Written by Marjorie Cohen, member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood Planning Committee The centerpiece for the Straus Park triangle at 106th Street and Broadway is a statue, dedicated to the memory of Ida and Isador Straus who went down on the Titanic three years before, is a likeness of the face and form of a model named Audrey Munson. Other West Side statues that Audrey modeled for are the Firemen’s Memorial in Riverside Park at 100th Street and the memorial to the USS Maine in Columbus Circle. Her story is extraordinary. Born in a small town in upstate New York in 1891, Audrey Munson became an internationally famous model and muse for the most important sculptors of the American Beaux Arts movement. Her face and body were considered the ideal of American beauty; she was widely known as “The American Venus”. She is the woman who posed for the statue of Civic Fame on top of the Municipal Building, the U.S.S. Maine Monument at Columbus Circle, the statue of Abundance on top of the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza and hundreds of other extraordinary pieces of art in this city and others around the U.S. Three quarters of the sculptures created for the Pacific International Exposition in 1915 are modeled on Audrey’s figure and face.
But her story is far from a happy one. It involves a meteoric rise to fame as an artist’s model, a brief career in silent films as the first woman to appear nude on screen, a stint as a newspaper columnist, involvement in a murder case, banishment back to upstate New York, a suicide attempt and finally, commitment to a mental hospital at the age of 39 where she lived until her death at 105. In a newspaper column that Audrey wrote in 1921 when her fame was waning, she poses this plaintive question: “What becomes of the artists’ models? I am wondering if many of my readers have not stood before a masterpiece of lovely sculpture or a remarkable painting of a young girl, her very abandonment of draperies accentuating rather than diminishing her modesty and purity, and asked themselves the question, ‘Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?’” Audrey was born in Rochester, New York but her parents –- a Protestant father and a Catholic mother — divorced when she was a young girl. Her mother, Katherine, moved with her to Providence, Rhode Island and enrolled her daughter in Catholic School where she studied music and dance and performed in local theater productions. When she was 15 years old, Audrey and her mother moved to New York City where Audrey’s mother took a job in a corset shop. Audrey’s “discovery”, as she told it, came about when she and her mother were walking down a Manhattan street and were spotted by Ralph Draper, a successful portrait photographer. She reports that Draper persuaded her to pose for him and that, struck by her beauty and poise, he immediately introduced her to Isidor Konti, a Vienna-born sculptor who asked her to pose for the Three Graces the first piece of art that Audrey’s nude form would inspire. The early 1900’s in New York is when the Beaux Arts movement flourished. The newly wealthy wanted to embellish their city, their homes and their vacation estates with paintings and sculpture. The time was absolutely right for Audrey to become, as she later called herself, The Queen of the Artists’ Studios. She was both model and muse; her beauty and her artistic imagination inspired some of the most famous sculptors of the time: Konti, Attilio Piccinilli (sculptor of Audrey’s image on the Firemen’s Memorial in Riverside Park at 100th Street), David Chester French, Augustus Lukeman (the sculptor of the Straus Park statue), Adolph Weinman and Alexander Sterling Calder (the father of Alexander Calder) who chose her to pose for most of the statuary at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Daniel Chester French described Audrey’s uniqueness: “I know of no other model with the particular style that Miss Munson possesses. There is a certain ethereal atmosphere about her that is rare.” Audrey loved her work. At the height or her popularity, she explained : “In the studio there are thousands of wonderful things to be learned. You come into contact with cultured minds able and willing to impart the spirit of the lands of music, art and literature.”
