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.

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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.

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Frick Steam Tractor

I found this hulking old steam tractor on Highway 751 in Apex, NC, outside a roadside farmers market called Jean's Berry Patch. It had a dozen or more antique cars, tractors and farm equipment parked outside. I only had time to draw this one.

This was built by the Frick Co., based in Waynesboro, NC, sometime in the 1920s. To see a similar machine from this company, check out this video...

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Reference

Farm Collector has several articles on the Frick Company and its products. Here's one

Old Long Tractor

 I saw this derelict tractor on the same lot as the Henry J car of my last post.

One of the things that makes researching these drawings so fun for me is that no matter what the subject is, there's usually someone out there who has done an obsessively detailed history of that thing. I've found mind-numblingly in-depth sites on New York streetlamps, 19th-century wood stove manufacturers, early-20th-century hat manufacturers, 19th century gambling kings, and everything else. You never know what rabbit hole you're going to find.

For example, this tractor came from Long Manufacturing, based in Tarboro, N.C., which was established in 1948. It's a model 550, built in the 1970s. During this period, Long outsourced manufacture of its tractors to Universal Tractor Barsov of Romania.  

The history of the Long Manufacturing Company is not that interesting, but nonetheless has inspired some guy to post a FIVE part history of the firm and its tractors, providing not just the information above, but also such fascinating details as:

"The hydraulic system of the 550 used the same size of pump as the smaller tractors, and resulted in a lift of 2660 lbs, the same as the smaller units. Owing to its larger size and weight, power steering was standard equipment on the 550. Also steering related, the front axle was the same basic telescopic unit as used on the 350 & 445 tractors, but, due to different front wheels, resulted in a front track adjustment of 52 to 79 inches in 8 increments, on 7.50X16 tires. Rear adjustment was the same 47 1/4 tp 74."

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REFERENCE:

Super detailed history of Long tractors at Import Tractor Parts

Henry J

I was in North Carolina for a bit this summer, and came across a warehouse with some old abandoned vehicles rusting away outside. This guy is the remnants of a 1951 Henry J.

The Henry J was produced by the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation between 1950 and 1954. It was intended as a low-budget entry into the small car market, meant to appeal to less affluent consumers. To keep the price low, the car was designed to be extremely bare-bones, lacking a glove compartment, armrests, sun visors, and even a rear trunk lid! (Owners accessed the trunk by folding down the rear seat.)

When the prototype was introduced, a contest was held to name the car. The winner was "The Henry J," which was an amazing co-incidence given that the Chairman of Kaiser-Frazer was Henry J Kaiser. While largely forgotten today, Kaiser was once one of the most popular men in America. He was known as the "Father of Modern Shipbuilding," and was responsible for mass-producing Liberty Ships, cargo ships that supplied the war effort in the Second World War. The Kaiser Shipyards could complete a ship in four days. After the war, a poll ranked him as the foremost civilian war-hero, crediting him with having "done more to help the president win the war than any other civilian." He was a contender for Roosevelt's second Vice President, and was so popular that they made a comic book of his life! He was also the "Kaiser" in "Kaiser Permanente."

The Henry J was not one of Kaiser's successes, however. The car did not catch on with the public, and production far exceeded demand. By 1953, production of the cars had halted. Some went on to have a second life as hot rods, as seen here. Their lightweight bodies combined with a muscular engine makes them super-speedy.

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REFERENCES

Classic Car History.com

Old Cars Weekly.com

Kaiser Permanente - Our History: Henry J Kaiser: America's No. 1 Civilian Hero