Abram Champanier’s “Alice of Wonderland Visiting New York” was a commission from the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program that championed American art in public spaces
The exhibition includes 14 original mural panels and two recreations. Brad Farwell for MCNY
In 1940, the children’s ward of Gouverneur Hospital in Manhattan became Wonderland. Artist Abram Champanier had painted a fantastical mural for its walls, commissioned by the Federal Art Project. Titled Alice of Wonderland Visiting New York, the mural imagined Lewis Carroll’s iconic character exploring the city.
In 16 panels of vivid color, Champanier showed Alice, the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter flying over the Empire State Building, boarding a crowded subway, strolling Central Park and more.
“What could be more New York than this hodgepodge crew crashing the city?” Lilly Tuttle, curator at the Museum of the City of New York, tells the New York Times’ Hilarie M. Sheets. Tuttle says Champanier designed the mural to help sick children transport themselves out of the ward through imagination. “For viewers today, the mural is a reminder of what federal funding for the arts could do for cities like New York and how public art could inject light and energy into unexpected spaces.”
Now visitors to the Museum of the City of New York are able to see Champanier’s work for themselves. The exhibition “Another Wonderland: Abram Champanier’s Alice Mural” includes all 16 panels of the mural—rescued, restored and replicated over decades.
Champanier imagined the characters boarding a subway car. From Abram August Champanier’s “Alice of Wonderland Visiting New York,” 1938–40, NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine Collection
Champanier was born in Russia in 1896, and his family immigrated to New Jersey when he was 9 years old. As a young man, he studied at the Art Students League, joining the artistic generation of Alexander Calder and Edward Hopper. Champanier made a career as a muralist, painting in a unique style he called “Staccatoism,” according to a statement from the museum.
In 1935, Champanier won the Gouverneur Hospital commission from the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration—a Depression-era New Deal program through which the U.S. government funded the creation of visual arts. The project commissioned art by the likes of Jackson Pollack, Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. According to Brooklyn College, it funded some 2,500 public murals, 108,000 easel paintings, 19,000 sculptures and 36,000 posters.
Champanier began painting his Alice mural in 1938, on panels more than seven feet tall. In 1940, the canvases were installed in the children’s ward—fused to the walls with lead paste. There they stayed until the hospital lost accreditation in 1961. The building, abandoned in 1978, fell into disrepair. It was then that Andrew S. Dolkart of the Landmarks Preservation Commission discovered the forgotten paintings in the children’s ward.
“The room was a ruin,” Dolkart, an architectural historian, tells the Times. But the Champanier’s panels were “witty and fun and bright, and even in that abandoned space you could tell that they were pretty wonderful and shouldn’t be just torn down.”
Yet, he adds, “The city had no interest in the mural.”
Alice and friends fly over the Empire State Building. From Abram August Champanier’s “Alice of Wonderland Visiting New York,” 1938–40, NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine Collection
Dolkart enlisted conservators Alan and Denise Farancz, who had experience extracting wall art. In 1981—as the hospital was being demolished—the team extracted Champanier’s work from the ward’s walls. Over the next four decades, a morphing team slowly cleaned and conserved the panels. In 2008, they entered the care of restorers John Lippert and Dawn D’Aluisio, who created replicas of lost panels: scenes of a fishing boat and the Statue of Liberty.
The characters fly over the Statue of Liberty’s island. From Abram August Champanier’s “Alice of Wonderland Visiting New York,” 1938–40, NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine Collection
The new exhibition contains the mural panels framed individually as well as information about Champanier and the therapeutic usage of art. The mural was, after all, one installation in a wave of Depression-era hospital art—designed to uplift, amuse and interest ailing patients. As the Times reports, Alice of Wonderland Visiting New York is the only surviving Works Progress Administration commission for a children’s hospital ward.
