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.

Process:

REFERENCES

Classic Car History.com

Old Cars Weekly.com

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

Windsor Terrace Fire Box

I wasn't intending to do a whole series about the Windsor Terrace fire station at the corner of Prospect and Greenwood Avenues, but after posting the last two drawings of the fire house and its truck, and some older drawings of the building, I remembered that I'd done this drawing of a fire alarm post that I never posted. It's located on the corner opposite the fire house.

According to this post on Untapped Cities, at least a third of these emergency boxes don't work, only 2.6% of the calls the FDNY receives come from these boxes, and of those calls, 88% are false alarms. I'm not sure why this particular fire box was located where it is, directly across from a fire house! Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg made efforts to remove them, but like everything in New York City, the fireboxes have their supporters and they remain.

Engine 240/Battalion 48

This is my local fire house, in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, NY. It is the home of FDNY Engine 240/Battalion 48.

In 1894, the city of Brooklyn (at this point still independent of New York City) annexed the towns of Flatbush, Gravesend, New Utrecht, and Flatlands, and subsequently began a campaign to replace the old firehouses of the volunteer fire departments of those towns with modern facilities for companies of professional firefighters. This one, at the Southern end of Prospect Ave., was constructed in 1895. It was designed by Peter J. Lauritzen, a Danish immigrant who designed eight other firehouses for the Brooklyn Fire Department, five of which are still extant. 

ca 1895, via NYC Landmarks Commission Report

Lauritzen used the same Romanesque Revival Style for other Brooklyn firehouses. It is faced with Wyoming bluestone, Indiana limestone, and pressed brick. As seen in this historical photo, the exterior looks very much the same as when it was built, except for the conical roof atop the oriel turret, and the doors to the interior, which was a horse stable rather than a garage for trucks at the time.

I've drawn this firehouse before. These were done between 2014 and 2015. I'd done a series of firehouse drawings. I don't often re-visit old subjects, but seeing this old work makes me want to go back and re-do them all! And come back and draw this firehouse in another six years and see how I've changed.

Reference:

Brownstoner: The Little Fortress Watching Over Windsor Terrace Since 1896

NYC Landmarks Commission

Pumper

Fire truck parked outside my local firehouse. It took me three days to draw it. Not because it's complicated, but because it kept leaving for emergency calls. Then I would find it parked in the same spot the next day.

Process shots. I forgot to take a picture of the pencil sketch. Here's the initial ink drawing.  

First color layers.

Waiting Flight

It's kind of an urban sketcher cliché to draw airplanes on the tarmac while waiting for your flight, but here it is. At LaGuardia Airport in Queens, NY. 

Bartel-Pritchard Columns, Take 2

These two columns stand at the Western entrance to Prospect Park at Bartel-Pritchard Square in Brooklyn, NY. They are made of granite, with bronze tripods of bowls on top. Inspired by the 400 B.C. Acanthus Column of Delphi, the columns were one of the last designs of Stanford White, cast just before his infamous murder in 1906. The columns were dedicated in 1911. 

Bartel-Pritchard Square is actually a circle. Now a traffic circle, or roundabout as some call it, it was once a major trolley interchange. It was named for two local World War I war heroes, Emil Bartel and William Pritchard, who were killed in action in France in 1918.

I don't often revisit past subjects, but lately I have done so a few times.. Here's a drawing I did of this same site almost 10 and a half years ago! Back then, it was all in pencil, with no color.

Fuller Building - 57th Street

 

The Fuller Building is a 40-story building at the corner of Madison Ave. and 57th St. It was built in 1929 by the Fuller Construction Company, an early developer of steel-skeleton skyscrapers. It is actually the second "Fuller Building;" the first is better known as the Flatiron Building. At the time of this building's construction, the area was the center of the New York art world, and so the lower twelve floors were designed with very high ceilings specifically for art galleries.

Above the main entrance is a limestone sculpture of two idealized construction workers towering over the cityscape they've built. It is the work of Elie Nadelman. Born in Warsaw in 1882, Nadelman was classically trained in Munich. He immigrated to America at the onset of World War I, settling in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where he remained until his death. He married a wealthy heiress named Viola Flannery in 1920. He became fascinated with American folk art, incorporating it into his own work, and the couple began to collect American and European folk art, eventually accumulating a collection so large that they founded the Nadelman Museum of Folk and Peasant Art.

Nadelman, ca 1915, with bronze "Man In The Open Air"

Elie and Viola Nadelman, ca. 1921

Unfortunately, after some initial years of success as an artist, his career went into decline, and after Viola's fortune was lost during the Great Depression, they were forced to sell their folk art collection to survive. In 1935, many of his artworks were destroyed by workmen remodeling his studio, and the remaining work was packed away and left to disintegrate. Nadelman fell further into isolation and depression, refusing to exhibit his work, and committed suicide in 1946. 

After his death, a huge trove of work was discovered. He'd spent his years of seclusion making hundreds of small plaster figurines of little girls. He received a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1948, and another at the Whitney Museum in 2003, and some of his work remains in the collections of the Jewish Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and a few other collections. The bulk of his folk art collection is owned by the New York Historical Society, which toured the collection a few years ago.

Initial Pencil Sketch:

Ink Drawing:

First color stages:

References:

On the Fuller Building:

Ephemeral New York: Fuller Building-57th-street

The City Review

On Elie Nadelman:

Artnet.com : Elie Nadelman Biography

National Gallery of Art

Incollect.com: The Folk Art Collection of Elie and Viola Nadelman

New York Historical Society:The Folk Art Collection of Elie and Viola Nadelman