No. 35 West 57th St - Schieffelin Bowne House

 

On West 57th St., between 5th and 6th Avcnues, stands this lone Beaux Arts-style mansion. Large vacant lots flank it, awaiting construction, and a graint I-beam structure to its west seems to be holding it up.

In 1891, it was given, fully furnished, as a wedding gift to Maria Louise Vanderbilt, great-granddaughter of "Commodre" Vanderbilt, patriarch of the Vanderbilt dynasty, and William Jay Shieffelin, a descendent of John Jay, the first chief justice, by Maria Louise's mother. At the time, the area was block after block of these brownstone mansions. Several of the Vanderbilts lived in the enclave, including Cornelius Vanderbilt.

They only lived there until 1898. Commercial development began to encroach into the area, and the "hustle and bustle of that area made the residence undesirable," according to Wayne Craven's book, Gilded Mansions. So Maria Louise's mother built and furnished another brownstone for the couple, this one on 66th Street. The 57th Street building was sold to a business man named Samuel Bowne in 1899. By 1910, most of the mansions on the block were demolished, but No. 35 somehow survived and was converted for commercial and business use. 

In recent years, the first two floors were occupied by restaurants, Cafe Classico and The Great American Health Bar. In 2021, demolition permits were filed by the ownder, Solow Reality, who tried to push out the commercial tenants. However, the tenants had leases that ran through 2040, and the owner of Solow died in 2020. The company in now owned by his son, but no new permits have been filed. Cafe Classico is gone, but The Great American Health Bar is still there. But it's unclear if it's actually still in business. I've seen workers going into the space, but it didn't look like an active business. It stands there in this weird, kind of surreal limbo.  I can't imagine this building remains very much longer.

Sources:

Ephemeral New York: 35 West 57th Street

Dayton in Manhattan 1891 Schieffelin Bowne House

New York Yimby: Demo Permits Filed For 35 West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan

Patch New York: Old Vanderbilt Mansion Billionaires Row Be Demolished

Coignet Stone Company Building

The Coignet Stone Company Building in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Built in 1872-73, this is the last remaining structure of the Coignet Stone Company complex, which occupied five acres of land along the Gowanus Canal. The company manufactured a type of pre-cast cement material patented by Frenchman François Coignet. This material was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Metropolitan Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History, as well as an alternative to brownstone in residential buildings. The company boasted that it could produce the facade of a building in a single day. This building looks like a mansion, but it actually served as a showcase for the product, and is the oldest remaining concrete structure of its type in New York.

The Coignet Company went out of business in 1882. The building was used by the Brooklyn Improvement Company until 1957. In the mid-1960s, it was covered in imitation red brick and had various occupants, but by the 1980s it was abandoned and left to deteriorate. Nonetheless, in 2006 it was designated a New York City Landmark.

The previous year, Whole Foods had bought the Coignet factory site, though not including this building. Whole Foods agreed to pay for its restoration, I guess as part of a deal to secure permits and zoning for the rest of the property, or maybe just because they didn't want a dilapidated eyesore next to their fancy new supermarket. Whole Foods built their store, and after a few lawsuits and fines were levied, made good on their promise to fund the building's restoration, even being awarded the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award for "excellence in restoration" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

The building was then put on the market for $5 million, and then again in 2019 for $6.5 million. However, there were no buyers, because despite the excellence in restoration to the exterior, the interior is still dilapidated. It's currently back on the market with an asking price of $2.99 million.

The Arthur Foss

 

The Arthur Foss, docked in Seattle, WA, is the oldest wooden-hulled, 19th century tugboat still afloat. She is 120 feet long with a 24-foot beam and draws 15 feet. She was built in 1889 in Portland, OR, and operated in the Puget Sound towing log rafts and then during the Alaska Gold Rush. In 1933, she was used in the film Tugboat Annie, starring Maureen O-Sullivan, and then in 1940's Tugboat Annie Sails Again, featuring Ronald Reagan.

