When Schools Mattered

As superintendent of school buildings from 1891 to 1922, C.B.J Snyder designed close to 350 schools, plus numerous additions and other school improvements. Snyder put up 5, 10, sometimes 15 buildings a year, ranging from giants like Erasmus, Curtis and Morris high schools to public schools in almost every neighborhood, these new schools symbolized the commitment of the city to care for and even uplift its citizens, many of whom were new immigrants.

Bronx;Morris, Brooklyn;Erasmus, Staten Island;Curtis

Snyder’s schools attracted occasional criticism for ”unnecessary ornamentation” but the city board replied that it was ”worth every cent — in the long run the modest and appropriate adornment of schoolhouses would do much more to raise the level of public taste than any amount of money spent on more sumptuous and conspicuous municipal edifices.”  Social reformer Jacob Riis wrote of Snyder  “He found barracks, where he is leaving palaces to the people.”

270 of his  buildings are still in use, over 20 (and counting) have been designated New York City landmarks.

Throughout my travels around NYC I’ve photographed some of these schools without realizing they were the work of one man.

P.S. 277 Bronx (landmark)

P.S. 66 Queens (landmark)

P.S.66 detail

P.S.95 Brooklyn (landmark)

P.S. 95 detail

P.S. 95 detail

P.S. 109  in East Harlem ( National Register of Historic Places) has been closed since 1996; community groups saved it from demolition and want it restored as a school, but some local politicians and other interests want it converted into apartments &/or art spaces. It remains empty as neither side has come up with funding.

(H.S. photos courtesy of NYC DoE and Creative Commons)

odds & ends; The Garibaldi-Meucci Museum

Antonio Meucci, rarely mentioned in history books, is considered to be the true inventor of the telephone.  Meucci filed for a preliminary patent application for his ”teletrofono” in 1871 but was hampered by a lack of funds and command of the  English language.  Alexander Graham Bell went on to successfully patented his version of the telephone in 1876.

After being forced to flee Italy in 1850, Giuseppe Garibaldi sought refuge with his friends, the Meucci family, on Staten Island.  He returned to Italy in 1854 and became an international hero for his role in the fight for the independence and unity of Italy.

Garibaldi 1861

The Gothic-revival style Meucci house was built in the 1840s.

19th century drawing

After Garibaldi died in 1882, a marble plaque was installed over the front door to commemorate his time in Staten Island.

In 1907, on the centennial of Garibaldi’s birth, the house was moved two blocks to its present location where a pantheon was erected over it by the Garibaldi Society. The columned dome was stucco and wood and sat on a concrete base, making it one of the oddest architectural structures in New York City.

berenice abbott 1937

In 1956 the National Order Sons of Italy, which had controlled the memorial since 1919, demolished the decrepit pantheon, filled the restored house with artifacts from Meucci and Garibaldi, and opened the house as a museum.

original front, now rear, of the house

candle furnace in the backyard

Brooklyn Gothic; Wallabout

The neighborhood of Wallabout was recently designated as a landmark district largely because it contains  one of the greatest concentration of remaining pre-Civil War wood-frame houses in NYC.

Amongst the well maintained houses on Vanderbilt Avenue, just south of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, is one of the oldest houses (early 1830s) in the area.

 then a few doors down there was this…….

                                              (Before and After; November/ December)

According to Brownstoner; these two “vernacular Greek Revival” design houses were built by carpenter Richard Pease in 1849 (Vernacular signifying that the house was designed and built by someone who was not a trained architect).

The history of the Wallabout can be traced back to 1624 when a group of Walloons, French-speaking Protestants from what is now Belgium, settled along the shore of the East River bay and named it Waal-bogt. Since the flatlands along the river were not considered to be as prestigious as the uplands several blocks south, much of the construction in Wallabout continued to be wood houses rather than the more expensive brick or brownstone dwellings found in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.

1766 map

view from the Navy Yard 1850s

                                           Vanderbilt Ave. 1930s

(archival images NYPL)

odds & ends; Elevated Acre

various spots photographed over the past months……

“Rogers Marvel Architects won an international open competition to transform this one-acre elevated plaza in New York’s financial district. The project turns a barren, windswept hard deck into a vibrant, multi-programmed, accessible public park. Sculptural escalators, elevators, plantings, and terraces encourage pedestrians to enter from the street level below. Part of the Green Necklace that will encircle Manhattan, the Elevated Acre offers new panoramic views of the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Harbor.” 2005

Riis Park off season

A cold and windy day at the beach….

Constructed on the site of one of the first US naval air stations, the park was designed in 1936 by Park Commissioner Robert Moses, who envisioned Riis Park as a beach for the working class accessible by public transportation and closer to the city than Jones Beach (another of his creations on Long Island). The park is named in honor of Jacob Riis, the famed New York City journalist and photographer who documented the plight of the poor and the living conditions in city tenements.

aerial 1946

July 04, 1953 Margaret Bourke-White

The landmark art deco bath house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

pigeons huddle waiting for the wind to die down

throgs neck / edgewater park, Bronx

Where the East River and the Long Island Sound meet; the waterfront between the Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges

private docks and the Throgs Neck Bridge

barges in the river and  Whitestone, Queens in the background

                the Whitestone Bridge and site of the future Ferry Point Park Golf Club

“The Parks Dept has a long simmering plan to build a public world-class 18-hole golf course here. In addition to the golf course, a separate 20-acre waterfront promenade will convert the undeveloped landfill into a passive ecologically responsible park with a beach, picnic area, comfort station and views of the Long Island Sound.”

[Update; it's been announced that Donald Trump has won the bid to develop the golf course -- controversy and more delays are sure to follow.]

Before the bridges

Natural History

“Natural History” sculpture by Patrick Dougherty to commemorate Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s 100th anniversary

                                                a good place for hide and seek

Francis Lewis Park

continuing the tour of parks along the East River in north Queens

Dutch farmers founded Whitestone in 1645, naming the area for a large white boulder along the shore.

The park honors Francis Lewis a member of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Having accumulated great wealth, Lewis retired from trade in 1765 and moved to Whitestone, New York. In 1776 British troops destroyed Lewis’s Whitestone property and abducted his wife Elizabeth in retaliation.

19th century etching

Francis Lewis Park.

Powells Cove; Malba

Malba is an upper middle-class neighborhood in the Whitestone section of Queens. The waterfront neighborhood is home to some of the largest and most expensive private houses in New York City. Its name is derived from the first letters of the surnames of the five founders of the Malba Land Co: Maycock, Alling, Lewis, Bishop, and Avis. Development began in 1908, a railroad station on the Whitestone line was soon added. There were thirteen houses by the time of World War I and more than a hundred were built in the 1920s.

the early days

from almost every angle the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge looms

the Malba Yacht Club

Powells Cove; College Point

                                             Powell’s Cove Park was completed in 1999 on an East River bay with sizable wetlands and filled uplands. The Queens neighborhood of College Point borders on the west and Malba borders on the east. The first known European resident of the area was David Roe who arrived from England in the 1640s. In 1786 John Powell purchased the 87-acre parcel. It’s believed that the Roe family lost the land for their allegiance to the crown during the Revolutionary War.

view from Powells Cove of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge being built in 1939                                                 last bits of color for the season