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Compiled by Jim Mackin working with Jim Torain — both Jims are members of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group’s Planning Committee. The OLD COMMUNITY is the African-American community of West 98th and 99th Streets between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue that was decimated by urban renewal in the mid-1950s. A number of outstanding achievers were raised in the OLD COMMUNITY, as described below. Its legacy continues with an annual gathering of its surviving members and with celebrating its history. A 7-munute long video entitled THE TRAGEDY OF URBAN RENEWAL recounts how the OLD COMMUNITY was physically destroyed. The critically acclaimed, award-winning video was written, produced, shot and edited by Jim Epstein and narrated by Nick Gillespie, the Editor-in-Chief of REASON magazine. Jim Epstein grew up in our BLOOMINGDALE neighborhood. He donated his research papers on THE TRAGEDY OF URBAN RENEWAL to the BLOOMINGDALE Neighborhood History Group and they have been placed in the BLOOMINGDALE Branch of the New York Public Library. The TRAGEDY OF URBAN RENEWAL may be seen on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGwsA1V2r4 Here are some of the notable people who were part of the OLD COMMUNITY: SIMON P GOURDINE (1940-2012) – He was a lawyer who in the 1970s became the highest-ranking Black executive in professional sports as Deputy Commissioner of the NBA. He was also Commissioner of Consumer Affairs under Mayor Koch, General Counsel for the NYC Board of Education, and Chairman of the NYC Civil Service Commission. HENRY “JUGGY” MURRAY (1923-2005) – He was co-founder of SUE Records (with Bobby Robinson) whose repertoire included Bobby Hendricks (“Itchy Twitchy Feeling”, lead on Drifters “Drip Drop”), Baby Washington, Barbara George (“I Know”), Inez & Charlie Foxx (“Mocking Bird”), Ike & Tina Turner (“A Fool In Love”). CHARLES ALSTON (1907-1977) – He drew posters at PS 179 before going on to Columbia University and was related to Romare Bearden by marriage. As a painter, sculptor, illustrator, and muralist he was part of the Harlem Renaissance known for his WPA mural for Harlem Hospital. His bust of Dr. Martin Luther King was the first image of an African-American displayed in the White House. RICHARD T GREENER (1844-1922) – He was the first African-American graduate of Harvard University and Dean of the Howard University School of Law. He held numerous prominent positions, including Secretary (and chief fund-raiser) of the Grant Monument Association, which created the largest mausoleum in the United State: Grant’s Tomb. GRANVILLE T. WOODS (1856-1910) – His 60 patents including one for the “troller” which is the grooved metal wheel that allowed streetcars (later known as “trolleys”) to collect electric power from overhead wires. His most important invention was the multiplex telegraph, also known as the “induction telegraph,” which allowed men to communicate by voice over telegraph wires. But he is most well known for the power pick-up device, which is the basis of the “third rail. He turned down Thomas Edison’s offer to make him a partner, and thereafter Granville T. Woods was known as “the Black Edison.” PHILIP A PAYTON, JR – He was the entrepreneur known as “The Father of Harlem” as his Afro-American Realty Company struggled and successfully opened Harlem to African-Americans. WILL MARION COOK (1869-1944) – He was a violinist and prominent African-American composer of classical, popular songs, and Broadway musicals. He gave us the very significant show “In Dahomey”, the first full-length landmark American musical written and played by Blacks. ARTURO SCHOMBURG – He was a Puerto Rican historian, writer, and an important intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance. His collection of literature, art, slave narratives, and other materials of African history constitute the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871-1938) and brother JOHN ROSAMOND JOHNSON (1873-1954) lived in 52 West 99th Street – James was a poet and much more, and John was a composer and much more. We know them mostly for giving us the hymn “Life Every Voice and Sing” which has come to be known in the United States as the “Black National Anthem.” THELMA “BUTTERFLY” McQUEEN (1911-1995) –She was called “Butterfly” in tribute to her constantly moving hands in performance of the Butterfly Ballet in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” ROBERT EARL JONES (1910 – 2006) – He was the great actor father of the great actor, James Earl Jones with a long stage, TV and movie career. He was at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance in so many productions, but is most fondly remembered for his role in Robert Redford’s “The Sting”. BERT WILLIAMS (1874-1922) – Partnered with George Walker, he is thought to be, by many such as W. C. Fields, to be the greatest vaudevillian of all time. MARCUS GARVEY (1887-1940) – Marcus Garvey – a protégé of Booker T Washington, he was a political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who promoted the return of the African Diaspora to their ancestral lands and, in so