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

This placard refers to prominent Trump supporter and white supremacist Richard Spencer being punched by a protestor while being interviewed in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20. See the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rh1dhur4aI

For a sober analysis of Spencer's racism, see this Daily Telegraph article: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/richard-spencer-white-national...

After the shock of Donald Trump’s inauguration day, when millions of Americans (and visiting foreigners like me) felt understandably distraught, bereft, dismayed, as the grotesque, narcissistic, predatory, corrupt fraud that is Donald Trump delivered a bleak and graceless inauguration speech, it was nothing short of a delight on Saturday, Jan. 21, Day 2 of the aberrant Trump presidency, when, across the country and around the world, millions of women (plus large numbers of supportive men) marched in protest against Trump and all he and his administration stand for — his disdain for women, his racism, his xenophobia, his adherence to intolerant white Christian fundamentalism, and, last but not least, his opaque, but very obviously corrupt business practices. Two US academics have estimated that between 3.3m and 4.6m people marched in total across the US, with New York’s turnout estimated at between 400,000 and 500,000 people.

Stepping out of Grand Central Station into a river of protest, with more clever, witty and insightful handmade posters than you could imagine, and with chants and cheers punctuating the general hubbub at regular intervals was to feel that perhaps this dystopian vision of America can indeed be overthrown before it wreaks untold havoc at home and abroad. And with no beginning or end of the protest in sight, it was easy to believe that the number marching was much larger than even the academics’ estimate.

It will take more than one day, of course, as the people of America need to unite like never before — everyone who didn’t vote for Trump, everyone threatened by Trump, everyone appalled by Trump, including, of course, those who voted for him but might already be having second thoughts. This could be a disastrous presidency, or it could be even worse than that, but people need to put aside any notions of complacency, and work out how to resist. This was a great start, and a historic moment that everyone there will remember, but now there needs to be much more action and organizing.

As you look at these photos, however, I hope they are a reminder of a day of hope across the US and around the world, when ordinary people demonstrated that fundamental decency will not be silenced, and that a tolerant, multi-racial society, featuring, at its heart, equality between women and men, and between people whatever their race, creed or color, has humour, intelligence and compassion that throw into even sharper relief how troublingly miserable, negative and ungenerous Donald Trump and his advisors are.

For an article by US Uncut about the numbers attending the protests, see: usuncut.com/news/womens-march-largest-protest-us-history/

For the turnout estimates, see: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa0iLqYKz8x9Yc_rfhtmSOJQ2...

For an article in New York Daily News, which ran a front page devoted to the protests, under the headline, “See them roar,” see: www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/women-march-washington-...

For my website, see: www.andyworthington.co.uk

For my Facebook posts after Trump’s inauguration, see:

www.facebook.com/andyworthingtonUK/posts/1015497574252380...

www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154975238073804&set...

For my most interesting photos, see: www.flickriver.com/photos/andyworthington/popular-interes...

 

Maria Teresa Louisa di Savoia, Principessa di Savoia (8 September 1749 – 3 September 1792) was a member of the House of Savoy. After her marriage to a French nobleman, she became the confidante of Queen Marie Antoinette of France. Her death in the massacres of September 1792 during the French Revolution sparked a movement of anti-revolutionary propaganda, which ultimately led to the development and implementation of the Reign of Terror.

 

On 19 August, she and the Marquise de Tourzel, governess to the royal children, were separated from the royal family and transferred to the La Force prison. On 3 September, she was brought before a hastily assembled tribunal, who demanded she "take an oath to love liberty and equality and to swear hatred to the King and the Queen and to the monarchy". The latter she refused to swear, upon which her trial summarily ended with the words: Élargissez madame ("Take madame away"). She was immediately brought to the street and thrown to a group of men who killed her within minutes.

 

Some reports allege that she was raped and that her breasts were cut off, in addition to other bodily mutilations, and that her head was cut off and stuck on a pike. Other reports say that it was brought to a nearby café where it was laid in front of the customers, who were asked to drink in celebration of her death. Other reports state that the head was taken to a barber in order to dress the hair to make it instantly recognizable, though this has been contested. Following this, the head was replaced upon the pike and was paraded beneath Marie Antoinette’s window at the Temple.Those who were carrying it wished the Queen to kiss the lips of her favourite, as it was a frequent rumor that the two had been lovers. The head was not allowed to be brought into the building, but the Queen's guards did force her to look out of the window at the sight, whereupon the Queen fainted almost immediately. In her historical biography, Marie Antoinette : The Journey Antonia Fraser claims that the Queen did not actually see the head of her long-time friend, but was aware of what was occurring, stating; "...the municipal officers had had the decency to close the shutters and the commissioners kept them away from the windows...one of these officers told the King '..they are trying to show you the head of Madame de Lamballe'...Mercifully, the Queen then fainted away".

 

Five citizens of the local section in Paris delivered her body (minus her head which was still being displayed on a pike) to the authorities shortly after her death. Royalist accounts of the incident claimed her body was displayed on the street for a full day. According to author Blanche Christabel Hardy , her heartbroken father-in-law finally succeeded in retrieving her corpse and had it interred in the Penthièvre family crypt at Dreux. However, French historian Michel de Decker writes that her body was never found, (as was never found that of her brother-in-law Philippe Égalité), which is the reason why she is not inhumed in the Orléans family necropolis at Dreux. Marie Grosholtz, better known as Madame Tussaud, was ordered to make the death mask.