“It was really a gift to the kids who were in the hospital when there was no TV, no iPads, no video games and they needed something to keep them entertained and pass the time,” Tuttle tells NY1’s Roger Clark.
The Statue of Liberty panel is one of the replicated pieces. Brad Farwell for MCNY
After the exhibition, the murals will be installed at NYC Health + Hospitals Gouverneur—a 295-bed nursing facility on the Lower East Side—reports NY1. As Tuttle says in the statement, bringing the murals back to the public “after decades in obscurity has been a profound curatorial journey.”
Meet Abram Champanier (1896–1960), an artist whose work bridges creativity, public history and health. Most known for his WPA-era murals, his work became part of the fabric of public spaces—including murals created for the original NYC Health + Hospitals/Gouverneur building. In 1981, these murals were carefully rescued. Today, through the dedication of our Arts in Medicine department with support from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, they have been restored over the years and brought back to life.
Children’s’ Ward with murals on the walls.
Gouveneur at the turn of the 20th Century and today as supportive housing
“These works are not only visually stunning, they’re a testament to the belief that art can uplift, inspire, and heal,” Tuttle says. “Through this exhibition, we honor a moment in New York’s history when public investment in the arts transformed civic spaces and enriched the lives of everyday New Yorkers—including the city’s youngest and most vulnerable patients.”
Roosevelkt Island Group Presentation Kristi Towey, Dr. Michal Melamed, Arlene Bessenoff Nina Lublin, Felicia Ruff (No Phtos Zora Boyadzhieva, Melissa Wade)
CREDITS
The Broadsheet Judith Berdy
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Take away the orange cones out front, the skyscrapers in the background, and electric lights, and you can almost see Fraunces Tavern in 1776.
Imagine the cobblestoned corner of Pearl and Broad Streets in the summer of 1776, where important visitors mingle with the locals at a busy tavern. Men known as the Sons of Liberty drop in for refreshment and libation. General George Washington dines with his officers. Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and others well known to Americans 250 years later meet to make their revolutionary plans. Rebellion against England is heating up, and Fraunces Tavern is at the center of it. Today, Fraunces Tavern, owned by the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, is the oldest surviving building in Manhattan. Still a popular watering hole at ground level, the building has hosted the Fraunces Tavern Museum upstairs since 1907. In conjunction with this year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the museum is offering an exceptional lineup of exhibitions, lectures, and programs. Tomorrow, Friday, June 12, the Fraunces Tavern Museum will observe Flag Day (which technically falls on Sunday), starting with a parade that winds through Lower Manhattan and concludes at 54 Pearl Street. There, the museum will throw open its doors with $1 admission.
Flag Day will be celebrated in style tomorrow at the Fraunces Tavern Museum (54 Pearl Street), where a Friday open house offers admission for $1.
One of New York’s longest-running parades, the Flag Day Parade will begin at City Hall Park at noon with marching bands and VIPs, and proceed down Broadway, gathering members of the public as it winds south and concludes at a grandstand in front of Fraunces Tavern around 12:30pm. Beneath a four-story American flag, student winners of the annual Flag Day student essay and art contest will be honored.
At the museum, “Path to Liberty: The Emergence of a Nation” is a chronological, multi-year, multi-installment, multi-gallery special exhibition commemorating the United States Semiquincentennial, and featuring documents, artifacts, and works of art that tell the history of the American Revolution from 1775 to 1783, with a focus on what occurred in New York and the surrounding areas.
“This is our core semiquincentennial exhibit,” says Scott Dwyer, director of the Fraunces Tavern Museum and the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York. “It will rotate content throughout the year, but this installment is focused on the battles of New York at the beginning of the Revolution, and how the struggle for independence nearly ended before it began.”
This was a reference to a series of engagements—in Brooklyn, Kip’s Bay, Harlem, White Plains, and Washington Heights—fought between August and November of 1776, when George Washington managed to recover from multiple defeats and continue the struggle.
