Before It's Gone: The Elizabeth Street Garden

Somehow, I'd never been to the Elizabeth Street Garden in 20+ years of living in New York City, despite having spent plenty of time in the Lower East Side. At least, I don't remember ever going there, and it's a memorable place. But when I heard it was in imminent danger of succumbing to yet another development plan, I made a point of visiting to check it out for my "Before It's Gone" series.

In 1990, an antiques dealer named Allan Reiver leased an abandoned city-owned lot next to his gallery/store to serve as overflow storage for his stock. He kept antique busts and oversize sculptures on it, and eventually began to plant perennials, grass, and trees. People started to come through the store to hang out in the green space, and eventually, in 2013, he added a public entrance to the garden. Besides being a green space, in recent years it has become a community space, hosting yoga classes, concerts, movie nights, readings, and the like.

A few years ago, the city announced plans to turn the lot over to a developer who would build housing units. The pitch is that it would be very affordable housing for senior citizens. They also promise that units will be set aside for the homeless, and that it will be a green eco-friendly building, and LGBTQ-friendly. A lot of promises. And apparently this lot is the only site anywhere in the city that this can be built. Last month, the city served the garden with an eviction notice. Some neighborhood locals, including the late Allan Reiver's son, Joseph, are attempting to fight it in court, but I imagine  that will go the way it usually does. 

As to the question of whether this place is worth saving, I was a bit agnostic, and still am. After visiting this garden, it really did strike me as a special spot, especially in this area of the city, which is really lacking green spaces. It helped that it was a particularly beautiful, unseasonably warm Autumn day when I went. The garden was full of people of all types, enjoying the day and chilling in this peaceful, beautiful spot. What makes it especially attractive is that it has such a quirky, individual, organic character, as opposed to all the generic, cookie cutter plazas that get plopped down by planners.

On the other hand, truly affordable housing really is very, very needed. I'm a bit skeptical of all the promises this developer is making, but it sounds really great on paper. At least it's not just another luxury condo or overpriced retail space. Also, there's a lot of anti-development sentiment that seems to me borders on fetishization. Some people want to preserve every single building, every site, every inch of the city, no matter what, just on some principle. 

Recently, I've been reading a book called Lost New York, and it's striking in how many things have existed in this city which were, in their time, considered iconic and irreplaceable. Much more so than this garden, and with a lot more history . . . it occurred to me that perhaps the reason I wasn't familiar with this garden is because actually it's only been open to the public for less than a decade. So, that puts it into some perspective. It will still be a sad day when this gets bulldozed - I wish the garden's defenders luck, but I don't think they have a chance. So go check it out while you can.

Happy Birthday, Charles Feltman!

Today is the birthday of Charles Feltman (1841-1910). He would have been 180 years old! His claim to fame is as the inventor of the hot dog. Awhile back, I happened to draw his mausoleum in Green-Wood Cemetery.

Feltman emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1856, at the age of fifteen. In 1867, he started a business selling food from a pushcart to beachgoers at Coney Island, including frankfurters from his native land. His innovation in 1869 was to insert the frankfurter into a custom-made elongated roll, eliminating the need for plates and utensils. He called the invention the Coney Island Red Hot, but it became better known as the 'hot dog,' perhaps because there was some question as to exactly what sort of meat was in that sausage.

Henry Collins Brown, New York historian and founder of the Museum of the City of New York, explained that "It could be carried on the march, eaten on the sands between baths, consumed on a carousel, used as a baby's nipple to quiet an obstreperous infant, and had other economic appeals to the summer pleasure seeker." I never thought of using hot dogs to pacify my children when they were babies!

In 1871, Feltman leased some land on the boardwalk and began building an entertainment complex that eventually included several restaurants and bars, a beer garden, a carousel, a roller coaster, an outdoor movie theater, a hotel, a bathhouse, a pavilion, and a maple garden. By the 1920s, Feltman's Ocean Pavilion was billed as the world's largest restaurant, serving over five million customers a year. It was actually better known for its seafood than for hot dogs.