 

No. 2 - 4: Exploring Canterbury.

Canterbury Cathedral

 

A view of the Nave looking westwards.

 

The Nave

The Romanesque Nave was replaced in the 14th century by the one we see today. Its tall columns rise to meet in delicate vaulted arches and gilt roof bosses high over our heads. It is one of the most magnificent surviving examples of English Perpendicular Gothic, designed by Henry Yevele, the King’s Master mason.

Canterbury Cathedral

 

The most significant of Yevele's remaining works are the naves of Westminster Abbey (1362) and Canterbury Cathedral (1377-1400), the latter completed in an early Perpendicular Gothic style.

Wikipedia

 

Eadmer records:

[Eadmer, a Canterbury monk of the 12th century, was a friend of St. Anselm and of his successor. In 1120 he was invited to Scotland to become Bishop of St. Andrews, but returned to Canterbury owing to a disagreement with the King of Scotland with regard to his consecration. He wrote Historia Novorum, Vita Anselmi, and notices of SS. Dunstan, Bregwin, and Oswald.]

 

...... at a convenient distance from this, westward, there was another altar, dedicated to Christ our Saviour, at which divine service was daily celebrated. In this altar was inclosed the head of St. Swithin, with many other relics, which archbishop Alphage brought with him from Winchester. Passing from this altar westward, many steps led down to the choir and nave, which were both even, or upon the same level. At the bottom of the steps, there was a passage into the undercroft, under all the east part of the church. At the east end of which, was an altar, in which was inclosed, according to old tradition, the head of St. Furseus. From hence by a winding passage, at the west end of it, was the tomb of St. Dunstan, but separated from the undercroft by a strong stone wall; over the tomb was erected a monument, pyramid wife, and at the head of it an altar, for the mattin service. Between these steps, or passage into the undercroft and the nave, was the choir, which was separated from the nave by a fair and decent partition, to keep off the crowds of people that usually were in the body of the church, so that the singing of the chanters in the choir might not be disturbed. About the middle of the length of the nave, were two towers or steeples, built without the walls; one on the south, and the other on the north side. ......

 

...... After the see of Canterbury had continued thus vacant for five years, Ralph, or as some call him, Rodulph, bishop of Rochester, was translated to it in the year 1114, at whose coming to it, the church was dedicated anew to the Holy Trinity, the name which had been before given to it by Lanfranc. The only particular description we have of this church when thus finished, is from Gervas, the monk of this monastery, and that proves imperfect, as to the choir of Lanfranc, which had been taken down soon after his death; the following is his account of the nave, or western part of it below the choir, being that which had been erected by archbishop Lanfranc, as has been before mentioned. From him we learn, that the west end, where the chapel of the Virgin Mary stood before, was now adorned with two stately towers, on the top of which were gilded pinnacles. The nave or body was supported by eight pair of pillars. At the east end of the nave, on the north side, was an oratory, dedicated in honor to the blessed Virgin, in lieu, I suppose, of the chapel, that had in the former church been dedicated to her at the west end. Between the nave and the choir there was built a great tower or steeple, as it were in the centre of the whole fabric; under this tower was erected the altar of the Holy Cross; over a partition, which separated this tower from the nave, a beam was laid across from one side to the other of the church; upon the middle of this beam was fixed a great cross, between the images of the Virgin Mary and St. John, and between two cherubims. .....

 

..... Hence, he continues, we go up by some steps into the great tower, and before us there is a door and steps leading down into the south wing, and on the right hand a pair of folding doors, with stairs going down into the nave of the church; ......

 

...... on the 5th of September, anno 1174, being the 20th year of king Henry II.'s reign, a fire happened, which consumed great part of this stately edifice, namely, the whole choir, from the angel steeple to the east end of the church, together with the prior's lodgings, the chapel of the Virgin Mary, the infirmary, and some other offices belonging to the monastery; but the angel steeple, the lower cross isles, and the nave appear to have received no material injury from the flames. The narrative of this accident is told by Gervas, the monk of Canterbury, so often quoted before, who was an eye witness of this calamity, as follows:

 

...... The choir being thus laid in ashes, the monks removed from amidst the ruins, the bodies of the two saints, whom they called patrons of the church, the archbishops Dunstan and Alphage, and deposited them by the altar of the great cross, in the nave of the church; and from this time they celebrated the daily religious offices in the oratory of the blessed Virgin Mary in the nave, and continued to do so for more than five years, when the choir being re edified, they returned to it again. ......

 

...... Odo's body was laid under St. Dunstan's and Wilfrid's under St. Alphage's; Lanfranc's was deposited nigh the altar of St. Martin, and Theobald's at that of the blessed Virgin, in the nave of the church, under a marble tomb; and soon afterwards the two archbishops, on the right and left hand of archbishop Becket in the undercrost, were taken up and placed under the altar of St. Mary there. ......

