

“The effort to place the children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see.”27

 

Since Brace could not remove every poor child from the bad influences of the city, he also made local efforts. These included the development of a series of lodging houses and industrial schools located around the city. The lodging houses were places a homeless child could come so he or she did not have to sleep on the street, with separate facilities for boys and girls. A young person could stay for a night or two if his difficulty was temporary, or he could stay for extended periods, and be assured of receiving food and a bath, as well as shelter. If they could pay, the children were asked for a small amount so that they felt they were paying their own way, rather than accepting charity, or they were asked to help with certain chores. These lodging houses eventually offered evening or morning classes to help the children with reading and writing, and specific skills that could help them gain employment.

 

The Newsboys’ Lodging House was opened in a building at Fulton and Nassau streets in 1854. The liveliness and ingenuity of the newsboys had a special resonance with Brace, who admired these qualities but felt they needed to be channeled into some productive enterprise. By 1928, the Children’s Aid Society ran seven lodging houses, located throughout the city.28

 

Brace saw that many poor children did not attend public school, either because they could not afford proper clothes, or because they had to work to help their families, so Brace established the Industrial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society to educate these children.29 The Industrial Schools taught reading and writing and character building, as well as skills such as carpentry for boys and cooking and laundering for girls. They also trained children to work on machines that might help them gain employment, such as sewing machines and typewriters, filling a gap left by the public schools. They provided clothes if needed, as well as a hot meal, and were non-sectarian. The Children’s Aid Society found that different groups had different needs, so they organized specific schools for Italian, German and “Colored” children, and later started medical and dental clinics for these children as well.

 

They became active in legislative efforts to promote their cause, such as working for the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of 1874. They started mothers’ groups to train them for this most important task, and day care centers for those who had to work. They eventually opened homes for sick and convalescing children, a school for crippled children, kindergartens, summer camps and playgrounds. While the Children’s Aid Society no longer runs lodging houses and schools, it continues to exist today, providing a variety of social services to New York children and their families.

 

Elizabeth Wheeler Home for Girls

 

The first lodging house for girls, called “The Girls’ Temporary Home,” was opened at 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1863 and during its first nine months, this building served 597 girls. The intention of this facility was to be “a resting place, a temporary home for any girl without friend or family in the city . . . to gain time to seek reputable employment” as well as a place where they could get help and advice.30 The Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society of 1889 called this girls’ home “one of the most successful and economical of all the branches of the Society,” but noted that there was a great need for an additional building for this facility.31 In the Annual Report of the following year (1890) the writer was even more adamant. “. . . we feel deeply the lack of accommodations, and look forward earnestly to the time when, with increased facilities, much more can be accomplished.”32

 

They reported that during the previous year, there had been 15,533 lodgings in the house, 49,324 meals served, 45 girls trained on typewriters and 72 girls trained on sewing machines, with 178 girls sent to situations and employment.33

 

In July 1891, the property at 307 East 12th Street was purchased by Emily Wheeler and conveyed by her to the Children’s Aid Society.34 The home was given by Mary B. Wheeler, Mary B. Ceccarini and Emily B. Wheeler in memory of Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler.35 The Elizabeth Home was designed by the preeminent architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.36 The home opened with a festive dedication in 1892, and included dormitories as well as single bedrooms for girls, sitting rooms, a reading room, office, dining rooms and kitchen, and rooms fitted with sewing machines and typewriters.

 

Calvert Vaux

 

Calvert Vaux (1824-1895)37 was one of the most prolific and influential architects working in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. His picturesque buildings and romantic landscape designs were constructed in numerous cities and towns and his books had a wide-ranging audience, contributing to the vogue during this period for interesting and picturesquely styled buildings. Vaux, trained in architecture, landscape design and planning, came from England to the United States in 1850 to work with A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York as a partner in his Bureau of Architecture. They specialized in the creation of picturesque English country houses and also began the planning of the grounds around many government buildings in Washington, D.C. After Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux began a partnership with Frank Clarke Withers, with whom he designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse (1874-77, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

Vaux’s book of house designs, Villas and Cottages (published originally 1857) was modeled on Downing’s highly popular Cottage Residences and became a standard for the genre.

 

Vaux relocated to New York City where, in 1858, he and Frederick Law Olmsted entered the competition for Central Park with their plan for a “Greensward,” the first public park in the country (a designated New York City Scenic Landmark). Their design, based on the tradition of English landscape gardening, became a major influence in the development of public parks throughout the country. Vaux was responsible for the design of many of the architectural features of the park, including the bridges, and the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain. He went on to design numerous projects with Olmsted under the auspices of the landscape firm, Olmsted, Vaux and Company (1865-72). These included Prospect Park in Brooklyn (1865, a designated New York City Scenic Landmark), Riverside, Illinois (1868-70), Morningside Park (1887-94, from earlier plans), and Riverside Park (1873-88).

 

Vaux designed many public buildings, institutions and grounds in various cities. These included the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut (1865, with Olmsted), Hudson River State Hospital and Grounds (1867-72), the Grounds for Gallaudet College in Washington (1866), the grounds of Parliament buildings in Ottawa (1873-79), and the park system for Buffalo, NY. With Jacob Wrey Mould, who had come earlier from England and contributed many designs for Central Park, Vaux developed a Master Plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1874-80) and the American Museum of Natural History (1874-77, both designated New York City Landmarks).

 

Around 1873, Vaux began a partnership with George Kent Radford (dates undetermined), a civil engineer, that was to last for eighteen years. This partnership was formalized as the architectural division of Vaux & Co., Landscape Architects in 1876. In addition to numerous designs for the Children’s Aid Society during the last part of his career, Vaux designed a High Victorian Gothic townhouse for Samuel J. Tilden in New York (1881-4) and the grounds for Tilden’s country estate, Greystone, in Yonkers, New York (1879-80). Vaux had a long and varied career, from private homes for the wealthy to model tenements for the poor, from the landscape of individual estates, to the layout for entire cities. His designs helped establish the standard aesthetic of the late nineteenth century, both in building and landscaping and he is known as one of the founders of the field of landscape architecture.

 

Calvert Vaux and the Children’s Aid Society

 

Vaux became increasingly interested in the way architecture could be used to better the lives of unfortunate members of society and devoted much of the last part of his career to this cause. He was a careful observer of the first model tenement competition in 1879, sponsored by the journal, Plumber & Sanitary Engineer. In 1880, he designed a block of model tenements on First Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets for the Improved Dwellings Association. These apartments had windows in each room, central courtyards for improved air circulation and roof-top gardens for the residents.38

 

Calvert Vaux was a friend of Charles Loring Brace who lived in a house Vaux designed in Hastings, New York. By the late 1870s, Brace’s organization was successful and well-funded enough to want to construct its own lodging houses, in order to create the exact type of structure they needed. In 1879, Vaux designed their first purpose-built building, the East Side Boys’ Lodging House and Industrial School on East Broadway and Gouveneur Street (demolished). The picturesquely designed, 3 ½ story, brick and brownstone building had steeply pitched roofs and held dormitories, classrooms, and a well-furnished reading room as well as a dispensary and sick room. The free-standing building was a far cry from the dingy tenements of the area and was hailed in the press as “Christianity solidified in brick and mortar.”39

 

Vaux went on to design more than a dozen buildings for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, a very important part of his work. These included four lodging houses, among them the West Side Lodging House at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street (1883, demolished) and the Tompkins Square Lodging House and Industrial School at 8th Street and Avenue B (1885, a designated New York City Landmark), and five industrial schools that had similar facilities without the beds. This latter type included the Mott Street Industrial School at 256-258 Mott Street (1888, a designated New York City Landmark), and the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School (1888-89, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

The 44th Street Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School (1888-9, demolished) was the first to display a large, front-facing, stepped gable. According to the Society’s 46th Annual Report of 1888, this element came from “an old Nuremburg house called the ‘Petersen’ building, [which] is one of the most picturesque in the city.”40 This lodging house was marked by steep gables, dormer windows and oriole towers, in keeping with Vaux’s intentions to create a home-like and visually interesting composition, but also was “appropriately reminiscent of the city’s Dutch heritage.”41 Most of Vaux’s buildings that were built in the following years employed this design element.