doing, championing Lack nationalism. BILLIE HOLLIDAY – “LADY DAY” (1915-1959)– Her mother ran a restaurant on West 99th Street. She was one of the greatest voices of the 20th century. EARL LEWIS and the CHANNELS – In February of 1956, there was a talent show at a community center in PS 179 that featured Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers (of “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” fame.) That show brought together 3 guys from 115th and 116th Sts with 2 guys from the OLD COMMUNITY. One of them from West 99th Street, EARL LEWIS, became the lead singer and another, CLIFTON WRIGHT, sand bass. A few days later they won a talent contest at PS 113 nearby on 113th Street. Just one week later they came in 2nd at the weekly talent show on the stage of the Apollo Theater. In June, they recorded a song that the lead singer wrote when he was 10 years old. That song. “The Closer You Are”, was the number 5 song for the entire year of 1956 on the charts of Alan Freed’s WINS Radio Show. They also had a hit song with “That’s My Desire.” By Pam Tice, former Executive Director of the New York Hostel and Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group planning committee member. I became Executive Director of Hostelling International New York in 1990. This was to be an exciting venture: the hostel was in an historic building and we were opening the city’s first youth hostel that is part of the international hostelling organization. I lived in the neighborhood and knew the building as a community eyesore, an abandoned structure with tin-sealed windows and chain link-fencing. I had strong memories of the July 1977 blackout when the building was set on fire. Now it was re-furbished and taking on new life and the neighborhood was excited to have it back in such good shape. I spent the next twenty years working in the building for two organizations. Recently, I had the time to do the research that gave me a fuller understanding of its history. I learned why it was built, how it fell upon hard times, how it was “saved” by a coalition of Columbia students and neighborhood activists, and then re-purposed by a local community development corporation and American Youth Hostels. This post is drawn from a “history talk” I gave in October 2010 at the Hostel, and shares some of the images that tell the story of 891 Amsterdam. There were three distinct eras during the life of the building: first, from the time it opened in 1883 until it shut down in 1974 as the Association Residence for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females. A second era was one of abandonment and the time when the building was saved and re-purposed, from 1974 to 1989. A third era, the past twenty years, starting on January 20, 1990 when the building opened and the first hostellers arrived. By Jim Mackin, Historian and Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group planning committee member.
How does the NINTH AVENUE EL fit into the history of railroads in New York City? The first railroad in New York City was the New York & Harlem Railroad. It was operational by 1832 – horse-drawn at first, then with steam locomotives – along its first section from the Bowery at Prince Street up to 14th St. After several locomotives exploded in the streets of New York, in 1850 the city outlawed use of locomotives south of 14th St, in 1859 moved the restriction up to 26 St, later to 42 St. On Monday evening, June 10th, 2013, Marguerite Holloway made a presentation to the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group of her book “Measure of Manhattan”. Holloway is the Director of Science and Environmental Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. “Measure of Manhattan” is the story of the tumultuous career and surprising legacy of John Randel, Jr., cartographer, surveyor and inventor. For anyone who is interested in the New York City street grid, and who probably saw “The Greatest Grid” exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York in 2012, this book is essential.
The streets and avenues in our Bloomingdale neighborhood are part of this story. With a little bit of historic license, it can be stated that Randel “created” Morningside Park because his Ninth Avenue couldn’t be extended. And we can thank him for Riverside Drive and Riverside Park because his 12th Avenue was too expensive to make (with all due respect to Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux, and Andrew Haswell Green.) John Randel did much, much more than survey for the Manhattan Street grid. He rendered maps for many other areas, along the Hudson and elsewhere in New York State and was instrumental in the building of some important canals. In addition, he invented things, notably surveying instruments, and his diagrams and maps are works of art. Let’s not leave out his plan for an early elevated railroad in New York City. Randel’s star will be rising in history and “Measure of Manhattan” by Marguerite Holloway explains why. You can visit Ms. Holloway’s site at: http://www.measureofmanhattan.com written by Gil Tauber, Historian and Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group planning committee member.