“The British thought this would lead to a very quick victory and were not prepared for a long war,” Mr. Dwyer says. “People at the time, and even today, discounted the Continental Army. But in addition to the home court advantage, they knew how to fight and where to do it. The context and the terrain were utterly foreign to the British. And the Americans had more skin in the game, more reason to fight than the British. This showed in their strength and resolve and courage.”
He cites the intrigue engaged in by Samuel Fraunces, who owned the tavern and hosted meetings of the Sons of Liberty, but fled when the British captured New York in 1776. “The British found him in New Jersey, brought him back, and made him work as an indentured servant in his own restaurant,” Mr. Dwyer recounts. “He used this as an opportunity to collect intelligence by eavesdropping on the British officers who dined there, and also to smuggle food to Americans taken prisoner by the redcoats.” Fraunces was later honored by Congress for foiling a plot to assassinate George Washington, and for gathering evidence about the treachery of Benedict Arnold.
After the Revolution was won, George Washington famously bade farewell to his troops at Fraunces Tavern, and the building was later used as the first offices of the federal Departments of State, War, and Treasury.
“New York and Lower Manhattan were really at the center of the American Revolution,” Mr. Dwyer adds. “That’s the story this exhibition aims to tell.”
“Path to Liberty: The Emergence of a Nation” is part of the Fraunces Tavern Museum’s broader Liberty 250 program, which will commemorate the semiquincentennial throughout the year. For more information, please click here.
Matthew Fenton
Women of Distinction Honored by Rebecca Seawright
Roosevelt Island Group Presentation Kristi Towey, Dr. Michal Melamed, Arlene Bessenoff Nina Lublin, Felicia Ruff (No Phtos Zora Boyadzhieva, Melissa Wade)
CREDITS
The Broadsheet Judith Berdy
PHOTO OF THE DAY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
New York Unseen by artist Marc Yankus envisions a city without cars (and often people) by literally removing them from the photographic landscape. At NYC Urbanism we are constantly perusing historic photos of the city, with a common reaction to familiar sites being “look at this block without cars!” Yankus’s work allows us to see today’s metropolis without the vehicles that now line the streets and surround our landmarks.
Through a unique form of digital collage, I attempt to mute some of the visual noise that can distract viewers from their essential beauty, and in the process help them see their city anew.
This work presents a subtle, surrealistic alteration of the architectural landscape found in New York City, where imagination and documentation meet. Some building portraits are more detailed and others more abstract, but all serve to rebuild and honor the buildings while making a statement about altered perception, reality, and past preservation… Strangely familiar, the buildings are elevated in a fictional composition that appears to tell a story or reflect a past history, but their power resides more in the realm of sensation than explicit narrative… Through this, more people just might see an alternate universe right in front of them, one that is very beautiful and otherworldly. (Marc Yankus)
The Dakota
New York Public Library
Flatiron Building
TIME TO UPDATE THE SIGN
CREDITS
Mark Yankus and Clampart
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
You can see it peeking out from the Harlem River Drive or through the chain-link fence of the Third Avenue Bridge: a five-story red brick building almost buried behind glass and steel apartment towers.
The towers are newish luxury rental residences built on the Bronx side of the Harlem River. Shiny and modern, they bring Manhattan-style living spaces to a section of the borough that some canny real estate people have tried to rebrand as “SoBro.”
But the red brick building, which is longer than it appears and has faded letters painted on its Manhattan-facing side, is a curiosity. It’s not just shielded by the apartment towers; it looks stuck, wedged between their outer walls.
How did it avoid the wrecking ball when the apartment buildings were under development, and what is its backstory?
Turns out this timeworn survivor played a role in two crucial businesses that practically defined the industrial South Bronx since the middle of the 19th century.
First, the ironworks business. Constructed in 1882, the building originally housed the offices of the J.L. Mott Ironworks firm, according to a 2020 report in the New York Times.
Mott Ironworks was established on the Harlem River waterfront by Jordan Lawrence Mott in 1841. The company grew, attracting German and Irish immigrant workers to the new Mott Haven neighborhood. With success under its belt, Mott expanded its product line and produced “a whole range of household goods such as tubs and sinks, as well as decorative work like fountains and fences,” states the Historic Districts Council.
The ironworks company packed up and left the Bronx for Trenton in 1902, but not before another industry—piano manufacturing—began dominating the waterfront.
The South Bronx piano business got its start in the 1880s, when it became something of a cultural requirement for a middle-class family to have a piano in its parlor. Thanks to this trend, several manufacturing concerns sprang up to supply pianos.
“By the early 20th century, the Bronx had (by one count) 63 piano factories—43 of them in Mott Haven—producing more than 100,000 instruments a year,” states the Historic Districts Council.
The red brick factory building eventually transitioned into the Beethoven Piano Company, with the name appearing on the windows facing the Third Avenue Bridge (third photo).
The piano business declined as the 20th century progressed, decimated in part by record players and radio. Most of the Bronx piano makers closed their doors, leaving behind gorgeous industrial buildings that have found new life as residences—like the Clock Tower, formerly home to the Estey Piano Company, on nearby Bruckner Boulevard.
Today, the holdout factory building is occupied by a charter school. A sign for the school obscures the J.L. Mott Ironworks insignia, which remains on the Manhattan-facing facade (fourth photo).
The factory building has also been designated by the Historic Districts Council as worthy of being landmarked. That’s a good decision, and it might be the reason the apartment developers didn’t reduce it to rubble.
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Stacy Horn is the author of Damnation Island, which has been a best-seller at our visitor center.
WONDERFUL
KID’S
ART AT
ROOSEVELT ISLAND DAY
SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2026
ISSUE # 1693
B.J. JNES JOINED JUDY BERDY AT THE RIHS TABLE
CHOOSE A LANDMARK AND COLOR IT IN! ALWAY A POPULAR SUBJECT
EVERYONE LOVES A COLORFUL TRAM
A BRIGHT VIEW OF THE LIGHTHOUSE
A PASTEL CHAPEL
AMULTI-COLORED OCTAGON
RED CABIN PLEASE
THOM HEYER WAS IN CHARGE OF CRAYONS AND MARKERS!!
ASSEMBLY MEMBER REBECCA SEAWRIGHT STOPPED BY
BRYANT DANIELS OF RIOC KEPT THE DAY MOVING SMOOTHLY
RIOC AND THE RIHS WERE RECIPIENTS OF COMMENDATIONS FROM REBECCA SEAWRIGHT, NYS ASSEMBLY MEMBER FOR THE TRAM’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY
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MARCO LUCCIO JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Stacy Horn is the author of Damnation Island, which has been a best-seller at our visitor center.
THE ART OF
MARCO LUCCIO
FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 2026
ISSUE # 1692
A few years ago I met Marco Luccio when he was sketching the scenes on Roosevelt Island. This print hangs in my home. We met many times when Luccio was in New York and have enjoyed his joyous paintings of the City.
Chrysler Building grants rare exclusive access to Melbourne artist
Step inside the Chrysler Building studio of Marco Luccio.
BEAT – Music · Art · Culture · Melbourne
Chrysler Building grants rare exclusive access toMelbourne artist
Photo: Sina Basila
BEAT MAGAZINE· 17/11/2025 · Words by Staff WriterNew York’s Chrysler Building access granted to Marco Luccio for upcoming Manhattan exhibition opening at 14Gallery on 27 November.
Melbourne will step inside the raw pulse of New York when artist Marco Luccio opens Manhattan at 14 Gallery this month. Luccio is one of the only artists ever granted access to work inside the Chrysler Building, creating some of the exhibition’s most powerful works from this rare vantage point across rooftops, sidewalks and throughoutManhattan.
This series marks a new high point for Luccio. Works are visceral, layered and filled with the tension, movementand intensity of the city that has shaped him for more than 20 years. Painted and drawn in the weather, noise and unpredictability of New York, the pieces carry the urgency of the streets themselves.
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MARCO LUCCIO JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism and true crime, Stacy Horn sheds light on how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly devastated East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood that would come to be known as the Killing Fields.
On a warm summer evening in 1991, seventeen-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the Killing Fields. In the six months after Julia Parker’s death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying.
But how did this once thriving, diverse, family neighborhood fall into such ruin? The answer can be found two decades earlier. In response to redlining and discriminatory housing practices, the Johnson administration passed the Housing and Urban Development Act in 1968. The Federal Housing Authority aimed to use this piece of legislation to help low-income families of color finally achieve homeownership. But they could never have predicted how banks, lenders, realtors, and corrupt FHA officials themselves would use the newly passed law to make victims of the very people they were supposed to help, and the devastation they would leave in their wake.
A compulsively readable hybrid of true crime and investigative journalism, The Killing Fields of East New York reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots. Following the dual threads of the hunt for the network of criminals behind the first subprime mortgage scandal and the ensuing downfall of East New York, Stacy Horn weaves a compelling narrative of government failure, a desperate community, and ultimately the largest series of mortgage fraud prosecutions in American history. The Killing Fields of East New York deftly demonstrates how different types of crime are profoundly entangled, and how the crimes committed in nice suits and corner offices are just as destructive as those committed on the street.
Stacy Horn is the author of Damnation Island, which has been a best-seller at our visitor center.
A BEACON RESTORED
MANHATTAN’S MONUMENT
TO A
SHIP THAT NEVER ARRIVED
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 2026
THE BROADSHEET
MATTHEW FENTON
ISSUE # 1691
A Beacon Restored
Lower Manhattan’s Monument to a Ship That Never Arrived in New York to Shine Once Again
The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, at the corner of Pearl and Fulton Streets since 1976, has been restored by the South Street Seaport Museum.
After a year of stabilization and refurbishment, the restoration of the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse by the South Street Seaport Museum is nearing completion.
Museum president Captain Jonathan Boulware reported to Community Board 1 members that programmers were finalizing the project and configuring the Memorial’s time ball, a long-dormant horological aid. A large metal globe that once descended a pole precisely at the stroke of noon each day (triggered by a telegraphic signal from the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.), the time ball of the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse enabled sailors aboard ships offshore to calibrate their marine chronometers, needed for celestial navigation and the determination of longitude at sea. (This device was the origin of the now-renowned Times Square ball drop on New York’s Eve.) “That maritime tradition will now happen again every day at noon,” Mr. Boulware said.
Above: The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse was originally located atop the now-demolished Seamen’s Church Institute at the corner of South Street and Coenties Slip, on the site of what is now Vietnam Veterans Plaza. Below: The “time ball” at the top of the lighthouse descended a pole precisely at the stroke of noon each day, triggered by a telegraphic signal from the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
This local memorial to the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic has been hiding in plain sight at the corner at the corner of Pearl and Fulton Streets for five decades. Originally perched atop the Seamen’s Church Institute (a philanthropic organization that provides social services to mariners) at the corner of South Street and Coenties Slip, it was dedicated on April 15, 1913, the one-year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Designed by the architectural firm Warren and Wetmore (who created Grand Central Terminal), the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse featured a trio of 2500-candle power mercury lamps, the emerald beams from which could be seen ten miles out at sea.
“There is a new set of lights in there, which are green,” Captain Boulware noted. “When the lighthouse was erected on the Seamen’s Church building on Lower South Street in 1913, it had three green lanterns, which were deliberately intended to avoid confusion with an actual lighthouse.”