In 1916, one of his employees, a roll-slicer named Nathan Handwerker, quit and founded a rival hot dog restaurant. A downscale version of Feltman's, Nathan's sold its hot dogs for five cents as opposed to Feltman's 10-cent weiners. Feltman's empire lasted until the early 1950s, when his sons sold the land to be developed into Astroland Amusement Park. Feltman's is now mostly forgotten, while Nathan's continues to reign as the iconic Coney Island hot dog king.

Feltman's placemat. Image from Green-Wood Cemetery Collection

REFERENCE:

Coney Island History Hall of Fame: Charles Feltman

Ferrari 641

Another set of drawings from the car exhibit at MoMA.

The Ferrari 541 is considered one of the most beautiful Formula 1 race cars of all time. It debuted in 1990 and won six of the sixteen races it entered, nearly winning the World Championship for Ferrari for the first time in seven years. Its shape was designed using exhaustive wind-tunnel studies and a precise size/weight/materials formula to maximize its aerodynamic properties. With minimal drag, it could handle at speeds over 200 mph (322 kph) and withstand lateral forces of up to 4G.

On the left is the Ferrari logo. Agip is the Italian gas company. The six-legged dog of its logo represents the four wheels of the car with the two legs of the driver.

Fiat 500F

The Fiat 500 City Car was conceived as an economic car for the masses. Three feet shorter than a Volkswagen Beetle, it was compact yet spacious enough to accommodate four passengers. Cheap but reliable, it became highly popular in Italy and then throughout Europe. Designed by Dante Giacosa, who was lead engineer for Fiat for almost 25 years, it was launched in 1957 and remained in production until 1973.

Porsche 911

  Another car featured in the MoMA Automania show.

The Porsche 911 (pronounced "nine eleven") was designed by Butzi Porsche, grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, who created the Volkswagen Beetle. Production of the Porsche 911 began in 1964 and continued through 1989. It was initially called the "Porsche 901" after its internal project number, but rival car-maker Peugeot claimed to have exclusive rights in France to car names formed by three numbers with a zero in the middle. That seems like a very specific right, but there you go.  

The April 1965 issue of Car and Driver raved:

No Contest. This is the Porsche to end all Porsches - or, rather, to start a whole new generation of Porsches. Porsche's new 911 model is unquestionably the finest Porsche ever built. More than that, it's one of the best Gran Turismo cars in the world, certainly among the top three or four.

Porsche enthusiasts used to insist that the 365 model was as nearly-perfect an automobile as had ever been designed, an immutable classic that couldn't be improved on. Oh, no? Put a familiar 356 up alongside a 911. Only yesterday, the 356 seemed ahead of its time. Today you realize its time has passed; the 356 leaves you utterly unimpressed and you can't keep your eyes off the 911. The 911 is a superior car in every respect ... the stuff legends are made of.

Citroën DS 23

Until recently, the Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art was occupied by several classic cars as part of the exhibit, Automania. Those are gone now, though the exhibit continues through January 2021 with some more cars inside, which I plan to get to soon. Here's the first of this series. . .

The French Citroën DS was one of the most ambitious car productions of all time. It created a sensation when it debuted at the 1955 Paris Auto Show. Stylish and expensive, the Citroën was a aspirational symbol of France's resurgence after the devastation of World War II. Its body was designed by Italian sculptor and industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni. In addition to its futuristic design, it featured much advanced technology and innovations such as hydraulic suspension. "DS" was a play on the pronunciation of the French word déesse, meaning "goddess." Of the Citroën, French literary theorist Roland Barthes said, "It is obvious that the new Citroën has fallen from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object . . .  We must not forget that an object is the best messenger of a world above that of nature." Over 1.5 million were sold over its 20-year production run between 1955 and 1975.