In 1941, The Arthur Foss began towing barges from Pearl Harbor to Wake Island. She escaped the Japanese invasion by mere hours. After the war, she was returned to civilian service in Washington, and in 1970 she was donated to the Northwest Seaport Museum in Seattle. She was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989.

Historical Sources:

Harbordays.com blog - Tug of the Month: Arthur Foss

Tugboatinformation.com

Nom Wah Tea Parlor

 

Nom Wah Tea Parlor is the oldest continuously-running restaurant in New York's Chinatown. It opened at 13-15 Doyers Street in 1920, and moved to the space next door in 1968, where it remains. Originally, it was primarily a bakery, but it is now known for its Hong Kong-style dim sum. The original owners are unknown, but is was run by the Choy Family in the 1940s, and sold to one of its employees, Wally Tang, in 1974. It's now owned by Wally's nephew, Wilson, who has expanded the business to other locations.

Doyers Street has one of the most infamous reputations in New York City history. It was named after Hendrik Doyer, a Dutch immigrant who built a distillery and tavern there in 1791. In the late 19th century, the area transformed into Chinatown, with the first Chinese language theater located on Doyers. The short street also became infamous for its tenements, gambling parlors, and opium dens. It is only one block, about 200 yards (183 m) long, with a sharp bend in the middle. That bend earned the name "Bloody Angle," because the sharp turn made it a perfect spot for rival gangs to ambush one another. In his book "The Gangs of New York," Herbert Asbury wrote, "The police believe, and can prove it so far as such proof is possible, that more men have been murdered at the Bloody Angle than at any other place of like area in the world." Doyers Street remains at the heart of Manhattan's Chinatown, though it's been a long time since it's seen warring tongs. Bloody Angle is now just the spot where tourists and hipsters line up to get into Nom Wah.

348 West 23rd St.

 West 23rd St., between 8th and 9th Ave.

In the late 19th century, the area of Chelsea had become a fashionable residential neighborhood featuring brick and brownstone buildings. But a new concept was emerging for affluent people - the apartment house, or "French flats," as an alternative to single family homes. Termed "French flats" to distinguish them from the overcrowded, unhealthy tenements of the lower class, these apartments were gaining in popularity. In 1885, the owner of No. 348 West 23rd St. decided to alter the house into an apartment. He hired Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert, a 24-year old engineer and architect who had recently returned to New York from adventures in mining towns in the West. C.P.H. Gilbert would later gain fame as the designer of some of the most opulent mansions in the city. I drew one of his Brooklyn homes a while ago. This was one of his first commissions in the city.

The building was transformed into four apartments - one per floor - that were rented to affluent residents, including men prominent in business and politics. Gilbert's eclectic style is on display with the Queen Anne-style ornamental facade and stained glass windows.

In 1929, the stoops of all the brownstones on the streets were removed for a widening of the street, a project which never happened. Other alterations occurred, including dividing the apartments into smaller units, turning the lower floors into commercial space, removing the stained glass and covering the facade in paint.

Two Buildings on South Elliott St.

 

This distinctive Queen Anne house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn has quite a history.

Originally built as a one-story, wood-frame house in the 1870s, it was bought and enlarged by a lawyer named Anthony Barrett. It was then purchase by Salvatore Cantoni, a wealthy Wall Steet banker, who expanded it even further, adding the towers and oriels and distinctive fish scale shingles on the facade. Cantoni rented the house out for years. Eventually, ownership passed to others, and by the 1980s, the house was deteriorating and going into foreclosure. The city wanted to demolish the building, but it had been landmarked as part of the Fort Greene Historic District in 1978. In 1993, in the middle of a building inspection, the house collapsed, leaving only the front facade standing.

The property continued to auction and sold for $45,100. However, the bidder thought he was buying a fixer-upper, not a single wall! And so he backed out of the deal. Eventually, another buyer was found, who rebuilt the house utilizing the remaining facade.

