Bennett's Owls

This post also appears on Fashion Herald.

James Gordon Bennett Jr.'s adoration of owls may have bordered on pathological, but in the best possible way. While serving as a Third Lieutenant for the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service (the pre-Coast Guard Coast Guard) during the Civil War, the son of New York Herald founder James Gordon Bennett Sr. claimed that a serendipitous owl guided him through rough seas to safety.

As a tribute to his spirit animal, he lined the Herald building with several bronze owls in 1894, and years later even had an owl shaped tomb designed to hold his remains. The Herald owls, along with the statue of Minerva and the bell ringers, were created by French sculptor Antonin Jean Carles. The two corner owls with their wings spread had eyes that lit up to the delight of evening passersby.

The Herald building in the early 1900s, looking north from 34th Street. Statuary from the Bennett monument in Herald Square is on the facade of the building along with Bennett's owls.

Today those two owls perch on either side of the Herald monument, and their eyes continue to light the way.

Back of the Herald Square monument, facing south. Photo: 34SP

Two more of Bennet's owls guard the entrance to Herald Square.

Entrance owl. Photo 34SP

The Herald building may have been Bennett's most well known tribute to the bird, but it wasn't his first. At some point in the mid 1800s Bennett bought a stone villa in Newport Rhode Island, originally built in 1833 by Rhode Island stonemason Alexander McGregor. The new homeowner enlisted the help of Newport architect Dudley Newton to add several embellishments to the property, including gateposts topped with owl statuary. It's hard to see in this picture, but these look to be a leaner species than the Herald owls, but no less fierce.

Bennett's stone villa and owl sentries in 1957, shortly before the building was demolished to make way for a shopping center. Photo: Preservation Society of Newport County

So solid was his devotion to the bird, he also had Stanford White design a 200-foot high tomb shaped like an owl that would serve as Bennett's mausoleum. Work was halted due to the untimely but not entirely surprising death of Stanford White in 1906. The design never came to be, but the Times reported that in 1918, shortly after Bennett's death, drawings of a model owl tomb were found on the desk of sculptor Andrew O'Conner, who had been commissioned by White to work on the initial designs.

That same year Frank Munsey, then owner of the New York Sun bought out the Herald, combined the two papers, and moved the offices to 42nd Street. The owls were removed from the facade of the Herald building. A few have since resurfaced: aside from the Herald Square owls mentioned above, the Brooklyn Museum has a couple on display, and there are a few above the entrance to NYU's Shimkin Hall.

Reviving Tony Smith's "Presences"

This post also appears on the Bryant park blog.

In the early 1960s American artist Tony Smith constructed a number of sculptures from tetrahedral and octahedral shapes -- he called them "presences." In 1966 he was included in a critically acclaimed exhibit of minimalist and "reductive art" at the Jewish Museum called Primary Structures. Just one year later, several of Smith's sculptures were exhibited in Bryant Park as part of the first temporary display of contemporary art in a city park. Thankfully the tradition continues.

The Parks Commissioner at the time was Thomas Hoving. In March of 1967, just after the Smith exhibit was installed in the park, Hoving left that post to become the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He oversaw a huge renovation and expansion project of the museum, and then wrote about it. But, during his 14 months as Parks Commissioner, he brazenly went about the city, collecting donations to make changes to the city's parks and igniting an interest in public art.

Tony Smith (wearing hat) and workers during the installation. Image: New York City Parks Photo Archive

Installation of Tony Smith's "The Snake is Out" Image: New York City Parks Photo Archive

Tony Smith with "Willy," "Amaryllis," "The Snake is Out," and "Spitball" (L to R). Image: Tony Smith Estate

Nineteen years later, in 1998, another of Smith's pieces, "Smug" (1969-1970) was exhibited in Bryant Park, this time on the fountain terrace. (I think this image may have been scanned backwards -- from this angle on the terrace you should see 40th Street, not 42nd with the Grace building. It's a beautiful shot of the sculpture though).

"Smug" on the Fountain Terrace. Image: Tony Smith Estate

Smith's work is incredibly recognizable and all over the place, but apparently not fully inventoried. There is, however, an ongoing effort by the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art -- North America (INCCA) to compile a complete inventory of Smith's sculptures. The Tony Smith Sculpture Project South Orange has a good partial list along with a lot of supplementary information about the artist, his life, and work.