 

The Children’s Aid Society buildings were both domestic and institutional, intended to be an ornament to a part of the city the ugliness of which is particularly in need of some relief. It is a fortunate circumstance that the objects of the Children’s Aid Society require it to undertake its building operations in quarters where, but for its efforts, it is unlikely that there would be any architecture worth looking at or discussing.42

They were usually free-standing structures, with highly varied rooflines that provided visual interest and variety. Vaux believed that,

In any architectural design, the separate groups of forms may be, in themselves, attractive, or the building may be splendid in its general conception of masses, or rich in its varied and charming detail, but it will be defective as an architectural composition if it fails in its sky-line.43

 

Vaux’s rooflines were usually faced with slate or tile, and consisted of mansard roofs with steeply pitched towers, conical roofs or front-facing stepped gables. These buildings were built of brick and sandstone, common and inexpensive materials that were deemed to give a picturesque effect. Vaux tried to site them on corner lots because he felt that two perspectives gave him a chance to create a more interesting design. He used projecting oriels, large windows, dormers and chimneys in an attempt to create a home-like atmosphere for the neglected children who came here. Faithful to his earliest design theories, Vaux worked to evoke the imagery of a snug country inn in the middle of New York City.44 By varying the placement of the entrance as well as the size and placement of the window openings, he created a lively façade, ornamented solely with decorative brickwork such as string courses and recessed panels.

 

Design of the Elizabeth Home for Girls

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, the last of this group designed by Vaux has the picturesque characteristics common to Vaux’s other designs although its 40-foot-wide, mid-block site required a more restrained composition. It has two asymmetrical sections, with the entrance sited off center, in the western side. The eastern section is topped by the typical stepped gable while the western side has a mansard roof with two dormer windows, a reverse arrangement from that of the House of Reception on West 23rd Street (1890, demolished). The windows are placed along continuous sills, providing some unity in a façade of varied window sizes, shapes and groupings. Unlike many of the other CAS buildings, this one has no projecting oriel window, but here the entrance is given special emphasis by its projecting surround topped by a balustraded balcony.

 

While not as elaborate as some of the other CAS buildings, the Elizabeth Home is a distinctive building that would have provided the sense of “hominess” so desired by both the architect and the organization. Located on a block of brick-fronted rowhouses, this building is obviously different, but not enough to be jarring. Rather, it continues to add interest and variety to the streetscape.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1895, the Children’s Aid Society hired architects Clinton & Russell to create a two-story addition on the north of the building to house a laundry.45 Another alteration, in 1915, added bedrooms in three floors above this addition.46 In 1901, the Children’s Aid Society acquired the adjacent property at No. 311 East 12th Street and converted it into an addition to the Elizabeth Home.47

 

In 1930, the Society moved its operations to West 134th Street and sold both of these buildings to Dr. Benedict Lust, a promoter of natural healing.”48 Lust, a German immigrant with degrees in osteopathy and medicine, believed in natural healing, including a “water cure” and organized the Naturopathic Society of America. He established the American School of Naturopathy which offered a post-graduate curriculum in naturopathy, chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.49

 

Upon Lust’s death, the buildings were purchased by the Florence Crittenton League and remodeled and reopened in 1948 as a private shelter for girls aged 16-21, called Barrett House.50 The Crittendon League was started in 1883 by Charles N. Crittenton, a wealthy New York drug supply manufacturer.51 Originally called the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls and Night Mission for Fallen Women (later the National Florence Crittenton Foundation), it was named after his late daughter and was established as a shelter for troubled and runaway young girls, many of whom were orphaned, and as a mission for women of ill repute. In the late 1880s, the group started a shelter and mission on Bleecker Street that gained renown for its midnight gospel readings. By the turn-of-the-century, the Crittenton Foundation operated in many large

 

U.S. cities and was expanding its services in New York. In 1913, the group relocated its headquarters to West 27th Street and in 1946 purchased the former Children’s Aid Society buildings in order to be able to care for more residents and offer expanded services. The home’s residents were generally referred there by courts, clinics and private agencies and given a variety of therapies to help them emotionally, while keeping them out of the House of Detention.

 

In 1982, the building was sold to a developer and in 1984 it was re-opened as co­op apartments.

 

Description

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls is a four story brick-faced building set on a raised basement. Built originally on a street of townhouses (East 12th Street), the forty-foot-wide façade blends in by appearing to be two buildings. The western section is two bays wide and holds the building’s main entrance, in the eastern bay of the first story. The raised basement has a pair of large windows framed by a sandstone lintel and watertable and fronted by an iron grille, while the areaway is marked by a non-historic iron fence. The entrance, reached by a short concrete stairway with non-historic iron railings is emphasized by a projecting brick enframement embellished by small, terra-cotta ornament, string courses and globe lights. It is capped by a projecting hood supported on stone brackets. The entrance consists of a paneled door with a large glass light flanked by paneled side sections.

 

A plain, sandstone lintel separates it from the large, round-headed glass transom that is subdivided into small squares. A pair of plain rectangular windows on a continuous sill is in the western bay of the first story. The second story has a single window in the western bay and, in the eastern bay, is a double multi-light, non-historic door that leads to a small, balustraded balcony formed by the projecting hood over the entranceway. At the third story, two pairs of narrow, rectangular windows share a common sill and a smooth sandstone lintel. A simple, corbelled brick cornice separates the roof from the floor below. This section has a mansard roof pierced by two dormer windows with bell-shaped roofs and flanked on the western side by a stepped parapet wall that projects above the roof.

 

A tall, prominent chimney rises between the two sections. Its plain brick facing is marked by several narrow string courses. The section on the east is topped by a stepped, front-facing gable with a decorative sandstone molding that echoes the steps. Each floor contains grouped window openings linked by continuous sills and sometimes lintels. The fourth story has three, round-headed windows capped by a continuous, rounded brick molding. The third story has four evenly-spaced windows under a plain, continuous stone lintel, while the second story has two pairs of windows under stone lintels and a sill that runs across the entire section. There are five windows with transoms and a continuous stone sill and lintel at the first story, and two individual windows fronted by iron grilles at the basement level. A third window (on the eastern bay) has been converted to an entrance, with a non-historic door and light.

 

A broad sandstone lintel and watertable is located at the top of the basement level, creating a strong distinction between it and the rest of the building. A non-historic iron fence shields the areaway.