 

...... in the year 1379, anno 2 Richard II. the same archbishop, a prelate of a public and generous spirit, directly afterwards took down the old nave of the church, which Lanfranc had erected, as being too mean and greatly inferior to the new choir, and which probably had by this time fallen into decay, purposing to rebuild it again at his own cost, ......

 

...... before the death of prior Chillenden, for he is recorded in the obituary to have fully compleated, with the help of archbishop Arundel, the rebuilding of the nave, with the chapel of the blessed Virgin Mary, situated in the same. It was thirty years in building, and the whole of it continues at this time firm and entire.

 

At the time of archbishop Sudbury's death, the west front of the church, with the two adjoining towers, had not in the progress of taking down the nave, been demolished; probably the monks terrified at the great expence which they then found they must be subject to, determined to leave this part standing, and to add such alterations as would make it, as far as possible, suitable to their new building; to effect which, they formed new windows in each tower, with pillars and arches similar to those in the rest of the nave; a large window was put in the centre of the front between them, and a new porch underneath, and the whole, excepting the two towers, was new cased with stone. ......

 

...... prior William Selling, who was elected in 1472, anno II Edward IV. and died in 1495, being the 10th year of Henry VII.'s reign. He is said to have begun to rebuild it, and his successor prior Thomas Goldstone, the second prior of that name, to have finished it before his death, which happened in 1517. This the obituary records, telling us that he erected and perfected the lofty tower in the middle of the church, between the choir and the nave, with excellent carved and gilded works, with windows and with both iron and glass work belonging to it, in which he was assisted by what his predecessor William Selling had done, and by cardinal archbishop Morton, who built great part of it at his own cost and charges. ......

 

...... there was another small chapel or chantry of the Lady Joane Brenchesley, built on the outside, but adjoining the south wall of the nave, between the two buttresses of the fourth window, having a door opened to it in the wall of the church; in it was an altar dedicated to St. John Baptist. Sir William Brenchesley, chief justice of the king's bench, was buried near it, in the nave, in 1446, ......

 

...... This spire being much damaged in the great storm which happened in November, 1703, was taken down as low as the platform and balcony, which now make the top and finishing of it. This tower is now so weakened by age, and by the alterations made in the under part of it, to make it conformable to the rest of the nave on the inside, that it has been thought necessary to strengthen it with bands of many hundred pounds weight of iron. Underneath it, in the nave, is the archbishop's consistory court, lately fitted up in an elegant manner, by the present commissary of the diocese, Sir William Scott.

 

The nave has lately been new paved with white Portland stone, and has been much admired for its simplicity and neatness. On taking up the old pavement, the modern gravestones were all removed, but there was not that delicacy and decency used, as ought to have been to the remains of those antiently buried in it, by the workmen to whom it was intrusted, to make the ground firm and sure for the new pavement. At which time the beautiful font, the gift of Dr. Warner, bishop of Rochester, and prebendary of this church, not long before the great rebellion broke out, in the last century, which stood between two of the pillars on the north side, at the lower end of the nave, was removed without the church to the adjoining circular building, northward, close to the door of the library.

 

At the upper part of the north isle of the nave near the place where Sir John Boys's monument now is, was once, in the old nave, though parted off, a kind of chapel, dedicated, as well as the altar in it, to the blessed Virgin Mary, called from thence our Lady's chapel. In it were buried the archbishops Theobald, and Richard, the immediate successor to Thomas Becket, whose leaden inscription and pontifical relics, that is, his cope, crozier and chalice were found in 1632, in digging Dr. Anian's grave; but this old chapel has not been heard of since the present nave of the church has been built.

 

At the upper part of the nave are two cross isles or wings; that on the north being called the martyrdom, from St. Thomas Becket's murder in it. In this wing stood an altar, by the wall where Dr. Chapman's monument now is, commonly called the altar of the martyrdom of St. Thomas, which, together with the place, Erasmus saw, and thus describes it. ......

 

...... On the east side of this wing is the chapel of St. Michael, built mostly on the scite of a former one, most probably, by the appearance of the architecture of it, about, or soon after the time these cross isles or wings and the nave of the church were taken down and rebuilt, but upon a smaller scale, as appears by archbishop Langton's tomb, who lived in Henry III.'s reign, which is at the east end of it, and remains one half within the chapel, and the other without, in the church-yard, the wall of the chapel being built across the middle of it. ......

 

All this before the Reformation.

 

To proceed now to the windows in the western part of the church; the great window over the western entrance into the nave, was made in the latter part of the reign of king Richard II. anno 1400; it is in the gothic stile, quite different in taste from those abovementioned, being mitred at top and very large, with abundance of compartments in several stories or stages, one above another, divided by jambs of stone work, and each finished at top in form of the niches of that order. ......

 

...... The compartments of the windows in both ranges on the sides of the nave, have each a slender border, of no meaning and as little beauty; in the midst of each throughout the whole, is a shield of arms. ......

 

Length of the nave to the foot to the steps......178 feet

 

Breadth of the nave and side isles.................. 71 feet

 

British History Online

 

To see this Large:- farm3.static.flickr.com/2682/4357168086_7db4191aa4_b.jpg

 

Taken on

October 5, 2007 at 11:49

Not yet ready for service, 53020 has had new step lino and step edging plus retrimmed driver's seat. The cab and step partitions have also been removed, although I would imagine a decency screen of some description will be needed at the door.

