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.

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

The James Gordon Bennetts' New York Herald, Part 3

This is part 3 of a 3 part series on the New York Herald.

After returning to the States, Bennett commissioned Stanford White to design new offices for the Herald. The new building would be located a fair distance from Park Row and competitor Joseph Pulitzer's World building, completed in 1890. Bennett obtained a 30-year lease at Sixth Avenue and 35th Street, at the south border of a small clearing then known as Dodge Plaza in honor of William Earle Dodge, who I've mentioned before.

Park Row, and most of the competition

Bennett chose the new site for its proximity to public transportation and nightlife. The elevated train line had been built a few years before, and now afforded the public, including Herald's reporters, easy access to most parts of the city. The site also bordered Tin Pan Alley, and several music halls and theaters, including places like Jim Corbett's and the Haymarket.

Corbett's, said to be a hangout spot for JGB Jr., c. 1900. Photo: MCNY

No stranger to scandal himself, Stanford White designed an elaborate Renaissance Revival building based on Fra Giancondo's Loggia del Consiglio, a late 15th century seat of the local city council in Verona.  The Loggia's roof was lined with sculptures of famous poets, including the risque poet Catallus. It is said that this inspiration was chosen on purpose as a nod of sorts to the Herald's coarse nature and Bennett's sporting life.

Instead of poets lining the roof, Bennett chose his spirit animal, the owl. Supposedly he claimed that an owl's cry saved him at sea during his Civil War service.

the Herald building shortly after construction. Postcard: Pisark's

A couple of them are now incorporated in the Bennett memorial in Herald Square. I've written of the monument before, and so have others. . .

Ever-conscious of public perception, Bennett mandated that there would be windows along the Broadway side of the building allowing passersby to view the presses below. People loved it and regularly crowded at them to watch sheet after sheet of the Herald come off the presses.

The Herald building's elaborate western facade and people crowding near the windows, c. 1902 Photo: LOC

And, what they saw below:


The Herald presses, c. 1902. Photo: LOC

The acclaim of the building and increased commerce of the area led to a name change for the Square. It became known as Herald Square in the late 1890s. Still a commercial hub, now instead of newspapers, the square welcomes millions of daily shoppers.

Part 1 can be found here; part 2 here.

More sources:
Broderick, Mosette. Triumvirate, McKim, Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America’s Gilded Age.

The James Gordon Bennetts' New York Herald, Part 2

This is part 2 of a 3 part series on the New York Herald.

In 1866 James Gordon Bennett Sr. passed the publishing duties of the New York Herald on to a man who many thought to be an unlikely successor -- his son James Gordon Bennett Jr.

Image: NYPL

James Gordon Bennett Jr. is best known in history for his devotion to yachting, ballooning, and socializing on a grand scale. Mostly due to the Herald's commercial success, he was raised to cultivate and enjoy just about any recreational activity that required expensive equipment and/or traveling. Aside from a brief stint serving as a Third Lieutenant for the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service during the Civil War, Bennett practiced a life of leisure with a consistency and fervor that led artist friend and Julius LeBlanc Stewart to paint it at least twice. 

On the Yacht "Namouna", Venice (1890), Julius LeBlanc Stewart

 . . . with totally different lighting schemes. The sky in the painting below looks like the sun is rising and setting at the same time.

Yachting on the Mediterranean (1896), Julius LeBlanc Stewart



As publisher of the Herald JGB Jr. had an extensive list of "Don'ts" for reporters to follow. The list contained very detailed instructions on how to address or refer to the wealthy (i.e. his friends) in text. Father and son were a study in opposites: James Gordon Bennett Sr. was known for exposing scandal, and James Gordon Bennett Jr. was known for living it. Their contradictory lifestyles did not escape other members of the press, who regularly satirized both, and often referred to Jr. as "The Commodore." Here, JGB Sr. visits his namesake from the grave to keep him in line, and Jr. reacts.

Image: NYPL

Under Bennett Jr.'s leadership, the Herald's circulation gradually dropped and expenses steadily rose. Bennett moved to Paris in 1877 (Wikipedia, 4th paragraph) and continued to run the newspaper from there. While in Paris, he launched the Paris Herald (forerunner to the International Herald Tribune), and an evening edition of the paper called the Telegraph. He wasn't gone for good though. The famous Herald building was still yet to be built and the Square named after the paper of the same name. More on this in part 3.

Part 1 of this series can be found here.

Street Eats and City Crowds -- 100 Years and Counting

This photo was posted on Shorpy's, a historic and vintage photo blog. It shows Herald Square, currently managed and maintained by the 34th Street Partnership, and the surrounding area, in 1908. That's the 6th Avenue elevated train on the right, and in front of the Herald building, the William Earle Dodge monument, now in Bryant Park.


Image from Shorpy's
























Although a relatively common view -- I'm pretty sure the photo was taken from the elevated subway station at 33rd Street, in Greeley Square -- what is special about this particular one, is the insane amount of detail and information it conveys. If you click here to see the high resolution photo, you will see much, much more.

This lunch wagon, spotted by a Shorpy's commenter, and re-blogged by Midtown Lunch, was parked on Sixth Avenue, east of the elevated train tracks, or, to their left in the above photo. The commenter, Copyboy, included an excerpt from a letter sent to the New York Times complaining the cart's placement on Sixth Avenue obstructed pedestrian and vehicular traffic from 34th Street, all the way to 42nd Street, on the northwest corner of Bryant park, where it was often seen.

Displayed on top of the facade of the Herald Building, shown in a close-up below, is the James Gordon Bennett Memorial, removed from the building in 1921, and later reinstalled on a Milford pink granite pedestal in the park in 1940. The owls are another story.

And there's this:

Not nearly as many people in the street then, as now, but it looks so much more chaotic. I can identify at least six different types of transportation in use: automobiles, trolley cars, horse-drawn carriages, walking, the elevated train (not in this close-up, but in the main shot), and that strange thing in the pink box that looks like a motorized pedi-cab with the driver in the back, and passengers up front.  I guess bicycles were still too new to be considered a viable form of transporation, rather than a leisure activity. Also, without traffic lanes, and  organized direction, the street looks more like a free-for-all than it likely was. They're probably all heading for the lunch wagons.