 

- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was constructed in 1891-2 as a refuge for homeless girls by the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). Designed by renowned architect Calvert Vaux in a picturesque, High Victorian Gothic style in brick and sandstone with a Dutch-influenced stepped gable, this building was one of approximately twelve that the architect created for this organization in the 1880s and 90s. It was the only lodging house designed for girls and one of only a few surviving CAS buildings. The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853 to help New York’s poorest children improve their lives through education and the advantages of “home-like” living quarters. Brace believed that it was necessary to remove poor children from the bad influences of their environment, where they often had no one to care for them and no opportunities for education, in order to improve their lives and alleviate the crushing poverty of the city.

 

He was able to enlist many wealthy supporters and established a strong organization that continues to exist for the benefit of children and their families today. The Children’s Aid Society employed several approaches to achieve its goals, including sending orphan children to homes in the Midwest where they could enjoy the “benefits” of a home in a more rural setting, lodging houses for homeless children and industrial schools where they were trained for trades and employment. The Children’s Aid Society ran the Elizabeth Home in this building until 1930 when it was sold to Benjamin Lust, a practitioner of a natural “water cure” for illnesses, who coined the term naturopathy. In 1946, the building was purchased by the Florence Crittendon League and used again as a residence for girls without other places to live, called Barrett House. In 1984, the building changed ownership again and was converted to co-op apartments.

 

Its picturesque façade is significant for its architecture and as an evocation of the working class history of the Lower East Side.

 

Development of the East Village Area

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area was populated by bands of Native Americans from the Lenape tribe. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. The main trail ran the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Inwood following the course of Broadway adjacent to present day City Hall Park before veering east toward the area now known as Foley Square. It then ran north with major branches leading to habitations in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side at a place called Rechtauck or Naghtogack in the vicinity of Corlears Hook. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods.2

 

Under the Dutch, most inhabitants of New Amsterdam lived south of Fulton Street, where they could be close to each other for protection and close to the harbor for the essential shipping activities on which the colony depended. North of the settlement, many wealthy families owned large estates, used as farms and plantations and as country retreats, especially for those recurring times when epidemics threatened the crowded population on the island’s tip. The area now known as the Lower East Side and the East Village was divided into a series of large farms, which by the mid-eighteenth century were owned by three families: the Stuyvesants, Rutgers and De Lanceys.

 

The Rutgers property ran from Chatham Square to Montgomery Street between the East River shore and Division Street. The De Lancey holdings consisted of two large parcels (approximately 340 acres) abutting the Rutgers property on the north and east, acquired by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey around 1741. Peter Stuyvesant, who came to the colony in 1647, owned a large working farm he called his Bowerie. It lay between present day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth Avenue to the East River.3 He owned about 40 slaves, most employed in farm work. This property remained in the ownership of Stuyvesant’s descendents for many years. By the mid-nineteenth century, Peter Stuyvesant’s grandson Gerardus still lived in the original family house. Gerardus’ sons, Petrus and Nicholas lived nearby and divided the property between them. Nicholas called his section Bowery while his brother’s was called Petersfield, and this area included the property on which the Elizabeth Home was constructed.

 

After slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827, many former slaves settled in several black enclaves, including that near the Bowery, another in Greenwich Village, and still another in the growing slum area that came to be known as Five Points. During the eighteenth century Greenwich Village had been a small rural hamlet, but also was the site of a number of summer estates for wealthy families from downtown Manhattan. Its population swelled during the large cholera and yellow fever epidemics that struck in the early nineteenth century. The 1830s brought a huge economic boom to New York, attracting many more people and a great need for more commercial space as well as housing. African-Americans and other poor people were forced northward as more land was opened to development for the upper classes.

 

The areas around Great Jones, Bleecker and Bond Streets were all being paved and built up with “genteel residences”4 while Lafayette Place and St. Mark’s Place developed into some of the city’s most fashionable addresses. Seeking to take advantage of this boom, Petrus Stuyvesant began to subdivide his property in the 1830s and sell lots for development in the 1840s. Many of the buyers of these lots were large landholders who purchased extensive property and built speculative homes here, waiting for the housing need to catch up. These individual houses were first rented, and then sold to middle class families.5 Middle class residents however, did not stay too long in this section.

 

By the 1850s, the population of New York soared, due primarily to an influx of European immigrants as well as newly-freed African-Americans who were drawn to Manhattan because of the availability of jobs.6 Immigrants had been arriving in New York continuously and already by 1825, over one fifth of the population of New York was foreign born. In the 1840s, many of these immigrants were Irish who started coming in large numbers looking for work after the collapse of Irish agriculture and the rapid industrialization that displaced many workers.

 

Germans had always had a strong presence in New York, but after the failed revolutions of 1848, 70,000 more arrived in New York, fleeing “land shortages, unemployment, famine and political and religious oppression.”7 Many were poor and unskilled and tried to find housing in Manhattan’s notorious slum known as Five Points but the Irish and free Blacks who were already there did not welcome them. Although they were all classified as German, this name covered a multitude of ethnicities, and people tended to subdivide themselves, preferring to live among others who came from the same native communities and regions. The German immigrants first congregated in the five-block span between Canal and Rivington Streets, but the newcomers were forced to look elsewhere as landlords continued to crowd more and more people into inhuman living conditions.

 

They moved northward, up the eastern side of Manhattan island, pushing out existing residents of this area, including the African-Americans who had been there.8 Some of the existing homes in what is now the East Village9 were subdivided or changed into boardinghouses, while others were torn down to make way for tenement buildings, constructed to fit more people into the same space. Eventually the area north of Division Street up to 18th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River filled with German immigrants until it became the third largest concentration of German speakers in the world.10 This section came to be known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, Dutchtown, or Deutschlandle and was “the first large immigrant neighborhood in American history that spoke a foreign language” and remained the major German-American center in the United States for the rest of the century.11

 

German businesses congregated near Broadway creating a lively commercial strip, while various German groups created institutions to remind them of home and to help ease their way in their new lives. The Staats-Zeitung was the most popular of many German language newspapers. The German Dispensary (a designated New York City Landmark) helped with the health needs of the community, while the Ottendorfer Branch of the Free Circulating Library (a designated New York City Landmark) provided books in their native tongue. Social and other support organizations (vereins) organized around a place of origin or a particular outlook or activity. German shooting clubs became popular12 as did clubs for music, such as the Aschenbroechel Verein. Beer gardens and dance halls such as Scheffel Hall (a designated New York City Landmark) provided places for lively entertainment.13

 

The City’s Poor

 

The poor German immigrants who lived in Kleindeutschland did not have the wherewithal to take advantage of these institutions. They could barely find a place to sleep and a way to feed their families.

 

Since its earliest years, New York has dealt with the poor and helpless among its population with a combination of benevolence and disdain. When the Dutch West India Company sent a group of Dutch orphans to the colony “to be bound out as apprentices and servants” in 1656, Peter Stuyvesant established the first public home for orphans and an “Orphan Masters’ Court.”14 Generally however, under the Dutch, religious organizations were expected to care for the city’s poor. Under the English, in 1693, the Common Council passed its first “poor rate” tax to enable them to distribute fuel, clothes, food and cash to the “deserving” poor and established an almshouse on Broad Street for those who were unable to care for themselves.15 A two-story brick building was constructed on the Common in 1736, housing a mix of the city’s poor along with the unruly as well as convicted criminals, all of whom were required to attend prayer services and work if they were physically able, so they would not be a “Burthen to the Publick.”

 

With time, the gap between the rich and poor grew, and increasing numbers of people needed financial help to overcome problems that were sometimes created by illness or the death of a spouse. The city provided more and more “outdoor relief” and also had to build more almshouses to accommodate the growing need. Religious and philanthropic organizations also helped, their efforts usually involving “education in the habits of self-discipline and the self-reliance necessary to survive in a wage-based economy… to instill prudence, decency, sobriety, thrift, punctuality” since poverty was usually seen as “moral turpitude, not misfortune.”17 In 1806, the Isabella Graham Society for the Relief of Poor Widows opened an orphanage where poor children “could be brought up to lead productive lives,” that eventually led to the formation of the Orphan Asylum Society.18

 

By the early nineteenth century, only half of all children in New York attended school even though the traditional apprenticeship system for learning trades and behavior no longer existed. Many children were caught stealing or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior and the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents began in 1823 to try to deal with these problems. The first New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 to house children under sixteen years old, and the authorities used religion and education to try to redeem the children brought there.19

 

By the 1850s, conditions for the poor were only getting worse. The huge numbers of immigrants coming into New York increased the competition for jobs and housing, and crowded conditions led to higher rates of illness and crime. Efforts of groups such as the American Tract Society were comprised of preaching and giving away bibles, while the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was able to attract the interest and donations of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens. They managed to get more needy people into almshouses on Blackwell’s Island, build a new one for the able-bodied poor, and get a new truancy law passed that enabled the police to round up delinquent children to get them off the streets.20

 

Children’s Aid Society

 

The Children’s Aid Society, another in a wide variety of efforts to deal with the problem of poor and uneducated children, was started by Charles Loring Brace (1826­1890) in 1853 and continued under his leadership for the next 37 years. Brace graduated from Yale University and studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary. After a trip to Europe, during which he traveled in England with Frederick Law Olmsted,21 Brace began serving with Rev. Pease at the Five Points Mission in 1852. He was discouraged that the traditional methods of outreach were not helping change the lives of the people he saw. He also was struck by the large numbers of boys and girls who apparently had nothing useful to do and no one to look after them, and who seemed to be headed only for lives of crime. He decided that the most effective way to change conditions for the poor was to reach these children and try to change their circumstances

 

He wanted to “help the helpless, neglected children of the city to help themselves to become good and useful citizens.”23 Typically, their families could not care for them and they were sent out on the streets to fend for themselves, or to find some way to bring money or food back home.24 Because they were small, they were often preyed on by unsavory types who sent them out to steal, or they sold things on the streets or helped organ grinders in their trade. Boys would steal, sell newspapers or hawk matches, while many girls were forced into prostitution. 25 Street gangs developed to offer some protection for these wretched children who often slept on steam grates or in the remains of burned out buildings.

 

Brace believed that if he could show these children that someone cared about them, educate them to have good habits such as industry and self-control, and help them achieve some basic skills, they could get jobs and improve their lives. He felt that “home life was better than institutions and that self-help was better than alms.”26

 

From its beginning, the work of the Children’s Aid Society involved several separate efforts. The most radical and well-known was “placing out.” Over the course of the first forty years, the organization took 97,738 children from New York, (some orphans, others from difficult home situations) and sent them by train (“the Orphan Trains”) to situations away from New York City, usually with “Christian families” in the Midwest where they were supposed to enjoy the benefits of a good home life in a rural setting. While some did in fact become essentially members of these families and benefitted from the experience, others were put to work in stores and on farms, in conditions close to indentured servitude. Brace felt that this effort was very positive because he believed that it was important to completely change the circumstances of these children’s lives in order to have a positive impact.

 

“The effort to place the children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see.”27

 

Since Brace could not remove every poor child from the bad influences of the city, he also made local efforts. These included the development of a series of lodging houses and industrial schools located around the city. The lodging houses were places a homeless child could come so he or she did not have to sleep on the street, with separate facilities for boys and girls. A young person could stay for a night or two if his difficulty was temporary, or he could stay for extended periods, and be assured of receiving food and a bath, as well as shelter. If they could pay, the children were asked for a small amount so that they felt they were paying their own way, rather than accepting charity, or they were asked to help with certain chores. These lodging houses eventually offered evening or morning classes to help the children with reading and writing, and specific skills that could help them gain employment.

 

The Newsboys’ Lodging House was opened in a building at Fulton and Nassau streets in 1854. The liveliness and ingenuity of the newsboys had a special resonance with Brace, who admired these qualities but felt they needed to be channeled into some productive enterprise. By 1928, the Children’s Aid Society ran seven lodging houses, located throughout the city.28

 

Brace saw that many poor children did not attend public school, either because they could not afford proper clothes, or because they had to work to help their families, so Brace established the Industrial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society to educate these children.29 The Industrial Schools taught reading and writing and character building, as well as skills such as carpentry for boys and cooking and laundering for girls. They also trained children to work on machines that might help them gain employment, such as sewing machines and typewriters, filling a gap left by the public schools. They provided clothes if needed, as well as a hot meal, and were non-sectarian. The Children’s Aid Society found that different groups had different needs, so they organized specific schools for Italian, German and “Colored” children, and later started medical and dental clinics for these children as well.

 

They became active in legislative efforts to promote their cause, such as working for the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of 1874. They started mothers’ groups to train them for this most important task, and day care centers for those who had to work. They eventually opened homes for sick and convalescing children, a school for crippled children, kindergartens, summer camps and playgrounds. While the Children’s Aid Society no longer runs lodging houses and schools, it continues to exist today, providing a variety of social services to New York children and their families.

 

Elizabeth Wheeler Home for Girls

 

The first lodging house for girls, called “The Girls’ Temporary Home,” was opened at 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1863 and during its first nine months, this building served 597 girls. The intention of this facility was to be “a resting place, a temporary home for any girl without friend or family in the city . . . to gain time to seek reputable employment” as well as a place where they could get help and advice.30 The Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society of 1889 called this girls’ home “one of the most successful and economical of all the branches of the Society,” but noted that there was a great need for an additional building for this facility.31 In the Annual Report of the following year (1890) the writer was even more adamant. “. . . we feel deeply the lack of accommodations, and look forward earnestly to the time when, with increased facilities, much more can be accomplished.”32

 

They reported that during the previous year, there had been 15,533 lodgings in the house, 49,324 meals served, 45 girls trained on typewriters and 72 girls trained on sewing machines, with 178 girls sent to situations and employment.33

 

In July 1891, the property at 307 East 12th Street was purchased by Emily Wheeler and conveyed by her to the Children’s Aid Society.34 The home was given by Mary B. Wheeler, Mary B. Ceccarini and Emily B. Wheeler in memory of Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler.35 The Elizabeth Home was designed by the preeminent architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.36 The home opened with a festive dedication in 1892, and included dormitories as well as single bedrooms for girls, sitting rooms, a reading room, office, dining rooms and kitchen, and rooms fitted with sewing machines and typewriters.

 

Calvert Vaux

 

Calvert Vaux (1824-1895)37 was one of the most prolific and influential architects working in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. His picturesque buildings and romantic landscape designs were constructed in numerous cities and towns and his books had a wide-ranging audience, contributing to the vogue during this period for interesting and picturesquely styled buildings. Vaux, trained in architecture, landscape design and planning, came from England to the United States in 1850 to work with A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York as a partner in his Bureau of Architecture. They specialized in the creation of picturesque English country houses and also began the planning of the grounds around many government buildings in Washington, D.C. After Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux began a partnership with Frank Clarke Withers, with whom he designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse (1874-77, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

Vaux’s book of house designs, Villas and Cottages (published originally 1857) was modeled on Downing’s highly popular Cottage Residences and became a standard for the genre.