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.

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.

  

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.

 

French postcard by Imp. De Marchi Frères, Marseille.

 

French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) died on 28 December 2025, at the age of 91. In the 1950s, she was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she established herself as an animal rights activist. In the coming weeks, we will continue to post a BB postcard every day to remember her as she once was.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father, and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modelling career and found herself in May 1949 on the cover of the French magazine Elle. Her incredible beauty was readily apparent, and Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand / Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953, she attended the Cannes Film Festival, where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956, she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as an ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. In 1953, she made her first US production, Un acte d'amour / Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smash success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. The immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the shooting of Et Dieu créa la femme / And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956), directed by her husband, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at that time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped Brigitte Bardot's international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten', and fascination with her in America consisted of magazine photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theatres like lemmings. BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (Ralph Thomas, 1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne / La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957), which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur / Love is My Profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "This Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defence attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre can shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous and deadly side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960, postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 195,7 and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre / Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career

Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée / Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle, has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at French Films: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the high point of her career when she agreed to make this film with high-profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess, and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot, and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names was based on an actual incident, and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterwards, Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire Playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men, including Samy Frey, her co-star in La Vérité / The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Jean-Luc Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris / Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) opposite Michel Piccoli. She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres / Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires /Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses / Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewellery and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990s, she was also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal was a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularising bikini swimwear, in such early films as Manina / Woman without a Veil (Willy Rozier, 1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (French Films), French Films, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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

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

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2022. Gualtieri finisce sul Nyt: L'eterna crisi dei rifiuti a Roma ha unito il declino urbano, con i cinghiali nel centro storico. Gualtieri poco o nessun progresso; in: NEW YORK TIMES & La Repubblica (29-30/08/2021) (testo integrale).Vedi anche: il sindaco Marino e il degrado di Roma; in: Nyt (22/07/2015). wp.me/pbMWvy-36x

 

________________

S.v.,

--- RARA 2022. Roberto Gualtieri - Sindaco di Roma / Er Monnezzaro = Disservizi + Immondizia + Degrado + Cinghiali + Incendio (21/10/2021 - 21/10/2022). Fonte: ROMATODAY (06/09/2022). www.romatoday.it/social/segnalazioni/degrado-urbano/

________________

 

Foto: LOCAL TEAM / YouTube (09/07/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52324893351

 

1). ROMA - Gualtieri finisce sul New York Times: "Mentre Roma brucia (o almeno i suoi rifiuti), un sindaco osa sognare."La Repubblica (30/08/2021).

 

Il quotiano statunitense dedica un articolo all'immondizia della capitale, all'Ama ma soprattutto al sindaco che vuole il termovalorizzatore, "sicuro che qualcosa cambierà"

 

Un sindaco a Roma "osa sognare". Così definisce gli incubi di Roberto Gualtieri un lungo articolo uscito New York Times di Jason Horowitz. Che pubblica online foto di e dei suoi cassonetti carbonizzati oltre alla foto del sindaco alla scrivania assorto a guardare i fogli del progetto sul termovalorizzatore.

 

Foto: Nyt (30/08/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325323054

 

"Da anni ormai" si legge sul Nyt, "nulla simboleggia la caduta di Roma più della sua crisi dei rifiuti. Un serraglio di cinghiali, gabbiani violenti e ratti si riunisce per banchettare con i detriti della capitale". "E proprio quando sembrava che la puzza dei rifiuti di Roma non potesse peggiorare, una disputa sulla costruzione di un nuovo inceneritore per la città è emersa come motivo di un ammutinamento politico che ha fatto cadere il governo Draghi a luglio". Poche righe a riassumere l'effetto domino catastrofico.

 

Ma ecco che qui arriva Gualtieri: "Formalmente il motivo sono io", avrebbe dichiarato lasciando trapelare un tono sorpreso, ingenuo, al limite del compiaciuto.

 

Il quotidiano lo descrive come "un veterano della politica di sinistra", un uomo che "con l'autorità di accelerare la costruzione di un impianto di termovalorizzazione dei rifiuti per Roma da circa 600 milioni di euro, spera di avere successo dove altri hanno fallito". In fondo, avrebbe aggiunto il primo cittadino, "non si tratta di scienza missilistica. È solo spazzatura".

 

Foto: Nyt (30/08/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325212963

 

Roma e New York svettano nella classifica delle città più sporche del mondo, un gemellaggio tossico. E se anche il Nyt dipinge il sindaco che osa sognare, lo fa su uno sfondo di rifiuti in fiamme, autobus che si auto-incendiano, buche "profonde come pozzi d'acqua, una "giungla dove mancano solo i boa costrittori" e una miriade di "altre indecenze". Come Malagrotta. Il sindaco, dice e non dice, che "c'è una cospirazione per fermare me" e il progetto.