I saw one recently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC called "Moondog" (1964). It was inspired in part by composer and street performer Louis Harding. Harding was also known as Moondog and the "Viking of Sixth," for his chosen location (usually) at Sixth Avenue and 53rd Street.

Smith's "Moondog" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC

Here is the muse "Moondog" in his Viking garb. He was pretty amazing, and no doubt, one of the city's more interesting "presences."

In conjunction with the Tony Smith Centennial Celebration this year, Smith's works "One-Two-Three" (1976) will be on view in Bryant Park from March 13 - April 10, on the upper terrace. Come check it out!

Read about previous public art exhibits in the park:
Kenneth Snelson (1967)
Mel Chin (1984)
George Rickey (1986)
Alexander Calder (1993)
Kate Gilmore (2010)
Sheryl Oring (2003, 2011)

House of Mansions to Bankers' Trust

This post also appears on the Bryant park blog.
 
In 1855, developer George Higgins bought a plot of land at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, across the street from the Croton Distributing Reservoir. He hired American architect Alexander J. Davis to design a new building, and the result was this 11 unit luxury residential complex with crenelated parapets (like a castle!). Completed in 1856 and advertised as the House of Mansions, the housing complex promised residents views of "the water of the Croton, like an artificial pool, or lake . . . from the upper floors."  

Fifth Avenue looking south from 42nd Street. Image [1880]: NYPL or LOC

Just a few years earlier, the nearby Crystal Palace and Latting Observatory attracted visitors from all over, and helped establish midtown Manhattan as a tourist destination. Though the area was far from urban at the time, Higgins no doubt noticed the gradual migration of wealthy Manhattanites north along Fifth Avenue, and hoped to cash in on it. 

As history blogger Daytonian in Manhattan writes, Higgins' plan did not work -- Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street was still considered too rural for most New Yorkers. (The  Samuel P. "Sasparilla" Townsend residence had only recently been built at 34th and Fifth, and that's eight blocks south.) The property was bought and sold a few more times, and eventually the Rutgers Female Institute (later, Rutgers Female College) relocated here. A formal dedication ceremony was held on October 24, 1860. The school soon outgrew this location as well, and the property passed through a few more owners.

Fifth Avenue looking north from 41st Street, [1883].

By 1884 the Pottier & Stymus Manufacturing Company had purchased the land, demolished the structures, and built a new building on the site. The New York Times called it "extensive and elegant," and described the building as having a brownstone frontage on Fifth Avenue as well as a side entrance on 42nd Street. (I think it's the building in the photo below with the wall sign that reads "American Safe Deposit Bank.")

Fifth Avenue, looking north toward 42nd Street [1900-1910]. Image: LOC

By this time the landscape of Fifth Avenue had changed from rural to commercial, with a brief residential heydey in between. The area surrounding 34th Street by now had transformed from residential to retail, and many of the brownstones near 42nd Street were rapidly being torn down and replaced with commercial buildings and warehouses. 

The next ten years brought more changes and taller buildings to Fifth Avenue. In 1915 the Oceanic Investment Company announced the construction of a new building to be named after the building's primary tenant, the Astor Trust Company. The Astor Trust Company was set to move from their existing offices on Fifth Avenue and 36th Street and into this building, occupying a 21-year lease upon the building's completion in 1917.

Astor Trust Company building, NE corner of Fifth Ave. and 42nd Street, 1917. Image: LOC

The building's architect was Montague Flagg, also known for designing the Thomas Cook building at 565 Fifth Avenue, which is no longer. The Astor Trust Company building was eventually renamed the Bankers' Trust building and still stands, though it's no longer the tallest on the block, and there isn't a crenelated parapet to be found. 

Other Sources:
The Fifth Avenue Association. Fifty Years on Fifth, 1907-1957.
Lockwood, Charles. Manhattan Moves Uptown: An Illustrated History.

A Tower Among Skyscrapers

This post also appears on the Bryant Park blog.