A few years later, the address made news for tragic reasons. In 2003, it was the residence of a man named Othniel Boaz Askew. Askew wanted to run for City Council, and had some sort of fixation on the current councilman, James E. Davis. He convinced Davis to allow him to accompany him to City Hall, thereby bypassing the metal detectors, Askey shot and killed Davis in the middle of the chamber, himself then being shot by police.

Next door is this two-family brick and stone house. It doesn't seem to have an infamous history to it. It was built sometime in the late 1800s, and has an adjoining twin, painted brown and red.

The Lilac

The USCGC Lilac is a 1933 steamship that served as a lighthouse tender, carrying supplies to lighthouses and buoys for the U.S. Lighthouse Service and subsequently the U.S. Coast Guard. The last steam-engine ship in the Coast Guard fleet, she was decommissioned in 1972. The Lilac is now owned by the non-profit Lilac Preservation Project, and is docked on the West side of Manhattan at Hudson River Park's Pier 25. She was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Amistad

Replica of The Amistad, at Mystic Seaport. The ship is known for an 1839 slave revolt, dramatized in a 1997 film by Steven Spielberg.

In 1839, Portuguese slave hunters kidnapped a group of Mende people from Sierra Leone and transported them to Cuba, in violation of anti-slave trade treaties. The schooner La Amistad was used to ship them from Havana to a Caribbean plantation. During the voyage, the Africans revolted, killed the ship's captain and cook, and ordered the remaining crew to set sail for Africa. However, the sailors actually sailed the ship north, and it was eventually intercepted by the U.S. Navy off the coast of Long Island and brought to New London, CT. The Africans were charged with murder, and though these charges were eventually dismissed, the plantation owners went to court to retain their right to enslave the men. The Africans, backed by abolitionist groups, sued for their freedom. The case went up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1841 ruled that they were free men, and that ". . . it was the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice."

This ship was built between 1998 and 2000 by shipbuilders and artisans at Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, CT. They employed traditional tools and construction techniques, though some modern materials and technology, including two diesel engines, were incorporated. With the original ship lost to history and no extant blueprints, the ship is not an exact replica of La Amistad, but an extrapolation based on general knowledge of this type of ship and contemporary art drawings of 19th century schooners. Originally built and operated by an organization called Amistad America, it is now owned by the non-profit Discovering Amistad, which uses it as a floating classroom for educational and promotional programs.

Village Cigars

 

110 Seventh Ave. This triangular 373-square-foot space housed Village Cigars for over a century, having occupied the space as Union Cigars in 1922. Its unusual shape and distinctive color and signage made it one of the most distinctive storefronts in the West Village.

It is also well-known for that little triangle seen in front of the front door. In 1910, the city condemned over 300 buildings to be demolished to build the Seventh Ave. subway line. But the city surveyors missed a tiny, triangular piece of the plot at the corner of 7th Ave and Christopher St., a plot holding a five-story building owned by David Hess. The Hess Family refused to relinquish the land, taking the city to court and prevailing. The 27.5" x 27.5" x 25.5" triangle was the smallest piece of private property in New York City history. In 1922, the Hesses installed a mosaic reading "PROPERTY OF THE HESS ESTATE WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN DEDICATED FOR PUBLIC PURPOSES."

Village Cigars was owned by Andy Singh for 26 years, but the business lost its tobacco license and could not settle on a new lease with the building owner. The owner says he plans to retain the look of the storefront, and the building has some protection as it is located within the Greenwich Village historic district, so it cannot be altered without approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Happy Birthday St. Thomas

 

St Thomas Church at the corner of 5th Avenue and 53rd St. celebrates its bicentennial anniversary today. The Episcopalian church was founded on October 12, 1823 in Lower Manhattan. This is the fourth building for the church, with two of the previous three being destroyed by fires. It was designed by Ralph Adams Cram, who also designed the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Ave. and St. Bartholemew's Church on Park Ave., and opened in 1913.