 

L'articolo ricorda quindi che Gualtieri però "in qualità di ex ministro dell'Economia, ha contribuito personalmente a ottenere miliardi di euro di fondi dell'Unione Europea per l'Italia, con una fetta significativa per Roma. E ha già avuto successo nell'attrarre investitori privati per finanziare il nuovo inceneritore". Insomma, "il problema non è il denaro".

 

E mentre Roma è costretta a spedire i suoi rifiuti a costi elevati in impianti fuori città, "in quello che secondo Gualtieri è un salasso per le sue risorse, un contributo all'inquinamento e forse un favore agli interessi di elementi della malavita (...), la sfida più grande per ripulire Roma potrebbe essere la città stessa". Anche se i romani tendono ad avere "comportamenti non corretti" quando si tratta di buttare la spazzatura.

 

"I ristoranti spesso riempiono i bidoni riservati ai cittadini. I cittadini reagiscono mettendo in equilibrio i sacchetti dell'immondizia sopra i cassonetti come giocassero a Jenga".

 

Ed è qui che il sindaco sogna. Sogna una revisione dell'Ama e sogna che i rifiuti brucino in fiamme lecite. Sempre che i Cinque Stelle smettano di opporsi adducendo "motivi ambientali, e considerandolo un ipocrita". Perché "egli" sostiene che il termovalorizzatore "migliorerà Roma e sarà redditizio, un incentivo per gli investitori a entrare nel progetto. Una nuova età dell'oro". I sogni d'oro del sindaco di Roma.

 

Fonte / source:

--- La Repubblica (30/08/2021).

roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2022/08/30/news/roma_rifiuti_n...

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Foto: Gianluca Ferrara / Facebook (27/03/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52324089937

 

2). ROME - As Rome Burns (or at Least Its Garbage), a Mayor Dares to Dream. Could a solution to Rome’s perpetual trash crisis really be in sight? Mayor Roberto Gualtieri would like to think so. NEW YORK TIMES (29/08/2021).

 

ROME — For years now, nothing has symbolized the fall of Rome more than its garbage crisis. A trash menagerie of wild boars, violent sea gulls and rats convene to feast on the capital’s overflowing debris. Early this summer, a spate of suspicious blazes at garbage plants and scrapyards — literal dumpster fires — darkened the skies, choked the air, and raised the specter of arson and organized crime.

 

Then, when it seemed the stench of Rome’s garbage troubles could get no worse, a dispute over building a new incinerator for the city emerged as the stated reason for a political mutiny that brought down the national unity government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi in July.

 

On the day of the revolt, as he monitored the unfolding political drama from his office overlooking the Roman forum, Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, seemed bemused by the role he and his city’s garbage problem had played in the government’s unexpected collapse. “Formally, the reason is me,” he said.

 

Foto: Il Messaggero (22/06/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325323139

 

At least Mr. Gualtieri, a veteran of leftist politics, emerged from the wreckage with the authority to fast track the building of a roughly 600 million euro, or about $601 million, waste-to-energy plant for Rome, which he hopes will allow him to succeed where others had failed.

 

“It is not rocket science,” he said. “It’s garbage.”

 

But garbage, and the degradation of Rome that it symbolizes, is a force not to be taken lightly. Even in an oft-sacked city that has seen it all over the centuries, where people have more recently grown accustomed to self-immolating buses, potholes as deep as water wells and myriad other indignities, the garbage — pervasive, pungent and unrelenting — has become the true metric of Rome’s decline.

 

Since Rome closed its sprawling Malagrotta landfill, among Europe’s largest, as an environmental disaster in 2013, trash has overwhelmed two mayors, including Mr. Gualtieri’s predecessor, Virginia Raggi of the Five Star Movement, the party that touched off the rebellion that brought down the national government.

 

In 2018, prosecutors sequestered the landfill — owned by a businessman dubbed “er monnezzaro,” or King of Garbage — for failing to contain its toxic spillage. No actual garbage has been dumped there for years, but its treatment plant was still being used to process up to 1,500 tons of garbage a day, before being shipped elsewhere.

 

Foto: La Repubblica (12/08/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325212983

 

That is, before it went up in flames this summer.

 

“An enormous plume, gray,” Luigi Palumbo, the court-appointed manager of the landfill, said as he recalled the toxic blaze and cloud that closed nearby preschools and summer camps and laced parts of central Rome with an acrid odor.

 

“It’s unknown where it started,” he said as he approached the plant, its concrete scorched and its melted aluminum panels hanging over the building like carpets hung out to dry.

 

He turned to a burned heap of garbage that had been inside the plant. It was filled with thousands of scorched and bulging plastic bags, melted plastic fruit crates, stray cloths and tires and cans. It, too, has now been sequestered as evidence — but of what, no one seems quite sure.

 

The Malagrotta blaze was not an isolated incident, but one of a rash of trash fires that broke out around the city this summer.

 

Mayor Gualtieri sought to sidestep the theory that “there is a conspiracy to stop me,” and his incinerator, by preserving a system in which myriad players, some of them shadowy, profited from Rome’s garbage crisis. But, he added, “of course you consider this possibility, how was it possible this really is happening exactly when we are trying to …” Then he stopped himself.

 

He noted a well-established connection between waste management and criminal enterprises. Experts had determined it was “not self-combustion,” he said. “So that was man made.”

 

And it has exacerbated Rome’s already noxious disposal problem.

 

Rome now has to ship its garbage at high cost to plants outside the city, in what Mr. Gualtieri said was a drain on its resources, a contributor to pollution and possibly a favor to the interests of underworld elements who benefit from Rome’s sanitation paralysis.

 

But while prosecutors continue to investigate the fires, the greatest challenge to cleaning up Rome may be the city itself.

 

Rome had “little sense of responsibility for its own garbage, because it’s always thought that public things, being public, belong to no one,” said Paola Ficco, an environmental lawyer who edits Rifiuti, or Waste, a journal about laws regarding garbage. “And we forget that, being public, it’s all of ours.”

 

In the meantime, she added, Rome was a mess, with high grass and garbage everywhere. “It’s a jungle,” she said. “Only boa constrictors are missing. Then we’ll have it all.”

 

Mr. Gualtieri, himself a Roman, acknowledged that his city bred unique character traits. Romans tended to have “behaviors that we find that are not good,” he said, when it came to throwing out the garbage.

 

Restaurants often loaded up bins reserved for the public. The public had a tendency to respond to the packed bins by balancing trash bags on top of them, like a vile Jenga game, or throwing garbage at their sides, forming archipelagos of uncollected trash that attracted all sorts of interesting fauna.

 

But even while the burned plant remains out of commission, the mayor is confident that the new incinerator, on which construction is set to begin next year, and the introduction of tougher fines for a variety of infractions would create a more civilized Roman context. Within it, he said, Romans would become “more sensible about doing their part” and give “the best and not the worst.”

 

Foto: Amazing Walking Tours / YouTube (19/06/2022)

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52324893366

 

As a former economy minister, he had personally helped procure billions of euros in European Union funds for Italy, with a significant chunk for Rome and other plants in the city’s waste plan. He spoke of an additional 1.4 billion euros from the Italian government to help prepare for pilgrims visiting the city and the Vatican during the 2025 Holy Year as if it were a done deal. And he already had success in attracting private investors to finance the new incinerator.

 

“Money is not the problem,” he said.

 

The system is.

 

The mayor presented an organizational chart of AMA, a company that, among other things, manages collection of solid waste in Rome, and of which the city is the sole shareholder. He said that under previous administrations, AMA had changed chief executive officers five times in seven years, had become inflated with patronage jobs and had directed the majority of resources to garbage collection areas where it was not needed. Last winter, Rome paid bonuses to its workers just to show up for work during Christmas time.

 

“This is a joke,” he said. “This should be studied in university, what you should not do.” Overhauling AMA was a part of the mayor’s three-phase plan to clean up the city.

 

He said the city will have actually hired about 650 people by the end of the year to clean the streets while cracking down on an army of loafers. Officials had begun conducting thousands of checks on employees who perpetually present doctors’ notes certifying that they can only do desk work.

 

“You can see people heal,” the mayor said of the spot checks. “Miracles.”

 

In the second stage, within two years, the city would put new dumpsters on Rome’s streets, and a third phase would begin in 2025, toward the end of his five-year term, when the waste-to-energy incinerator is expected to come on line.

 

When he campaigned for the job, Mr. Gualtieri said he did not think such a plant would be necessary and that he would improve things by Christmas. He said that it was only when he took office that he understood the mind-boggling reality of Rome’s garbage. His critics, chief among them Five Star, which opposed the new incinerator on environmental grounds, consider him a hypocrite.

 

Foto: 7Colli (11/07/2022)

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52209791423

 

But, as summer vacation ends and the city fills back up with Romans and their trash, he argues the waste-to-energy incinerator will improve Rome’s environment and be profitable, an incentive he said for investors to get in on the ground floor.

 

All of Rome, he insisted, was on the brink of a new Golden Age.

 

“I can tell you why,” he said, anticipating the natural Roman skepticism and calling Rome an undervalued asset. “It has a lot of margin for improvements.”

 

Fonte / source:

--- NEW YORK TIMES (29/08/2021).

www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/world/europe/rome-garbage-fire...

 

S.v.,

 

Foto: Nyt (22/07/2015).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325212978

 

--- ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2022: Il degrado di Roma sul New York Times: Marino più interessato ai ricchi stranieri che ai cittadini, THE NEW YORK TIMES (22|07|2015), p. A4; LA REPUBBLICA & Forexinfo.it (23|07|2015).

 

ROME — The grass in some public parks sways knee high. Disgruntled subway workers have slowed service to a crawl. Fire has rendered the city’s largest airport crammed and chaotic. The arrests of public officials pile up, revealing mob infiltration of the city government.

 

It all adds up to what Romans call “degrado” — the degradation of services, buildings and their standard of living — and the general sense that their ancient city, even more than usual, is falling apart.

 

Not all those troubles are necessarily the fault of Mayor Ignazio Marino, a former surgeon whose own integrity remains unblemished. But, strangely enough, in Rome, his decency is not necessarily seen as part of the solution, either.

 

Fonte/source:

--- THE NEW YORK TIMES (22|07|2015), p. A4.

 

rometheimperialfora19952010.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/roma...