In the late 1960s the city began mounting art exhibitions in outdoor public spaces throughout Manhattan. Bryant Park's central location made it the perfect space for exhibiting large sculptures, and in the following years, several were displayed on the expansive lawn. One of the first was Kenneth Snelson's Needle Tower, as seen in the photo below with Sixth Avenue in the background. (This view is almost unrecognizable now, because the buildings that appear to be along Sixth now have larger buildings in front of them; the Bush Tower looks fantastic.)

Needle Tower in Bryant Park, 1967. Photo: Parks Department

Snelson's 60' x 20' tower was accompanied by three smaller pieces, and received positive feedback from the public as well as critics. Needle Tower is a "tensegrity" work -- the word is a combination of the terms tension and structural integrity. Compressed parts (in this case, bars or tubes) are attached not to one another, but to a network of cables. The tension of the cables dictates the structural shape and stability of the whole object. The term supposedly was coined by Buckminster Fuller, but Snelson argues that he came up with the underlying principle.  

Watch a computer animation of Needle Tower assembling itself along with several other examples of tensegrity on Snelson's youtube channel.

Snelson with several smaller models including Needle Tower (center). 

Today, the tower stands outside the Hirshhorn Gallery in Washington DC.

Photo: AK

New York City's commitment to public art continues today with the Art in the Parks Program.

Read more about public art exhibited in Bryant Park, including works by Mel Chin, George Rickey,  Alexander Calder, Kate Gilmore, and Sheryl Oring.

Happy 100th Birthday, Hotel McAlpin

It's now a residential building called the Herald Towers that somewhat blends in with surrounding tall architecture, but when it was first built in 1912, the Hotel McAlpin was a formidable presence. At 25 stories tall, it was the largest hotel in the world with 1,500 rooms, not including the Turkish bath, roof garden (a solid amenity if there ever was one), ballroom (throwback to the Gilded Age), and convention hall (meh).

The McAlpin going up, March 1912. Photo: MCNY

The building was designed by American architect Frank Mills Andrews and besides its fortuitous location next to the Sixth Avenue El train, it was smack in the center of rapidly changing part of the city. In 1912, the Macy's store on West 34th Street and Broadway (across the street) was celebrating its tenth year, and the area was quickly transforming from the den of sin it was in the late 1800s to a retail and hospitality center. A few blocks away on 34th Street at Park Avenue, the Vanderbilt Hotel was under construction; the Titanic sank in April 1912, taking with it Macy's founder Isidor Strauss; and the first monument dedicated to a woman was celebrated in Bryant Park. One year earlier, the New York Public Library opened its doors to the public, and in 1913, the Grand Central Oyster Bar opened its doors. In short, people were traveling, shopping, and eating out more.

The Hotel McAlpin opened for business on December 29, 1912, a Monday.

Photo: LOC

A year after the hotel's opening, members of the Blackfoot Confederacy from Montana visited the hotel. The visit was arranged by Louis W. Hill, fonder of the Northern Railroad Company to promote train service from western states.

Photo: MCNY

All sorts of PR stunts were staged, some with phonographs.

Photo: MCNY

The McAlpin was also one of the first hotels to rent ground-level space to retailers. By 1917,  the hotel's owners had purchased additional frontage along the 34th Street entrance, and were slated to add 200 more rooms.

Photo: NYPL

The McAlpin was also known for its restaurant located in the Alpine Cellar, called the Marine Grill, not so much for the food, as for the decor. The walls and ceilings were covered in Terra Cotta murals based on paintings by Fred Dana Marsh, and showed the history of the New York harbor. 

Marine Grill, c. 1924. Photo: MCNY

The restaurant eventually closed, but thankfully the murals were rescued and are now installed at the Chambers Street / Park Place A train stop as part of the MTA's public art program.

Postcard: Pisark's

 

Sounds Like Fighting Words

Recently my boss asked me to find the first recording of a U.S. President. I thought it may have been Teddy Roosevelt, but it wasn't, and so I went backwards, finding and listening to recordings of McKinley, then Cleveland, until I got to what actually was the first recording of a U.S. President - 23rd President Benjamin Harrison, recorded in 1889. Harrison was in office from 1889-1893, nestled in between Grover Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms. He looks like he sounds.

23rd President Benjamin Harrison sitting pretty, 1888

It could have stopped there, but I got lost in the wonderful audio rabbit hole that is the Library of Congress's main sound recording page. I highly recommend spending some time with the Vaudeville recordings. They are amazing, and quite distracting.