TWA

 

The TWA Terminal at John K. Kennedy Airport. Designed by renowned architect Eero Saarinen, the building was commissioned as part of a major expansion of JFK (then named Idlewild Airport) in the mid-1950s to accommodate the Post WWII boom in commercial air travel. With its fluid, swooping Neo-Futurist curves, the building captures the sensation of flight and the optimism of the Jet Age.

The terminal opened in 1962, though unfortunately Saarinen did not live to see its completion, having passed away in 1961. Also unfortunately, despite having been built as a symbol of the jet age, it quickly proved to be too small to serve the increasing size and number of jet airliners, especially after Boeing introduced its mammoth 747 in 1970. The terminal eventually closed in 2001, but it had been named a New York City Landmark and placed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, and so avoided demolition. In 2019, the renovated terminal re-opened as a hotel.

The Mary A Whalen

The Mary A Whalen is a decommissioned oil tanker docked at Pier 11 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Built in 1938, she was originally called the S.T. Kiddoo, after Solomon Thomas Kiddoo, the Vice President of the company that manufacturing its engines. The ship was built for Ira S. Bushey & Sons, a Red Hook business that operated a combination shipyard and fuel terminal. She is 172' (52m) long and 31.5' (9.6m) wide, with a gross tonnage of 613 and a capacity of 8.019 barrels of fuel.

The ship delivered fuel up and down the east coast between 1938 and 1968. In 1962, she was purchased by the Eklof Marine Corporation of Staten Island and re-christend the Mary A. Whalen. I'm not entirely sure who that is. She went out of service in 1994, due to a damaged engine crankshaft.

The ship is the last of its kind. It's an early example of lap-welding, a technique in which one steel plate overlaps the other, and is also one of the few surviving examples of a bell boat. On a bell boat, the captain or mate steering has no control over the throttle or direction of the boat, and uses a manual system of bells to signal instructions to an engineer in the lower levels to determine speed and direction. She is also significant for being the subject of the 1975 Supreme Court case U.S. v Reliable Transfer Co., and important maritime law case.

Currently, she is owned by PortSide NewYork, a non-profit advocacy group for waterfront development, and serves as their headquarters and museum. In 2012, she was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mary A Whalen History at PortSide NewYork

344 Ninth Street

This brownstone on Ninth Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is one of a row of four houses designed by architect Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert in 1887. The four houses all measure 17.83 feet (5.4m) wide by 45 feet (13.7m) long, but all are different. No. 344 is the only one to retain its original details, and is still a one-family home. It was originally owned by a gravel and sand merchant named Michael Fitzsimmons. Between 1902 and 1913, it was occupied by the European Conservatory of Music, later called the Manhattan Conservatory.

C.P.H. Gilbert was born in 1861. Little is known of his early life or training, but eventually he wound up designing mining towns in Arizona and Colorado, where he also learned trick riding and shooting. He returned to New York City in 1883. These four houses were his first Brooklyn commissions. He later designed numerous mansions and townhouses in Park Slope, especially on Carroll St. and Montgomery Place. He also had many clients among Manhattan's elite, including F.W. Woolworth.

His Brooklyn buildings were eclectic in design, as opposed to his Manhattan projects. This New York Times feature says, "Whereas Gilbert's Manhattan mansions are all about good taste and sober politesse, his Brooklyn work tends toward a rugby scrum: the houses tangle and tussle with one another like cats and dogs in a burlap bag. He left no diary, no notes, no thoughts on design, no hint as to whether he later regretted his Brooklyn work, or looked on it with affection."

The drawing in process, pencil drawing and inked. . .