The South Street Seaport Museum saved the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse a half century ago, by arranging to accept the structure as a donation when the Seamen’s Church Institute building was demolished in the mid-1970s. The Titanic Memorial was initially moved to Pier 16 and then in 1976, after a partial restoration, the lighthouse was moved to its current location atop a lighthouse-like base at Titanic Memorial Park where it welcomes visitors to the South Street Seaport Historic District.
“We also had a treatment for the plinth, the base, which is not part of the artifact itself,” Captain Boulware added, “but inhabits one of this object’s multiple roles, that of wayfinding, the entry point to the Seaport, making it really clear where you are. We’re already finding that people say, ‘meet by the lighthouse.’”
“The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse will again shine in Lower Manhattan as a beacon of history and hope in honor of those lost in the Titanic disaster,” he said, suggesting the lighthouse as a new locale for “a downtown New Year’s Eve celebration for New Yorkers.”
Matthew Fenton
KID’S TEE SHIRTS HAVE ARRIVED SIZES XS, S,M,L AVAILABLE AT THE VISITOR CENTER NOW
CREDITS
THE BROADSHEET
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Lower Manhattan’s Monument to a Ship That Never Arrived in New York to Shine Once Again
The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, at the corner of Pearl and Fulton Streets since 1976, has been restored by the South Street Seaport Museum.
After a year of stabilization and refurbishment, the restoration of the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse by the South Street Seaport Museum is nearing completion.
Museum president Captain Jonathan Boulware reported to Community Board 1 members that programmers were finalizing the project and configuring the Memorial’s time ball, a long-dormant horological aid. A large metal globe that once descended a pole precisely at the stroke of noon each day (triggered by a telegraphic signal from the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.), the time ball of the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse enabled sailors aboard ships offshore to calibrate their marine chronometers, needed for celestial navigation and the determination of longitude at sea. (This device was the origin of the now-renowned Times Square ball drop on New York’s Eve.) “That maritime tradition will now happen again every day at noon,” Mr. Boulware said.
Above: The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse was originally located atop the now-demolished Seamen’s Church Institute at the corner of South Street and Coenties Slip, on the site of what is now Vietnam Veterans Plaza. Below: The “time ball” at the top of the lighthouse descended a pole precisely at the stroke of noon each day, triggered by a telegraphic signal from the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
This local memorial to the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic has been hiding in plain sight at the corner at the corner of Pearl and Fulton Streets for five decades. Originally perched atop the Seamen’s Church Institute (a philanthropic organization that provides social services to mariners) at the corner of South Street and Coenties Slip, it was dedicated on April 15, 1913, the one-year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Designed by the architectural firm Warren and Wetmore (who created Grand Central Terminal), the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse featured a trio of 2500-candle power mercury lamps, the emerald beams from which could be seen ten miles out at sea.
“There is a new set of lights in there, which are green,” Captain Boulware noted. “When the lighthouse was erected on the Seamen’s Church building on Lower South Street in 1913, it had three green lanterns, which were deliberately intended to avoid confusion with an actual lighthouse.”
The South Street Seaport Museum saved the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse a half century ago, by arranging to accept the structure as a donation when the Seamen’s Church Institute building was demolished in the mid-1970s. The Titanic Memorial was initially moved to Pier 16 and then in 1976, after a partial restoration, the lighthouse was moved to its current location atop a lighthouse-like base at Titanic Memorial Park where it welcomes visitors to the South Street Seaport Historic District.
“We also had a treatment for the plinth, the base, which is not part of the artifact itself,” Captain Boulware added, “but inhabits one of this object’s multiple roles, that of wayfinding, the entry point to the Seaport, making it really clear where you are. We’re already finding that people say, ‘meet by the lighthouse.’”
“The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse will again shine in Lower Manhattan as a beacon of history and hope in honor of those lost in the Titanic disaster,” he said, suggesting the lighthouse as a new locale for “a downtown New Year’s Eve celebration for New Yorkers.”