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

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

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

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, 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

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

"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

"Los actos de Greenpeace son repudiables y esperamos que los responsables sean sancionados con todo el peso de la ley."

El Comercio, Lima, 11.12.14

 

The story made The New York Times on December 13, 2014:

 

“We fully understand that this looks bad,” [Greenpeace's] statement said. “Rather than relay an urgent message of hope and possibility to the leaders gathering at the Lima U.N. climate talks, we came across as careless and crass.”

 

The group said the stunt took place early Monday and involved activists from Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Germany and Italy. It said they took the letters with them when they left the area.

 

The group said it would cooperate with authorities. But on Friday a spokesman in Lima, Mike T., said that the activists involved in the incident had left Peru and that the group had not given their names to government officials.

 

Annie Leonard, the executive director of Greenpeace in the United States, said the stunt showed “a complete disregard for the culture of Peru and the importance of protecting sacred sites everywhere.” She added, “It is a shame that all of Greenpeace must now bear.”

  

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

Greenpeace didn't even have the decency to communicate its message in Spanish when it placed these signs on the site of the famous Nasca lines in Peru to grab publicity during the climate-change summit underway in Lima. That's about 300 million Spanish-speaking Latin Americans (not including the population of Brazil) who Greenpeace is excluding from this Anglophone discussion.

 

It shows that even greenies can be ugly gringo cultural imperialists.

 

In American terms, it would be like someone setting up signs amid the fragile thermal pools of Yellowstone National Park - in a language we don't speak.

 

Peru is outraged.

 

Greenpeace claims it followed an old tire track to this image and so did not disturb the fragile desert surface, where it is easy to leave marks that last for centuries.

 

The message looks like it's painted onto the desert, but apparently it's printed on signs. That scarcely makes this less of an offense against archaeology and the world's cultural heritage.

 

Photos taken closer to the vandalism show that the signs are individual letters and that the Greenpeace people removed rocks - I'd say a dozen or more per sign - from the desert surface to hold the signs down in the ever-present wind. ("Hey - they're just rocks. . .) Understand that it's not just the lines themselves that are significant, it's the entire desert plain where they're located. Now a surface that has been undisturbed for millennia has been intentionally damaged.

 

Peruvian authorities charge that the trespassers damaged the surface of the site. And how could they have avoided it? Surely the old tracks weren't the exact shape of the signs.

=======================================================

Lea las noticias de este infame atentado acá:

 

elcomercio.pe/opinion/editorial/editorial-greenpeace-line...

 

internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/12/10/actuali...

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

Queens Of The Stone Age @ Southampton Guildhall

 

p.s. if you are gonna post my copyrighted images elsewhere on the internet at least have the decency to credit me with them or link them back to here, or i'll probably stop posting them or at least start putting big watermarks on them.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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!”

   

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 . . .

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

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

Fanfare (Lorelei), Chopsocky and SparkSarcasm as Magical Girls Cranberry, Blueberry and Strawberry, from "Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly" (inspired by No More Heroes).

Now that is the meaning of fanservice... but believe it or not somebody complained because Quebec has "decency laws" (some kind of RC hangover I guess) under which you can be considered naked "if clad in a way that offends against public decency or order". WTF. Rocking costumes. End of story.

 

The states in question insist that someone has to take responsibility for restrictions of content that they demand as a precondition for flickr's formal internationalization; flickr has been anticipating this by increasingly encouraging flickr users to flag and effectively censor their own images. Obviously not everyone is going to do this (and the degree to which flickr users should partipate at all in this project of "voluntary" self-censorship is open to debate).

 

Presumably the states are demanding that flickr staff take some form of reponsibility for policing the content of flickrstreams which have failed to voluntarily self-censor. And presumably Flickr staff are bristling at the ridiculous requirement that they be reduced to morality police, enforcers of someone else's wierd conceptions of decency and political propriety. Why should Heather & Co. be the ones to get bombarded by 10,000 reams of hatemail for "filtering" this or that photo or photostream when the perception of objectionable content is arising not from individuals within the flickr community itself but from the states, who have very different - and very political - interests.

 

We don't know what demands the states are making but we can guess. And we can also guess that the decision to simpy dump a blanket safe-filter on the countries in question is a bit of a hardball ploy by Flickr - upping the ante - in order to force the states to back down. Ultimately, demanding that flickr staff act as agents of various states poltiical agendas IS unreasonable.

 

Obviously all this is complicated immensely by Flickr's corporate quasi-servility to Yahoo Corp, which has already demonstrated its corporate enthusiasm for catering to the powers that be and coddling the repressive political whims of states.

 

....

 

Finally, while denouncing germany, korea, et al, we would be wise to question whether there are not also domestic demands being made of the US-based Flickr.