Info on this house and C.P.H. Gilbert:

NY Times: Brooklyn Streetscapes C.P.H. Gilbert-The Wild Years

Brownstoner: Building of the Day: 340-344 9th Street, a Study in Change in Park Slope

Rockefeller Center: Atlas and Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Atlas and Prometheus were brothers, both punished by Zeus for transgressions against the pantheon of gods. Prometheus for stealing diving fire from Olympus to give to mortal mankind, and Atlas for siding with the Titans in their revolt against Zeus. Atlas' punishment, forced to bear the weight of the cosmos on his shoulders, is depicted. Prometheus, on the other hand, is shown in the act of his offense. I suppose it is because we mortals would look at his crime as a boon, and also because his punishment is particularly gruesome and not conducive to public art. He was bound to a boulder where an eagle would eat his liver, which would regrow overnight to be eaten again the following day, ad infinitum.

The sculpture of Atlas on Fifth Avenue, situated across from St. Patrick's Cathedral, is probably Lee Lawrie's most famous work . It was created with Rene Paul Chambellan. Lawrie conceived and designed the figure, while Chambellan modeled the sculpture from Lawrie's sketches. It is the largest sculpture at Rockefeller Center, standing a total of 45 feet (14 m) tall. The 15' figure holds a sphere that is 21' (6.4 m) in diameter. Upon its unveiling in 1937, some viewers were reminded of Benito Mussolini, while James Montgomery said that it looked as Mussolini thought he looked.

Cast in 1934, Prometheus is the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center. It is located at the lower plaza, above the skating rink and directly beneath where a giant Christmas tree is annually installed. The gilded bronze sculpture was created by Paul Manship and cast by the Roman Bronze Works in Queens. Leonardo Nole, an Italian-American lifeguard, was the model. The statue measures 60' X 16' (18.3 m by 4.9 m) and weighs 8 tons, and is covered by nearly a pound of gold leaf. The inscription behind it is from Aeschylus: "Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends."

Rockefeller Center: Wisdom, Sound and Light

Rockefeller Center is one of the most iconic locations in a city full of iconic locations. It's a complex of 19 commercial buildings in Midtown Manhattan. Among its most famous tenants are NBC and Radio City Music Hall, as well as home of the famous skating rink and the site of the annual giant Christmas tree.

It was conceived by John D. Rockefeller Jr. during the latter years of the Roaring Twenties. Originally it was intended to be the new home of the Metropolitan Opera, but the opera pulled out and was replaced by RCA (later NBC). Despite the 1929 Stock Market Crash and subsequent Great Depression, Rockefeller pursued the project. It was the largest private building project ever undertaken by private capital. His ambition was to create the "most inspiring example of urban planning that New York has ever seen," and to "demonstrate faith in the country's future when everything was going dead wrong, and to provide work in a time of lengthening breadlines." When construction begin in 1931, 1/3 of the manufacturing firms New York were out of business, and 64% of construction workers were out of work. Rockefeller's development provided employment for tens of thousands of men over the next decade. 

The initial plans for Rockefeller Center, by architects L. Andrew Reinhard and Henry Hofmeister, were met with scorn from critics such as Lewis Mumford, who said they were "bad with an almost juvenile badness." But by its opening in 1940, it was a popular success, with Ira Gershwin writing, "They all laughed at Rockefeller Center, now they're fighting to get in . . . Ha, ha, ha! Who's got the last laugh now?"

From the start, the complex was designed to be filled with public art, roughly focused on the theme, "The March of Civilization." There's an awful lot of Greek mythology-inspired sculptures and friezes that celebrate European colonialism and capitalist industrialism. Lots of swole Art Deco demi-gods celebrating mineral extraction and tobacco and international commerce.

The giant sculpture Wisdom looms over the entrance to 30 Rockefeller Center. It was designed by Lee Lawrie. Lawrie (1877-1963) was a leading American architectural sculptor, creating over 300 commissions in various styles, including Modern Gothic, Beaux-Arts, Classicism, and Art Deco. His family immigrated from Germany to Chicago when he was a young child, and he began working as an assistant to area sculptors at age 15, later receiving a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Yale University. Lawrie created a dozen pieces for Rockefeller Center, the most of any artist.