Matthew Fenton
CREDITS
THE BROADSHEET
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
During the Covid pandemic in 2020 the Department of Records & Information Services assigned several Municipal Archives staff to assignments that could be completed remotely. The projects included transcribing collection inventories, lists, finding guides and other descriptive materials into searchable databases and spreadsheets.
Pen-maker John Foley to Mayor Abram Hewitt, 1887. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
Recently, archivist Cynthia Brenwall resumed transcribing descriptions of documents in the Early Mayors’ collection. This series comprises correspondence and documents from New York City mayoral administrations from 1826 through 1897 and totals 157.5 cubic feet. The collection had been assembled by Rebecca Rankin during her 32-year tenure as the Director of the Municipal Library between 1920 and 1952. This was a core collection in the Municipal Archives when it opened in 1952, and remains one of the most important series documenting nineteenth-century government and policies.
One feature of the correspondence noted by Ms. Brenwall during her work in 2020 and again more recently, is the elaborate commercially produced stationery and letterheads used by businesses and governments. This week For the Record takes a closer look at these wonderful works of art that defined an era of letter writing.
Real-Estate Union letterhead form 1893. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
An example of the original documents that were transcribed by NYC Municipal Archives staff in 2020. Entry 146 is the reference to the Real-Estate Union letterhead shown above.
Pastor Nathan Hubbell to Mayor Gilroy, 1893. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
Johnson & Johnson Company, 1893. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
Twine, rope, cord and hammock makers the Travers Brother Company highlighted the products that they produced in this elaborate letterhead. 1892. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
Sherriff John J. Gorman to Mayor Grant in 1893. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
Leo Schlesinger & Company was located on Crosby Street and manufactured tin toys, among other items. 1893. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
The 1893 letterhead for the Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company the graphic logo of the original glass company. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
Technically, the term letterhead did not appear until 1890. Before then, it was simply called “letter paper.” The rich illustrations depicted on the stationery corresponds with industrialization in America. By the 1860s, the images became more detailed and creative. It was a period when Americans could see their growing nation reflected in the artwork on their bills and correspondence.
The primary role of these illustrations was publicity. The images show busy factories, bustling street corners, and bold bank buildings. Government agency and department correspondence visually conveys the nature of their responsibilities.
While the content of the letters in the Early Mayors’ collection might be standard government business, the stationery offers a delight for the eye and creates a window into the business and government culture of a time gone by. For more examples, readers are also invited to review two For the Record articles published in 2020: The Transcription Project, Early Mayors’ Collection and Early Mayors Collection Part 2
The Grand Union Hotel was located across the street from the Grand Central Depot. 1888. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
William McCoy to Mayor Thomas Gilroy shows off the work of both the engraver and designer of this letterhead. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
This detailed letterhead features an image of a beehive to promote the business of a grocery and tea dealing company. Letter from the office of Callahan and Kemp sent to Mayor Hugh Grant, 1889. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
Eureka Fire Hose Company logo on a letter dated 1893. Early Mayors records, NYC Municipal Archives.
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EDEN, The House of Art, invites you to discover Dorit Levinstein’s Park Avenue Exhibition, a vibrant open-air presentation set along one of Manhattan’s most iconic avenues.
On view from May 2026 to May 2027, the exhibition spans Park Avenue from 34th to 39th Streets, introducing nine monumental sculptures that bring movement, color, and rhythm into the urban landscape.
Through her signature visual language, Levinstein transforms the city into a living gallery, creating moments of joy, energy, and artistic discovery in the heart of New York.
On view May 2026 – May 2027 Park Avenue, NYC 34th–39th Streets
GLANCE FROM YOUR CAR AT THESE CREATURES
STOP BY THE RIHS VISITOR CENTER FOR GREAT GIFTS
GET YOUR RIHS EXCLUSIVE TRAM 50 TEE SHIRT IN ADULT SIZES AT THE RIHS KIOSK $20-
CREDITS
EDEN GALLERY
JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