 

Vaux relocated to New York City where, in 1858, he and Frederick Law Olmsted entered the competition for Central Park with their plan for a “Greensward,” the first public park in the country (a designated New York City Scenic Landmark). Their design, based on the tradition of English landscape gardening, became a major influence in the development of public parks throughout the country. Vaux was responsible for the design of many of the architectural features of the park, including the bridges, and the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain. He went on to design numerous projects with Olmsted under the auspices of the landscape firm, Olmsted, Vaux and Company (1865-72). These included Prospect Park in Brooklyn (1865, a designated New York City Scenic Landmark), Riverside, Illinois (1868-70), Morningside Park (1887-94, from earlier plans), and Riverside Park (1873-88).

 

Vaux designed many public buildings, institutions and grounds in various cities. These included the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut (1865, with Olmsted), Hudson River State Hospital and Grounds (1867-72), the Grounds for Gallaudet College in Washington (1866), the grounds of Parliament buildings in Ottawa (1873-79), and the park system for Buffalo, NY. With Jacob Wrey Mould, who had come earlier from England and contributed many designs for Central Park, Vaux developed a Master Plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1874-80) and the American Museum of Natural History (1874-77, both designated New York City Landmarks).

 

Around 1873, Vaux began a partnership with George Kent Radford (dates undetermined), a civil engineer, that was to last for eighteen years. This partnership was formalized as the architectural division of Vaux & Co., Landscape Architects in 1876. In addition to numerous designs for the Children’s Aid Society during the last part of his career, Vaux designed a High Victorian Gothic townhouse for Samuel J. Tilden in New York (1881-4) and the grounds for Tilden’s country estate, Greystone, in Yonkers, New York (1879-80). Vaux had a long and varied career, from private homes for the wealthy to model tenements for the poor, from the landscape of individual estates, to the layout for entire cities. His designs helped establish the standard aesthetic of the late nineteenth century, both in building and landscaping and he is known as one of the founders of the field of landscape architecture.

 

Calvert Vaux and the Children’s Aid Society

 

Vaux became increasingly interested in the way architecture could be used to better the lives of unfortunate members of society and devoted much of the last part of his career to this cause. He was a careful observer of the first model tenement competition in 1879, sponsored by the journal, Plumber & Sanitary Engineer. In 1880, he designed a block of model tenements on First Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets for the Improved Dwellings Association. These apartments had windows in each room, central courtyards for improved air circulation and roof-top gardens for the residents.38

 

Calvert Vaux was a friend of Charles Loring Brace who lived in a house Vaux designed in Hastings, New York. By the late 1870s, Brace’s organization was successful and well-funded enough to want to construct its own lodging houses, in order to create the exact type of structure they needed. In 1879, Vaux designed their first purpose-built building, the East Side Boys’ Lodging House and Industrial School on East Broadway and Gouveneur Street (demolished). The picturesquely designed, 3 ½ story, brick and brownstone building had steeply pitched roofs and held dormitories, classrooms, and a well-furnished reading room as well as a dispensary and sick room. The free-standing building was a far cry from the dingy tenements of the area and was hailed in the press as “Christianity solidified in brick and mortar.”39

 

Vaux went on to design more than a dozen buildings for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, a very important part of his work. These included four lodging houses, among them the West Side Lodging House at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street (1883, demolished) and the Tompkins Square Lodging House and Industrial School at 8th Street and Avenue B (1885, a designated New York City Landmark), and five industrial schools that had similar facilities without the beds. This latter type included the Mott Street Industrial School at 256-258 Mott Street (1888, a designated New York City Landmark), and the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School (1888-89, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

The 44th Street Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School (1888-9, demolished) was the first to display a large, front-facing, stepped gable. According to the Society’s 46th Annual Report of 1888, this element came from “an old Nuremburg house called the ‘Petersen’ building, [which] is one of the most picturesque in the city.”40 This lodging house was marked by steep gables, dormer windows and oriole towers, in keeping with Vaux’s intentions to create a home-like and visually interesting composition, but also was “appropriately reminiscent of the city’s Dutch heritage.”41 Most of Vaux’s buildings that were built in the following years employed this design element.

 

The Children’s Aid Society buildings were both domestic and institutional, intended to be an ornament to a part of the city the ugliness of which is particularly in need of some relief. It is a fortunate circumstance that the objects of the Children’s Aid Society require it to undertake its building operations in quarters where, but for its efforts, it is unlikely that there would be any architecture worth looking at or discussing.42

They were usually free-standing structures, with highly varied rooflines that provided visual interest and variety. Vaux believed that,

In any architectural design, the separate groups of forms may be, in themselves, attractive, or the building may be splendid in its general conception of masses, or rich in its varied and charming detail, but it will be defective as an architectural composition if it fails in its sky-line.43

 

Vaux’s rooflines were usually faced with slate or tile, and consisted of mansard roofs with steeply pitched towers, conical roofs or front-facing stepped gables. These buildings were built of brick and sandstone, common and inexpensive materials that were deemed to give a picturesque effect. Vaux tried to site them on corner lots because he felt that two perspectives gave him a chance to create a more interesting design. He used projecting oriels, large windows, dormers and chimneys in an attempt to create a home-like atmosphere for the neglected children who came here. Faithful to his earliest design theories, Vaux worked to evoke the imagery of a snug country inn in the middle of New York City.44 By varying the placement of the entrance as well as the size and placement of the window openings, he created a lively façade, ornamented solely with decorative brickwork such as string courses and recessed panels.

 

Design of the Elizabeth Home for Girls

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls, the last of this group designed by Vaux has the picturesque characteristics common to Vaux’s other designs although its 40-foot-wide, mid-block site required a more restrained composition. It has two asymmetrical sections, with the entrance sited off center, in the western side. The eastern section is topped by the typical stepped gable while the western side has a mansard roof with two dormer windows, a reverse arrangement from that of the House of Reception on West 23rd Street (1890, demolished). The windows are placed along continuous sills, providing some unity in a façade of varied window sizes, shapes and groupings. Unlike many of the other CAS buildings, this one has no projecting oriel window, but here the entrance is given special emphasis by its projecting surround topped by a balustraded balcony.

 

While not as elaborate as some of the other CAS buildings, the Elizabeth Home is a distinctive building that would have provided the sense of “hominess” so desired by both the architect and the organization. Located on a block of brick-fronted rowhouses, this building is obviously different, but not enough to be jarring. Rather, it continues to add interest and variety to the streetscape.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1895, the Children’s Aid Society hired architects Clinton & Russell to create a two-story addition on the north of the building to house a laundry.45 Another alteration, in 1915, added bedrooms in three floors above this addition.46 In 1901, the Children’s Aid Society acquired the adjacent property at No. 311 East 12th Street and converted it into an addition to the Elizabeth Home.47

 

In 1930, the Society moved its operations to West 134th Street and sold both of these buildings to Dr. Benedict Lust, a promoter of natural healing.”48 Lust, a German immigrant with degrees in osteopathy and medicine, believed in natural healing, including a “water cure” and organized the Naturopathic Society of America. He established the American School of Naturopathy which offered a post-graduate curriculum in naturopathy, chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.49

 

Upon Lust’s death, the buildings were purchased by the Florence Crittenton League and remodeled and reopened in 1948 as a private shelter for girls aged 16-21, called Barrett House.50 The Crittendon League was started in 1883 by Charles N. Crittenton, a wealthy New York drug supply manufacturer.51 Originally called the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls and Night Mission for Fallen Women (later the National Florence Crittenton Foundation), it was named after his late daughter and was established as a shelter for troubled and runaway young girls, many of whom were orphaned, and as a mission for women of ill repute. In the late 1880s, the group started a shelter and mission on Bleecker Street that gained renown for its midnight gospel readings. By the turn-of-the-century, the Crittenton Foundation operated in many large

 

U.S. cities and was expanding its services in New York. In 1913, the group relocated its headquarters to West 27th Street and in 1946 purchased the former Children’s Aid Society buildings in order to be able to care for more residents and offer expanded services. The home’s residents were generally referred there by courts, clinics and private agencies and given a variety of therapies to help them emotionally, while keeping them out of the House of Detention.