These two pieces, Sound and Light, flank Wisdom at the entrance to 30 Rock. This was the headquarters of RCA, now NBC (It's where Liz Lemon works on "30 Rock.") Radio and motion pictures were creating the modern media environment. These two figures represent these two industries that were achieving global significance. 

All three are by the team of Lawrie and Léon-Victor Solon. Lawrie designed the sculptures, and Solon applied color using a polychrome technique.

Before It's Gone: Papaya King

 

Another day, another vanishing NYC icon. Papaya King has sold hot dogs and tropical juices on the corner of 86th Street and 3rd Avenue since the 1940s. But last year, the lot where the restaurant sits was purchased by Extell Development for $21 million. While the eatery has not yet been evicted, demolition plans for the building have been filed. Extell is known for building high-rise luxury towers, such as the Central Park Tower, the tallest residential building in the world.

The business was founded in 1932 by Gus Poulos, a Greek immigrant (hmm, funny how many of these histories feature immigrants). Originally, Gus just sold tropical fruit drinks, which he'd developed a passion for while on vacation in Florida. However, the largely German population of the neighborhood didn't know what papayas or guava even were. As his son, Peter, explained in this interview, "People did not know what these juices were. So he had to spend a lot of time and money giving away these juices every day to the public - and literature, trying to educate them what papaya is, what this fruit was, that fruit was." Eventually, Poulos added something to the menu that Germans did know - frankfurters - and thus Papaya Dog was born. Its success spawned a number of similarly-named restaurants, such as Gray's Papaya and Papaya Dog.

The business was passed on to Peter Poulos, Gus' son, who sold it to another owner in the early 2000s. Now that the end of Papaya Dog is near, Poulos sounds sanguine about it. "It's too valuable of a corner to make it a one-story building. It's like everything else. Everything has to come to an end eventually."

Process Pix:

Jacob Dangler Mansion

I heard about this mansion in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, that was about to be torn down. I found some free time to travel out there and draw it for my "Before It's Gone" collection. Scaffolding already surrounded the building, and reportedly the interior had already been gutted. It was a beautiful day for sketching. A passer-by saw me drawing and said, "Beautiful, right? It's about to come down!" 

It was the usual story of the property being bought by a developer who was going to build some ugly, expensive glass apartments on the lot. And, as usual, there was a group of people protesting and trying to get the Landmarks Commission to declare it an historic site and thus save it from demolition. The big twist is that this time it worked! In literally the last minutes of the commission meeting, days before demolition was to start, they voted to consider landmark status for this building. It's not a done deal that the building will be landmarked, or what becomes of it if it is, but there's a possibility that it'll be saved.

Jacob Dangler emigrated to the U.S. as a young man from Germany in the 1860s. He began working in the grocery business in Brooklyn, eventually opening his own meat and provisions shop on Myrtle Ave. in Williamsburg in 1880. He had become prominent in the field as well as the real estate business by the turn of the 20th century. He married Louise Dangler, who kept the books for his businesses, and they had three sons.

Theobald Engelhardt, a fellow German immigrant, was a prolific architect who had a heavy hand in determining the architectural look of Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Bedford Stuyvesant. He designed Dangler's factory and other properties, and then this mansion, located near Dangler's businesses. Built in 1897, it was designed in a striking French Gothic style and cost $50,000 to construct. The huge home measures 58' X 85' (17.6m X 26m), with over 12,000 square feet (1115 sq m) of floor space, and included a bowling alley in the basement. 

Dangler died in 1939, at the age of 87. He'd never retired, working until the end of his life. His son inherited the mansion, but put it on the market in 1940. In 1943, Willow Temple, a lodge of the Knights of Pythias, purchased the building, and in 1967, it was sold to the Oriental Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star, an African-American, female-oriented masonic organization. The interior rooms were expanded, and additions were built, for use by Masonic lodges and other organizations, and for local community gatherings and events like weddings, baby showers, dances, and the like.