Neighborhood Nomenclature: Bloomingdale, the West End and Manhattan Valley Bloomingdale As a place name, “Bloomingdale” first appears in public records in 1688 but was probably in use much earlier. The Dutch colonists of New Amsterdam may have adopted the name by geographical analogy, since the Dutch town of Bloemendaal (which means “vale of flowers”) is northwest of Amsterdam and a few miles west of Haarlem. Bloomingdale is now a name for the blocks from 96th to 110th Streets between Central Park and the Hudson River, but it once denoted a much larger area of Manhattan Island. In British colonial times, “Bloomingdale” seems to have encompassed the entire west side of Manhattan north of the Great Kill, a creek near the present 42nd St., to what we now call Washington Heights. About 1708, the British colonial government built the Bloomingdale Road. It started at today’s Madison Square and ran, roughly along the line of Broadway, to the present 115th St. and Riverside Drive. (It was later extended to 147th St.). By the time of the American Revolution, Bloomingdale was a thriving district of farms and country estates. Shortly after 1800, three villages sprang up along the Bloomingdale Road. Harsenville was around the present 71st St., Bloomingdale Village around 99th St. and Manhattanville around 125th St. When the city’s present street plan was adopted in 1811, it included a park called Bloomingdale Square, from 53rd to 57th Streets between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. That original Bloomingdale Square was eliminated from the plan in 1857 when the city created Central Park only two blocks north of it. In 1868, the Bloomingdale Road north of 59th Street was closed and replaced by the present Broadway. In the 1870s, the creation of Morningside Park began to give the area north of 110th Street a distinct identity as Morningside Heights. Thus, “Bloomingdale” shrank in extent but continued to be used for the area closest to the old Bloomingdale Village. Today, between 96th Street and 110th Street, one can find a Bloomingdale School (P.S. 145), a Bloomingdale Branch Library, and even sections of the old Bloomingdale Road. Among other organizations using the name are the Bloomingdale School of Music, Bloomingdale Aging in Place and, most recently, the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group The West End For most of the 19th Century the best known institution in Bloomingdale was the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, opened in 1821 near 117th St. After the Civil War, real estate developers thought that, because of the asylum, the name Bloomingdale would deter prospective buyers. They campaigned to rename the area west of Central Park “the West End.” In 1880 they got the city to change the name of Eleventh Avenue, north of 59th St., to West End Avenue. A number of businesses and institutions also adopted the name West End, including West End Collegiate Church and West End Presbyterian Church. The drive to replace “Bloomingdale” with West End was somewhat blunted in 1894 when the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum moved to White Plains. Its former property is now Columbia University. In 1906, the name “Bloomingdale” gained renewed popularity when the historic Bloomingdale Reformed Church moved from 68th Street to an elegant new sanctuary on West End Avenue near 106th St., opposite what was then called Schuyler Square. The move took place during an apartment building boom that drew many new residents to the area. In honor of the church, the city renamed the park Bloomingdale Square. Unfortunately, the church encountered financial difficulties at its new site. By 1910 it had closed. In 1912, Bloomingdale Square was renamed Straus Square (now Straus Park). Although the church and the second Bloomingdale Square had lasted only a few years, their presence helped to reinforce the use of “Bloomingdale” as a neighborhood name. Manhattan Valley Valleys don’t move much but names do. When the village of Manhattanville was laid out in 1806, what is now the western portion of 125th Street was called Manhattan Street. The sharp dip in terrain at that point came to be known as the Manhattan Valley. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was frequently in the news because of the engineering challenges it posed for important public works projects such as the Croton Aqueduct and the IRT subway along Broadway. Manhattan Street was renamed in 1920. Over time, the name Manhattan Valley became unmoored from its original location and in the 1960s was reapplied to the blocks in the vicinity of Manhattan Avenue between 100th and 110th Streets. From the 1960s through the mid-1990s, newspaper articles mentioning this new Manhattan Valley were most often about crime and drug gangs, sometimes along Manhattan Avenue but more often along the parallel portions of Columbus and Amsterdam Aves. However, other articles dealt with the Manhattan Valley Development Corporation, a community-based group that has successfully rehabilitated over 600 units of housing in these blocks. Today, crime in Manhattan Valley has subsided considerably. Manhattan Avenue itself, with three blockfronts of row houses dating from the 1880s, is now a historic district. Real estate brokers often list apartments as being in Manhattan Valley. It can best be described as a sub-area of Bloomingdale, just as Bloomingdale itself is a sub-area of the Upper West Side. |