 

In 1982, the building was sold to a developer and in 1984 it was re-opened as co­op apartments.

 

Description

 

The Elizabeth Home for Girls is a four story brick-faced building set on a raised basement. Built originally on a street of townhouses (East 12th Street), the forty-foot-wide façade blends in by appearing to be two buildings. The western section is two bays wide and holds the building’s main entrance, in the eastern bay of the first story. The raised basement has a pair of large windows framed by a sandstone lintel and watertable and fronted by an iron grille, while the areaway is marked by a non-historic iron fence. The entrance, reached by a short concrete stairway with non-historic iron railings is emphasized by a projecting brick enframement embellished by small, terra-cotta ornament, string courses and globe lights. It is capped by a projecting hood supported on stone brackets. The entrance consists of a paneled door with a large glass light flanked by paneled side sections.

 

A plain, sandstone lintel separates it from the large, round-headed glass transom that is subdivided into small squares. A pair of plain rectangular windows on a continuous sill is in the western bay of the first story. The second story has a single window in the western bay and, in the eastern bay, is a double multi-light, non-historic door that leads to a small, balustraded balcony formed by the projecting hood over the entranceway. At the third story, two pairs of narrow, rectangular windows share a common sill and a smooth sandstone lintel. A simple, corbelled brick cornice separates the roof from the floor below. This section has a mansard roof pierced by two dormer windows with bell-shaped roofs and flanked on the western side by a stepped parapet wall that projects above the roof.

 

A tall, prominent chimney rises between the two sections. Its plain brick facing is marked by several narrow string courses. The section on the east is topped by a stepped, front-facing gable with a decorative sandstone molding that echoes the steps. Each floor contains grouped window openings linked by continuous sills and sometimes lintels. The fourth story has three, round-headed windows capped by a continuous, rounded brick molding. The third story has four evenly-spaced windows under a plain, continuous stone lintel, while the second story has two pairs of windows under stone lintels and a sill that runs across the entire section. There are five windows with transoms and a continuous stone sill and lintel at the first story, and two individual windows fronted by iron grilles at the basement level. A third window (on the eastern bay) has been converted to an entrance, with a non-historic door and light.

 

A broad sandstone lintel and watertable is located at the top of the basement level, creating a strong distinction between it and the rest of the building. A non-historic iron fence shields the areaway.

 

- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Session Americana and Peter Wolf playing at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, MA.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wolf

www.peterwolf.com/

www.facebook.com/PeterWolfMusic?v=wall

Life and career

 

Wolf was born in the Bronx, New York. He planned a career as an artist, but he got a job in the late 1960s as a disc jockey on then-cutting edge Boston FM radio station WBCN and began exploring his interest in blues and rhythm and blues music, giving himself the nickname "the Wolfa Goofa", sometimes expanded to "the Wolfa Goofa with the Green Teeth" (as mentioned in the intro to "Must of Got Lost" on the Blow Your Face Out album). Later as solo artist he called himself Woofa Goofa Mama Toofa. He formed a group called the Hallucinations who performed with The Velvet Underground, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, John Lee Hooker, and Sun Ra. He then saw the J. Geils Blues Band in concert and quickly joined. He was the vocalist and frontman, and often acted as a sort of manager. Wolf was known for his charismatic stage antics of fast-talking quips and "pole-vaulting" with the microphone stand. He and keyboard player Seth Justman were responsible for most of the songwriting. Creative differences followed their Freeze-Frame album, causing the J. Geils Band and Peter Wolf to part ways in 1983.

 

Peter Wolf with the J. Geils Band in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, California Photo: Catharine Anderson

Wolf became a solo artist for the next 15 years, but in 1999 the J. Geils Band reunited for several appearances, with Wolf resuming his duties as lead vocalist. They separated again, and Wolf began touring once more, as a solo act.

Wolf's first solo record, Lights Out (1984) was produced by Michael Jonzun of the Jonzun Crew, features Adrian Belew, and has a somewhat funky, electro sound. The eponymous single became a hit single the same year, peaking at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. He recorded many duets with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Little Milton, John Lee Hooker, Don Covay, and Wilson Pickett to name just a few.

Long Line was co-produced with two musician friends, Johnny A. and a Bob Dylan backup band member, Stu Kimball. Tim Archibald (Bass) and Brian Maes (keys and backing vocals) who are both members of "Ernie And The Automatics", played on the record and Toured in support of "Long Line." His next two solo albums, Fool's Parade and Sleepless (the latter featuring guest appearances from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), were both highly praised by Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone, receiving four-and-a-half and five stars, respectively. Sleepless (2002) was noted as one of the 500 greatest albums of all time in Rolling Stone issue 937. He has performed on stage with such diverse people as Bruce Springsteen and Phil Lesh.

Wolf toured in 2008 with Kid Rock and Rev. Run on The Rock N Roll Revival Tour. He performed "Love Stinks" solo with Kid Rock's band. Then he joined Kid Rock for "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", "Musta Got Lost", "Centerfold" (from the J. Geils album Freeze Frame) and "For What It's Worth".

The J. Geils Band re-united for a series of shows in 2009, including opening night at the Boston House of Blues.

Wolf's 2010 album Midnight Souvenirs won Album of the Year at the Boston Music Awards.[2][3]

 

www.facebook.com/pages/Session-Americana/53199003969

 

www.sessionamericana.com

www.myspace.com/sessionamericana

www.hi-n-dry.com/session_americana

www.exploitboston.com/music-musings/grab-new-music-from-s...

Session Americana - www.sessionamericana.com

 

This ad hoc acoustic supergroup started around a table at a small pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Conway, Sean Staples, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting and other friends gathered to swap songs and stories. Their lively performances and inspired versions of tunes from the dusty backroads of America's past were such a hit with fans that they decided to take their musical conversation into the studio. The two-CD debut Tabletop People ups the ante with stellar appearances by folksinger Rose Polenzani, Twinemen's Laurie Sargent, Dennis Brennan, Asa Brebner, Merrie Amsterburg, Dan Kellar, Presidents of the United States' Chris Ballew, Jabe Beyer, Tim Gearon and other luminaries. And the 18 gritty, funny, soulful performances included span a gamut of emotions and tastes that should please both adult and younger listeners.

 

"Genius ... Jaw-dropping vocals ... Session Americana is blessed in this regard:...musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston

and vocals that do the same"

— Performer Magazine

 

Session Americana sit tightly around a small cafe table, ambient mics tuned to catch the whole sound of the voices and instruments. A suit-case drum kit, an old electric bass, a bunch of acoustic instruments, a field organ: This format feels very theatrical and though the musicians face each other, the audience feels drawn into the circle by the warmth, joy and camaraderie that emanate outwards by the all star cast of characters seated around the table. What keeps you coming back show after show is the same thing that any audience member longs for, great songs performed by a great band. The six core members of the band have brought enviable careers worth of experience to the “table”, featuring (current and former) members of Treat Her Right, Patty Griffin, Lori McKenna, The The, Dennis Brennan, Kris Delmhorst. The group has grown from a rag tag jam at a local pub to a regional institution, playing gigs from church coee houses to urban nightclubs to regional festival tents to large halls.

 

Band: Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Beard, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting, Sean Staples and Jon Bistline.

 

*Winner “2005 Best Folk Act” - The Boston Music Awards

*Winner “Best Roots Act 2006” - Improper Bostonian “Best of Boston” Issue

*Winner “Best CD” 2007 - Improper Bostonian

*Nominated “Best Roots Act” 2007 - WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll

*Nominated Best Live Act 2007 - The Boston Music Awards

*Nominated Best Americana Act 2008 - The Boston Music Awards

 

“Genius ... Jaw-dropping vocals ... Session Americana is blessed in this regard: ...musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston and vocals that do the same”

— NE Performer Magazine

 

“No egos, no big production, just some great songs stripped down to their bare essentials and performed with a real genuineness of spirit and emotional authenticity... it’s beautiful.” (Brian Mosher)

— The Noise

 

“An eclectic, swinging tour de force” — The Boston Globe

 

“[This] local country-folk megagroup’s double CD is one of the most loose, spontaneous, warm, and homespun acts of community and decency since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

 

— The Boston Phoenix

“the cream of the Somerville/Cambridge community" - No Depression (read less)

 

New Depths Of Shameful Destruction Of American Decency, Democracy & Justice - IMRAN™

Trump plumbs new depths to destroy American institutions like the U.S. Department of Justice. Matt Gaetz, under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly having **sex with a minor**, is Trump’s nominee for … drum roll and dirge for funeral march of justice in USA..… **Attorney General**.

 

#news #shame #Trump #DOJ #lawandorder #Republicans #criminals

Washington DC, The Walter E. Washington Convention Center, the afternoon of March 1, 2015. Around one hundred social justice activists affiliated with Code Pink, Jewish Voice For Justice, AVAAZ, US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation, Boycott From Within, Answer Coaltion and other peace and faith groups demonstrate in front of the Convention Center to protest the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) yearly DC meeting. AIPAC is regarded by many as the most powerful lobbying group in town. AIPAC has a policy agenda that's out of step with the values of most Jewish Americans and other participants in civilized society but they call the tune because our corrupt political culture is fueled by money, not decency. In an act of peaceful civil disobedience, five demonstrators, all women, were arrested for failing to obey police orders to remove themselves from the granite in front of one of the Convention Center's many doorways. They were given three warnings before being arrested. I photographed one of women as she was being lead away in plastic handcuffs. "I'm a Jewish mother!" she proclaimed. I gave her the 'thumbs up'.

Most of the DC cops kept their cool but when some of the demonstrators got in their face a brief scuffle ensued. Some of us locked arms and and helped lift up one of the Code Pink ladies who was almost knocked down onto the steps by a DC officer who lost it.

Co. B, 9th KS. Cavalry

El Dorado Republican, Monday, Nov. 8, 1909, Pg. 2

Vol. XVII, No. 111

  

THOMAS BENTON MURDOCK

______

  

In 1841 Thomas Benton Murdock was born in the mountains of Virginia. He was one of five children, who lived to maturity, of Thomas Murdock and Katherine Pierrepont. From the mother’s side came the pride of the Pierreponts; from the father’s the insurgent instincts of the Irish Murdocks who left Ireland after the Irish rebellion failed in 1798. So, even though reared in the mountains among most simple people and most primitive surroundings, the Murdocks who have dominated Kansas for half a century have been proud soldiers of the militant democracy. They have been fighters who led naturally, by instinct and training but never fighters for the old order. They always were pioneers, always moving out into new territory of thought and action, looking forward. Thomas and Katherine Murdock could not endure the iniquity of slavery so in 1849 they freed their slaves and left the slave country for Ohio. They settled near Ironton but lost everything they had in the panic of 1855, and loaded their household goods on a boat, went down the Ohio to the Mississippi and journeyed as far west as Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. There the family spent the winter and the father went to Kansas and found a location. He brought his family to Topeka in the winter of ’56-’57. They rented a little hotel and kept tavern, among others having for guests, Jim Lane and A. D. Stevens, famous as a border fighter under Montgomery and afterwards killed at Harper’s Ferry under old John Brown. Going and coming in the little Kansas tavern of the Virginia abolitionist were the men who made Kansas free and famous in the great conflict that began at Lawrence and ended at Appomattox.

In this atmosphere of strife and patriotism young Benton Murdock, a youth in his late teens, grew up. In 1860 the family homesteaded at Forrest Hill, near Emporia, and the father and mother lived in Emporia the remainder of their lives; the father died in 1896 and the mother in 1887.

When the civil war broke out Thomas Benton Murdock enlisted with his father and brother, Roland, in the Ninth Kansas Cavalry and served until the end of the war. He served in the Rocky Mountains in ’63 and there met J. H. Betts, now of El Dorado. When they met seven or eight years later in El Dorado John Betts kept eying Murdock and finally said: “Say, aren’t you the chap that relieved me of that army overcoat out west?” Murdock’s company was confiscating government property where ever he found it. Murdock looked at Betts and replied: “Well I guess I am. But I’m here to start a newspaper. What’s the chance?”

“Bully,” returned Mr. Betts, willing to let bygones be bygones, and they have remained friends for forty years.

Returning from the army where he had gone snow blind on the plains—a calamity that hung over him of his later days—young Murdock who had been a hod carrier and general work man as a youth around Topeka, learned the printing trade. He worked in the office of Emporia News then owned by P. B. Plumb and Jacob Stotler who had married Leverah Murdock during the war. His brother Marshall who had worked at the printers trade during the war was running the Burlingame Chronicle at the end of war. Young Benton went back to Ironton, Ohio, married the sweetheart of his boyhood, Francis Crawford, and came to El Dorado, March 4, 1870, and founded the Walnut Valley Times with J. S. Danford. His wife lived only a few years leaving at her death their daughter Mary Alice.

From the first Mr. Murdock became a leader in politics in Kansas. He stood for the Walnut Valley and the Kingdom of Butler. In 1876 he was elected a member of the state senate. He served with such men as E. N. Morrill, Charles Robinson, J. M. Hadley, father of the present governor of Missouri, Benjamin F. Simpson, J. R. Hallowell, D. W. Finney, W. A. Johnston, new chief justice of Kansas, all members of the senate, while in the house were Lyman U. Humphrey, John Gilmore, A. W. Smith, L. B. Kellogg, P. P. Elder. His political career was fostered and guided by Mrs. Antoinette Culbreth-Murdock who for a generation has been wife, friend, comrade, guide and inspiration, who bore him five children of whom Ellina Culbreth only now is living. Mrs. Murdock survives him with his two children. In 1880 he ran for senate again but was unfairly defeated he thought. He sold the Times and moved to Topeka and became connected with the Topeka Daily Commonwealth, then controlled by the Baker family. But El Dorado held his heart and he returned in 1883 and founded the El Dorado Weekly Republican. The Daily followed the Weekly in 1884 and the paper at once took a prominent place in the affairs of Kansas.