Links

Brownstoner History of the Dangler Mansion

1963 Airstream Bambi Travel Trailer

Wally Byam was born on the Fourth of July in 1896 in Baker City, Oregon. He loved the outdoors and had a keen sense of wanderlust. But his wife did NOT. So in the late 1920s, he had the notion to attach a tent contraption on top of a Model T chassis, in order to provide her with some more comfort on their trips. He eventually built a proper trailer, and in 1931 opened the first Airstream trailer factory in California.

The business survived the Great Depression and World War II, and business started to boom after the war. He pitched the trailers to the average person, "With no worry as to where you are going to stay or how the means are going to be when you get there . . . you have plenty of carefree time to see the sights instead of hurrying through them." He also led Airstream Caravans across the globe, traveling through Mexico and Central America, Europe, Canada, and from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt. The Airstream Caravans produced a group of owners who formed a club to maintain the friendships they'd made during the trips. In 1955, the first Airstream Club was founded.

This 1963 Bambi was the company's smallest model, a single-axle trailer roughly the same length as the average passenger car. Its areodynamic body is all lightweight aluminum. Byam had worked in the areonautics industry, and took inspiration from airplanes in designing the Airstream body.

 

Wally Byam promoted his Airstreams with a rather beautifully idealistic manifesto, which reads in part:

In the heart of these words is an entire life's dream. To those of you who find in the promise of these words your promise, I bequeath this creed . . . my dream belongs to you.

• To place the great wide world at your doorstep for you who yearn to travel with all the comforts of home.
• To keep alive and make real an enduring promise of high adventure and faraway lands . . . of rediscovering old places and new interests.
• To open a whole world of new experiences . . . a new dimension in enjoyment where travel adventure and good fellowship are your constant companions.
• To encourage clubs and rallies that provide an endless source of friendships, travel fun and personal expressions.
• To lead caravans wherever the four winds blow . . . over twinkling boulevards, across trackless deserts . . . to the traveled and untraveled corners of the earth.
• To play some part in promoting international goodwill and understanding among the peoples of the world through person-to-person contact.
• To strive endlessly to stir the venturesome spirit that moves you to follow a rainbow to its end . . . and thus make your travel dreams come true.

This video gives a glimpse to the interior of an 1960s Airstream:

More history of Wally Byam and the Airstream: https://www.airstream.com/blog/the-creed/

Volkwagen Type-1 Beetle

 Almost through my series of MoMA Automania drawings.

The Volkswagen Beetle, along with its sibling, the VW microbus, is an icon of the 1960s Woodstock generation, and one of the most beloved cars ever made. In 1972, when the 15 millionth Type 1 was assembled, it surpassed the Ford Model T as the highest-selling car in history. It was quite the turnaround from some ignoble beginnings.

In the mid-1930s, Adolf Hitler ordered German carmakers to develop an automobile for the common people. This 'people's car,' or 'volkswagen,' was to be mechanically simple, inexpensive to produce, fuel efficient, and capable of accommodating a family of two adults and three children. Its production would be subsidized by the state, and consumer purchasing would also be subsidized through a state-run savings plan. Along with the development of the Autobahn, the Volkswagen program was Hitler's initiative to promote automotive culture to the German people.

In 1938, the first Volkswagen factory was built, however World War II delayed the launch of the car. After the war, the factory was turned over to the British. The factory began producing them for the occupying British Army, and they began to gain popularity throughout Europe, being faster and more fuel-efficient to other cars like the Citroën 2CV. It became known in Germany as the Käfer (German for "beetle"), the Coccinelle ("Ladybug") in France, and of course, the Beetle or Bug in America.

It began to be imported to the United States in 1949, and while it was slow to catch on, it started to gain popularity by 1959 and exploding in popularity in the early sixties. It eventually became the longest-running and most-manufactured model car ever made, remaining in production until 2003 and producing 21,529,464 cars.

History and Reference:

Hemmings: The Volkswagen Type 1 Beetle Marks Its 75th Anniversary

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