 

While it's too soon to really say what's going on, I think it is wise to recall the larger political context here: "The War on terror" is effectively an American invitation to fascists all over the globe: it requires that ALL states play the American game or be subject to unpleasant consequences. One of America's favorite games is called "Total Information Awereness": they intend to allow the anonymity of internet communication to continue only as a facade, and they demand a "right" to know everything everyone has to say to anyone about anything. This fascist game, coupled with an obsessive demand for the capacity to annull critics and criticism, requires that corporations like Yahoo open wide their doors to all sorts of state intervention. And it's not like Yahoo will be fighting it. On the contrary, Yahoo's Board of Directors "strongly opposes" the recent Stockholder Proposal 6 requesting that Yahoo take a stand against internet censorship. Fascism has always been about ensuring that corporate power remains completely unchecked - but provided that it remains subject to political intervention by the state. There are vast profits to be made by states and corporations willing to play the game, and Yahoo Corp and the US are not the only ones playing.

   

From comments on the Help Forum.

Interesting discussion here as well.

 

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-...

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.

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

 

[Adjustments: standard raw file edits]

Bondi Beach is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Bondi Beach is located 7 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Waverley Council, in the Eastern Suburbs. It has a population of 11,656 residents. Its postcode is 2026. Bondi, North Bondi, and Bondi Junction are neighboring suburbs. Bondi Beach is one of the most visited tourist sites in Australia sparking two hit tv series Bondi Rescue and Bondi Vet.

"Bondi," originally "Boondi" is an Aboriginal word which has the same meaning as the word "surf" in English. The first record of "bondi" by European-ancestry Australians was made between 1899 and 1903. It describes the meaning as "noise made by sea waves breaking on the beach," which is essentially the definition of "surf" in contemporary American English. The Australian Museum records that Bondi means place where a fight using bondi sticks (nulla nullas or fighting sticks) took place.

In 1809 the road builder William Roberts received a grant of land in the area. In 1851 Edward Smith Hall and Francis O'Brien purchased 200 acres (0.8 square kilometres) of the Bondi area that included most of the beach frontage, which was named "The Bondi Estate." Hall was O'Brien's father-in-law. Between 1855 and 1877 O'Brien purchased his father-in-law's share of the land, renamed the land the "O'Brien Estate," and made the beach and the surrounding land available to the public as a picnic ground and amusement resort. As the beach became increasingly popular, O'Brien threatened to stop public beach access. However, the Municipal Council believed that the Government needed to intervene to make the beach a public reserve. In mid-1882, Bondi Beach became a public beach. The first tramway to the beach was established in 1884. The Waverley Council was responsible for building the first surf bathing sheds on the beach in 1903. By 1929 an estimated 60,000 people were visiting the beach on a summer weekend day. The opening of the pavilion in the same year attracted a huge crowd of 200,000.

On 6 February 1938 five people drowned and over 250 people were rescued or resuscitated after a series of large waves struck the beach and pulled people back into the sea, a day that became known as "Black Sunday".

Bondi Beach was a working class suburb throughout most of the twentieth century with migrant people from New Zealand comprising the majority of the local population. Following World War II, Bondi Beach and the Eastern Suburbs became home for Jewish migrants from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Germany. A stream of Jewish immigration continued into the 21st century and the area has a number of synagogues and a kosher butcher. The multicultural migration funded and drove the growth of the suburb throughout the 1990s into the turn of the century, moving it steadily from its working-class roots towards an upper/middle-class enclave similar to its neighbors of Rose Bay and Bellevue Hill which was listed as the most expensive postcode in the country from 2003 to 2005.

Bondi Beach was long a center for efforts to fight indecency in beach attire. The beach was a focal point of the 1907 Sydney bathing costume protests, organized to oppose proposed dress standards for beachgoers. The Local Government Act, Ordinance No. 52 (1935) governed the decency of swimming costumes and was in force between 1935 and 1961, and resulted in public controversy as the two-piece "bikini" became popular after World War II. Waverley Council's beach inspectors, including the Aub Laidlaw, were responsible for enforcing the law and were required to measure the dimensions of swimwear and order offenders against public decency off the beach. While vacationing in Australia during 1951, American movie actress Jean Parker made international headlines when she was escorted off the beach after Laidlaw determined her bikini was too skimpy. The rule became increasingly anachronistic during the 1950s and was replaced in 1961 with one requiring bathers be "clad in a proper and adequate bathing costume", allowing for more subjective judgement of decency. By the 1980s topless bathing had become common at Bondi Beach, especially at the southern end.

Sydney's Water Board maintained an untreated sewage outlet not far from the north end of the beach until the 1960s when a sewage treatment plant was built. In the mid-1990s the plant was upgraded & a deepwater ocean outfall was completed to meet water quality standards.

In March 2007, Waverley Council started proceedings to evict a hermit who was living in squalor on a cliff overlooking the beach. Peter James Paul Millhouse, calling himself Jhyimy "Two Hats" Mhiyles, came to the beach during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and became a local celebrity for his lifestyle and poetry recitals to visitors. Residents and tourists put together a "save the caveman" petition to allow him to continue residing but under certain rules. In 2009, he was arrested and charged for the rape of a tourist. While he was in custody, Waverley Council under then-mayor Liberal Sally Betts removed his belongings from the cliff. In September 2011, charges against Jhyimy were dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions over concerns of the reliability of the witness. Waverley Council has not offered recompense for his eviction from his home or loss of belongings.

In March 2020, the NSW Government closed Bondi Beach after a number of people there exceeded Australia's outdoor-gathering limit imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus in New South Wales.

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)

 

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.