Johnson's Glass House

I don't remember why, but in 2007 I was passing through southern Connecticut with my then-girlfriend/now wife Lisa, and I had heard that architect Philip Johnson's famous Glass House had just been opened for public tours. I wasn't particularly an architecture aficionado, but I thought it might be a fun side trip, only to find that there tickets were sold out for the next six months! Fast forward to this summer, and Lisa's birthday surprise for me is a visit to the Glass House. Much more availability during a global pandemic, I guess.

Built in 1949, the Glass House is just what it sounds like - a house with four glass walls. The entire 1,800 sq ft. (167 m2) interior is visible to the world, except for a brick cylinder that conceals the bathroom. "The idea of a glass house," Johnson said, "where somebody just might be looking - naturally you don't want them to be looking. But what about it? That little edge of danger . . . " I always imagined it to be a transparent house that any passerby could look into. In actuality, it's situated in the middle of 50 acres of rural land. 

The Glass House was not well-received by other prominent architects; Frank Lloyd Wright said that he didn't know whether "to take my hat off or leave it on," and Johnson's idol and inspiration, Mies van der Rohe, ended his first visit to the house in a drunken rage. Nonetheless, the house solidified Johnson's reputation and popularized the notion of modern architecture in the U.S. Johnson used it as a weekend home and hosted events there, including performances by Merce Cunningham and the Velvet Underground. Later it became his permanent residence with his partner, David Whitney, until his death in 2005.

I had heard a bit about Philip Johnson's fascist leanings in the 1930s, and was aware that lately there is a lot of effort devoted to stripping his name off buildings and otherwise cancelling him. Later in life, he dismissed it as a youthful "phase," and it's often downplayed or bracketed as a side note. But reading up on him after this visit, I found that he was really, really into Nazism! He worked as journalist a far-right newspaper, Social Justice, where he wrote admiring reviews of Mein Kampf, visited Hitler Youth camps, attended the Nuremberg Rallies where he thrilled to "all those blond boys in black leather," and then visited the front as Germany invaded Poland. After the U.S. entered the war, of course, he stopped with all that talk, and after the war pointedly avoided mentioning his seven-year "phase."

Years later, he claimed the inspiration for the Glass House to be "a burnt wooden village I saw once where nothing was left but foundations and chimneys of brick." Several historians have pointed out that this ruined house would have been one of the Polish homes destroyed by the German Nazi invasion, to which Johnson was an eyewitness. If that's true, well, holy shit! That beautiful structure suddenly takes on a very dark cast. Johnson's political leanings were not a secret, but somehow he managed to avoid contemporaneous consequences for them, and according to biographer Ian Volner, he used this very fireplace to destroy his incriminating letters and articles.

Johnson used the acreage for full-scale architectural experiments. In addition to the Glass House itself, there are 14 other structures on the site. This one is The Study, Johnson's library and work space.

This 30' (9.1 m) tall tower is a monument to Johnson's best friend, Lincoln Kirstein, a poet and co-founder of the New York City Ballet.

The Glass House site

Buckingham Road

Colonial Revival house on Buckingham Road, in the Prospect Park South section of Brooklyn.

Prospect Park South is a neighborhood created by developer Dean Alvord in the early 20th century out of parcels of land in Flatbush purchased from the estate of Luther Voorhies and the Dutch Reformed Church. In planning the community, Alvord had the foresight to bury utility lines underground and paved the streets at a time when many were still dirt roads or lined with Belgian bricks. Unlike today's planned communities, each house had a distinctive, individual design in a variety of architectural styles. The streets were given British-derived names to sound classy. It is one of the eleven neighborhoods that now comprise the area known as Victorian Flatbush.

This house was built in 1901. It was designed by Carroll H. Pratt in the Colonial Revival Style. Its original owner was Russell Benedict, who was a NY State Supreme Court judge and lived here until 1923. A NY Times real estate article says that it has 16 rooms, with five fireplaces, seven bedrooms, four and a half baths, and a two-car garage. Pros cited are "a parlor floor befitting an embassy," and Cons are "The enormous kitchen and bathrooms could use an update."