Of course, then it's "What were these early recordings made with and listened on?" When I was looking into the history of sound playing/recording devices, I noticed that two names kept popping up: Thomas Edison and German inventor Emile Berliner. At first I thought Thomas Edison pulled a fast one on Berliner, just like he did Nikola Tesla (be still my heart). You know the story. But no, Edison filed his patent (no. 200,521, issued February 18, 1878) a few years before Berliner, and no doubt got the word out and the cash flow in first as well.

Thomas Edison wearing a very plaid suit and posing with his cylinder phonograph, [1878-1880]

Thomas Edison filed a patent for the first cylinder phonograph in 1878, and followed it up with several additional patents for modifications and improvements. Lines and grooves were scratched on the surface of a cylinder (part? object? thing?) of the phonograph, and as it moved, vibrations produced sound.

Edison had that market cornered for about ten years, until German inventor Emile Berliner came along with his gramophone in 1887. [There's a typo on the Google link to this patent, saying it was originally filed in 1837, not 1887. Huzzah?!]

Emile Berliner, so happy with his gramophone that his eyes are closed, [1910-1929]

Berliner changed (and improved) the design by swapping the cylinder out for a disc-shaped plate, also with grooves. He experimented with a number of materials for the discs including celluloid and hard rubber.  He marketed it to toy companies, and throughout the late 1880s he and Edison entered into a patent-filing war, adjusting and tweaking their respective inventions.

Berliner may have had the last laugh though. During a visit to London in 1900, he saw a painting by Mark Barraud of the artist's dog "Nipper" peering into a gramophone, called "His Master's Voice." Berliner trademarked the image and it went on to become one of the most iconic images in advertising history. Funny thing is, is that the gramophone in the painting is an Edison-Bell model. Apparently the image was first shopped to the Edison company and they turned it down.

"His Master's Voice" by Mark Barraud. Image: wikipedia

**All photos except for "Nipper" are from LOC's digital collection.

The Herald Building: Now with a Duane Reade!

This post also appears on Fashion Herald.

The New York Herald building at West 35^th Street where Broadway meets Sixth Avenue, was a two-story building designed by Stanford White of architecture firm McKim, Mead & White. White was commissioned to build it for friend James Gordon Bennett Jr. to house the new Herald offices when the paper moved uptown from Park Row in 1894. The story of the Herald and its founders are here, here, and here.

Photo: MCNY

The Herald had offices in this building until Bennett Jr.’s death in 1918. Soon after, Frank Munsey bought the paper and merged it with the New York Sun to create the Herald-Sun. The new combo-paper’s offices were moved to West 42^nd Street. 

The north half of the building was demolished in 1921, leaving only the southern part, statues intact on the  building’s façade. 

Photo: MCNY

Eventually, in 1930, a new, 24-story office building was designed and built by the architecture firm Clinton & Russell where the northern half used to be. The firm was founded in 1894, the same year the Herald building was completed (weird coincidence!).

Photo: Berenice Abbott via the  NYPL and MCNY

In the 1930s the Sixth Avenue Group (a business improvement group of sorts) sponsored a contest to re-design and “beautify” the area following construction of a new underground subway line and station, and the razing of the Sixth Avenue elevated line. The low rise portion of the Herald building was completed in 1940. I’m pretty sure that "completed" meant that the building was stripped of its Stanford White-designed façade work and given the 1940s-1950s simple (sterile) treatment. The front windows are much larger in the new building, and the ground floor looks lower, but I think the building's original bones are still there. That same year, the James Gordon Bennett memorial was installed in Herald Square in the form of a 40 ft. tall monument, unveiled during a dedication ceremony on November 19, 1940. 

Postcard: Pisark's

Herald Square and the surrounding area went into a decline in the 1970s and 1980s, but were brought back to life with a late 1990s renovation by the 34th Street Partnership.The building is still there, and the first two floors are currently home to a massive Duane Reade.Time marches on.

Additional Sources:

Kruger, Richard. The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune

“Sixth Ave. Group to Beautify Parks,” NYT, March 24, 1939

“Frank A. Munsey Buys the Herald and the Telegram,” NYT, January 15, 1920