Mr. Murdock was, during the late senator’s life time, a friend and ally of P. B. Plumb. He and Plumb were young men together in Emporia, thought alike and had much in common in training and in aspirations. And so after Plumb died the courage and independence and progressive Kansas spirit that made Plumb an insurgent who voted against the adoption of the McKinley bill, lived on Kansas through Mr. Murdock. He was politically always with the scouts, with the pioneers, ever with the skirmish line. It was the spirit of ’60 in his soul the rebellion of the ancestral Murdocks in his blood.

In 1888 he was again elected to the state senate. He served until 1892 and was on the committee that tried Theodosius Botkin and went over the old county seat troubles of western Kansas. He was defeated for re-election by the Populist wave, and until appointed fish and game warden by Governor Stubbs never held public office of any kind again.

But he was a public man all the time. His influence on the state has been more rather than less because of the fact that he was not in office. In every Republican state convention for forty years Mr. Murdock has been a power of the first class. Yet he sacrificed that power and worked for the primaries which put convention politicians out of power. He was never selfish, never little, never mean and so it happened that he was large enough to retain his influence in the state and multiply it through the primary. Gradually he has grown in strength with the people of Kansas, and since 1902—his last alignment with the old political machine—he has been easily the leader of the forward movement in Kansas Republicanism. Others have had the honor; but he has made them. He has expressed as no other man has been able to express it, the sentiment of popular protest against the wrongs of government by ring rule. He has been the voice of the people—an indignant people clamoring for a larger part in their state government.

He fought with arms for freedom in his youth; he offered his body then; he gave his life to freedom in this latest struggle, and fought with his spirit—a brave, successful fight.

As an editor he was equipped as few men are equipped—with an individual style. He expressed something more than an idea. He reflected an idea plus a strong, unique personality. He therefore in a way dramatized whatever he wrote—made it the spoken word of a combatant in the conflict, the defiance of a partisan in the contest. So thousands of people knew him as a voice, who did not know him as a man as we of his home have known him for forty years.

Here was his real life, his real friends, his real success. For before he was a Kansan he was a Butler county man, an El Dorado man. He always stood by the home folks. Of course he took part in local matters, and having taken part had to take sides. He was never neutral in any important contest here at home. But he always fought in the open, and he always fought fair. He never abused a man. He attacked causes, movements, orders, administrations, organizations and principles of his opponents—but the personal character of the men he opposed—there was the limit. He never returned abuse for abuse. He had no newspaper fights. He never made his personal enemies objects of newspaper ridicule. He had no office black list. Every man or woman in Butler county received exactly the same treatment from the Republican under Mr. Murdock that every other man or woman received, no matter whether he or she was friend or enemy. He strove always to be fair. Many is the politician in this county in the old days who has fought Mr. Murdock knowing he could always depend on Mr. Murdock to be fair, to keep to the issue, to be silent on old scores, to leave personal matters out of the question. Men have risen to power in this community opposing Mr. Murdock who have capitalized his innate decency, and have risen more by reason of his charity and humanity than by their own ability. He was a gentleman of the old school, was Thomas Benton Murdock, and that fact has given more power to those who opposed him often than their own worth should have given to them.

As his best qualities grew intenser, as people grew nearer to him, as they who knew him best here in his home community thought more of him than those who knew him in the state, so even better than they knew and loved him in the town, did they him in his home. Mr. Murdock was a home man clear to the core. Some men are least known at home. He was best known there, and best beloved. For there he showed always his best side. He kept the finest part of his heart and mind and soul for those who met him in his home. There he was in his kindest, his gentlest, his most human aspect. Home was his heaven. There he brought all his joy. There he left the world behind. When blindness threatened him, as it did for a quarter of a century off and on, it was in his home that he found his only solace. When enemies pursued him, when cares overcame him, when troubles compassed him about, he turned always up the hill—always homeward. There he drank the elixir of life, and returned full armed, anew and strong to the contest.

When his soul went out into the Greater soul that gave it, how lovingly he must have followed the last ride of his shattered clay tenement as it journeyed through the Kansas that he loved, down the West Branch into the Walnut Valley that loved him, up the hill through the gloaming into the home that was his first heaven. For it was a journey with a climax in love. And when those whom he knew best and loved best gathered about his wasted body of death, his soul triumphant in the new life must have felt glowing even through the dark veil the warmth of an affection too deep for words and tears.

So his last wish was granted. And after “taps” had sounded we left all that was mortal, only a withered husk of the exalted and risen soul of Thomas Benton Murdock under the prairie grass out in the sunshine. Sunshine and prairie grass—and the end.

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T. B. Murdock in writing of the death of his brother, Marsh, January 3, 1908, said:

“There is no death. There are no dead. No waiting for the resurrection, in that it releases the spirit from the body. If there was a Christ, and there was, and if he said something while on earth, and he did, he said it to Martha at the grave of Lazarus: ‘Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ The immortal spirit of husband and father has passed through the shadow of the borderland of the shoreless river, ‘and his voice is drowned in the rushing tide.’

“He has Crost the Bar. His dying eyes had read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and passing soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.”

 

Funeral Service

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Funeral services over the late T. B. Murdock were held from the family home on Walnut Hill, Sunday afternoon, November 7, 1909. Reverend Dean Kay of Trinity Episcopal church, Topeka, conducted the service and very beautifully expressed, sincere and true were his thoughts on immortal life, his tribute on the personality of Mr. Murdock. He was assisted by Reverend I. Newton Roberts of the El Dorado Trinity Episcopal church.

The rooms were banked with exquisite flowers, tributes from friends in this city and from over the entire state. The house and lawns were filled with people.

Brief interment were held in the west cemetery and “in the shadow of the evening,” were closed with “the soul stirring simple sound—the trumpeting of “taps.”

The relatives of the family who were here to attend the funeral were: Mr. and Mrs. Paul Eaton, Victoria Eaton, Mrs. R. P. Murdock, Marcellus Murdock, E. T. Allen, Victor Murdock, of Wichita; Mrs. Jacob Stotler,; Miss Leverah Stotler, Mr. and Mrs. A. Pemberton, Irene Pemberton, Murdock Pemberton, Emporia, Mrs. Emma Brady, Chicago.

Those from out of town attending were:

George Plumb, J. S. Watson, P. B. McCabe, W. Thornton and J. S. Gibson of Emporia, comrades of Mr. Murdock in the Ninth Kansas Cavalry. J. S. Watson was Mr. Murdock’s “bunkie.”

Other distinguished attendants: Governor W. R. Stubbs, Senator J. L. Bristow of Salina; Frank MacLenan, editor of Topeka State Journal; John Dawson, attorney for State Board of Railroad Commissioners; Henry Allen, editor of the Wichita Beacon; Mayor Davison, Postmaster W. C. Edwards, Tom Biodget, editor Kansas Magazine, E. B. Jewett, J. R. Meade, Lock Davidson and John McGinis, of Wichita; William Allen White and wife of Emporia; J. W. Moore of Marion; Victor Hodgin, superintendent of the fish hatchery at Pratt; Dan McGowan, of Emporia; E. C. Newby of the Cottonwood Falls Leader, his wife and daughter, Pauline El Dorado; W. W. Bugbee, of New York and Augusta Kuster of Los Angeles, California.