Some process pix. Initial drawing was done while attending a neighborhood block party. The capital on the right column is actually missing; I gave it a sketchbook-repair.

Reference:

Brownstoner: Building of the day - 104 Buckingham Road

Forgotten NY: Buckingham Road, Prospect Park South

Willink Plaza

The Willink Plaza entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn is on the eastern side, on the edge of Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Built in 1890, it is one of six grand entrances created as part of an overhaul of the park at the end of the 19th century. It was designed by McKim, Mead & White.

It is named after Johan (John) Willink, a Dutch immigrant who worked as a broker in Manhattan. In the 1850s, he purchased the land here and built a mansion on the hill, which he called Bloemen Heuvel - or Flower Hill - and moved in with his wife, Cornelia, her sister Elizabeth Ludlow, and the sisters' elderly mother.

The Willinks barricaded themselves within Flower Hill. The mansion was enclosed by an iron fence, its windows never opened, and the grounds were guarded by bulldogs that were kept in the basement and fed raw meat. After some years, the old woman passed away, and then John Willink died after being thrown from his horse-drawn carriage. The sisters became even more eccentric and reclusive, emerging only to attend Trinity Church or meddle with their employees and managers. Cornelia died, and years later Elizabeth, residing in a hotel they'd built on the land, gave up the ghost.

There were no heirs, and so the mansion was opened to the public to be liquidated to settle the estate. Swarms of people flocked to the mansion, and discovered the Willinks had been hoarders. The mansion was covered in cobwebs, filled with trunks of clothing, closets full of unused brooms, still-crated furniture, collections of fine silver and piles of cheap junk. Everything was sold, down to the brooms, and eventually the hill was levelled and the land purchased to be incorporated into the park.

Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt, an acid-tongued neighbor and local historian, described the scene: "Perhaps no gates were ever kept more sedulously locked against the public, and no lawn had ever been more strictly kept free from trespassing feet than the beautiful lawn about this house, and never has one been more entirely free to the public than that spot is now." Ironically, this once-restricted area is not the second-busiest entrance to the park.

Process pix:

Reference:

The Social History of Flatbush and Manners and Customs of the Dutch Settlers in Kings County by Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt

Brownstoner: Past and Present - Flatbush at Ocean Avenue

Brooklyn Eagle: How Did Willink Hill Get Its Name?

Langlois Mausoleum

The NYC Chapter of Urban Sketchers was in Greenwood Cemetery recently, so I met up with them for a bit and did this drawing. 

This mausoleum looks small, but if you look through the front door window, you see a set of stairs leading down to subterranean vaults!

I have a whole series of Greenwood Cemetery drawings that I've never posted. I did a lot of research on them, discovering fascinating stories of the people buried there. I couldn't find out anything about this family, the Langlois, though. There are five of them, buried between 1866 and 1893, but I know nothing about them.

I finished the ink drawing on site, and completed the painting later on.

More Life Drawing

 Got to another figure drawing session at Minerva's Studio today. The only session that fits into my schedule these days is the Long Pose session. I don't really like only having one pose over the three hour session, but that's what I got right now. 

Blooming Sunflower

 A sunflower in mid-bloom.

Return to Figure Drawing

 It's been a long while since I've done any live figure drawing. Two years, maybe? Longer? Fortunately and amazingly, Minvera Dunham's drawing studio is still around, and I got to a morning session today. Rusty, rusty!

4th Avenue/9th Street Station

The 4th Avenue/9th Street Station. It's a station on the old Independent Subway System line, servicing the F and G trains. This and the Smith Street Station are situated on the Culver Viaduct, an elevated section of track spanning the Gowanus Canal. Completed in 1938, the Culver Viaduct was the only elevated portion of the IND. At its highest point, it rises to 90 feet (27.4 m) above grade. It was built to this extreme height to accommodate the tall ships which used the Gowanus at the time, as it was deemed too expensive to tunnel below the canal.

Process Pix: