Category Archives: George Washington

Monday morning coffee

04 Monday Sep 2023

Posted by in Brooklyn, George Washington, George Washington's Mount Vernon, Memory, Museums, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

≈ 6 Comments

I hope everyone’s Labor Day weekend is going well. After the grind that was the first full week of the academic year I consciously stepped away from anything work-related on Saturday and Sunday. Today I’ll do laundry, clean the house, and send some emails. I’m in the midst of a project this semester that has proven more complicated and time-consuming than I’d originally envisioned. I’m trying to learn a few new skillsets on the fly, which to put it mildly has been a challenge. I’m trying to control what I can and pace myself for the remainder of what will be a challenging term. Yesterday I went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It was a gorgeous late summer day. Prospect Park was full and Eastern Parkway lined with vendors.

Daniel Huntington’s 1861 “The Republican Court (Lady Washington’s Reception Day)”

One of my favorite spots in the Brooklyn Museum is the visible storage facility. I’ve seen similar layouts at the New-York Historical Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum. Apparently the Henry Luce Association funded these and similar facilities, most if not all of which have names mentioning Luce . Visible storage, sometimes called open storage, is a way for museum visitors to view items not on display in the galleries. Strolling through I noticed Daniel Huntington’s “The Republican Court (Lady Washington’s Reception Day).” It portrays one of First Lady Martha Washington’s fêtes at the Presidents House in Philadelphia in the 1790s. It’s actually quite large, about six feet tall and twelve feet across. The year if came out—1861—is significant. The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association had been founded in 1853, and they opened Washington’s home as a museum in 1860. As the secession crises was heating up both sides were claiming the Founders as their own. Huntington produced this work the year of Fort Sumter and First Bull Run.

A quick dive into the Brooklyn Daily Eagle informs us that Latham Avery Fish purchased “The Republican Court (Lady Washington’s Reception Day)” for $3,300 from the A.T. Stewart collection in 1887 and sold it for that same value to the Alexander Hamilton Club at Clinton and Remsen Streets. The Union League Club of New York also coveted the painting but fell short in the bidding. Years later, President Theodore Roosevelt, a devout Hamiltonian, tried to purchase the artwork for $50,000—upwards of $1.5 million in today’s dollars—for the Library of Congress. That fell through. The Hamilton Club eventually merged with the Crescent Club and when the Hamilton clubhouse was torn down in the mid-1930s this and other pieces ended up moving to the Crescent clubhouse at Clinton and Pierrepont Streets. It became a fixture of Washington’s Birthday commemorations. Crescent-Hamilton Athletic Club members were generous with the painting, lending it to the Brooklyn Museum in 1932 for a big exhibit coinciding with the George Washington bicentennial. It really is one of the most iconographic pieces of Washingtonia, which is saying a lot. As I have been able to gather, the Crescent-Hamilton Athletic Club donated “The Republican Court (Lady Washington’s Reception Day)” to the Brooklyn Museum in 1939. I’m glad it has remained in the borough.

Washington’s retreat

29 Tuesday Aug 2023

Posted by in Brooklyn, George Washington

≈ Comments Off on Washington’s retreat

It is the first full week at my college. I’m having my coffee before heading out in a little bit for what will be a full day. Today is the 247th anniversary of General Washington’s evacuation of Brooklyn. Had the British pushed harder it all could have ended in late August 1776, less than eight weeks after the Declaration of Independence. The plaque above stands in the entranceway of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. It is actually not known for certain if it was at the Four Chimneys House that Washington held his council of war. Others such as General John Morin Scott, who was there, said it was at the nearby home of Philip Livingston. It is one of those things that likely will never be known for certain. I’m re-upping this post I wrote earlier this year for Morristown National Historical Park about John Glover, who with his men rowed Washington and his men across the East River that fateful day.

Lafayette arrives

13 Tuesday Jun 2023

Posted by in George Washington, Lafayette, Philately, Richard Varick

≈ Comments Off on Lafayette arrives

I love this gorgeous First Day of Issue commemorating the 1777 arrival of the Marquis de Lafayette—all of nineteen—in America to aid in the Patriot war effort. Europe was not always sending its best and Washington pleaded with Franklin and other diplomats to make it stop. I still collect blocks of four for older stamps, but First Day Covers are the only way to go with new releases given that today’s stamps are all self-adhesive. I can only hope that next year or in 2025 we get a release commemorating the bicentennial of Lafayette’s grand tour of 1824-25 when he visited every state in the union on the cusp of the jubilee. Richard Varick as a friend of Lafayette and president of the New York State Society of the Cincinnati did a fair amount to make that trip a success.

Morristown National Historical Park turns 90

04 Saturday Mar 2023

Posted by in George Washington, National Park Service

≈ Comments Off on Morristown National Historical Park turns 90

Morristown National Historical Park ninetieth anniversary celebration, March 4, 2023

I had a good time in New Jersey today at the ninetieth anniversary celebration of Morristown National Historical Park. Although we usually associate Franklin Roosevelt with the shifting focus on the national parks from the West to the East, it was actually Herbert Hoover who began the process. The lame duck executive signed the enabling legislation creating the first national historical park on March 2, 1933 in the waning days of his presidency. MORR is one of the gems in Park Service system, and spread across several locations as it is has something for everyone. Above we see the ribbon cutting that took place after this afternoon’s keynote address. The historical park is having a number of events throughout the year. In fact, on Saturday June 17 a guy with my initials will be giving a talk in the museum behind the Ford Mansion. The topic is based on an article I recently wrote about a project undertaken for a decade in the 1910s and 1920s sponsored by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in cooperation with the National Park Service.

The Washington-Rochambeau Grand Reconnaissance

23 Friday Jul 2021

Posted by in George Washington, Museums

≈ Comments Off on The Washington-Rochambeau Grand Reconnaissance

Van Cortlandt House Museum, Bronx

This morning a friend and I ventured to the end of the 1 Train on a gorgeous summer day to visit the Van Cortlandt House Museum, the oldest remaining house in New York City. The structure dates to 1748. It was more coincidence than anything else–we did not realize it when we booked out tickets online earlier in the week–but in a piece of good fortune we happened to be there on the 240th anniversary of the Washington-Rochambeau Grand Reconnaissance. The two generals had met on the premises on July 23, 1781 on the third of three days of reconnoitering British strengths in and around New York City. Ultimately they of course decided against an offensive against the Redcoats headquartered in Manhattan and instead went south to face Cornwallis at Yorktown. It was great to see people out using the park, and also striking up conversations with fellow museum visitors and knowledgeable museum staff. I took the photo you see here of one of the gardens from the second floor. Summer 2021 is on. Go get some.

Dateline: Wall Street, 30 April 1789

30 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by in Federal Hall National Memorial, George Washington

≈ 2 Comments

With the days warming, the world reopening incrementally, and a semi-normal summer potentially ahead I have been thinking a lot recently of hopefully returning to Federal Hall sometime in the near future. This has never been truer than today: the anniversary of George Washington’s first inaugural. We will see what happens. I have so missed that interaction with the public.

Above was the scene on Wall Street in 1789 and below an incredible image of President Benjamin Harrison’s entourage 100 years later.

(images/NYPL)

a “New Valley Forge”

23 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Federal Hall National Memorial, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Washington, Memory

≈ Comments Off on a “New Valley Forge”

Here are a few more images from my presentation this past Monday at Federal Hall on Presidents Day. Here we see an announcement for a Washington Birthday Democratic fundraiser held in Fort Worth, Texas on February 23, 1942. This was less than two months after Pearl Harbor in those tense days when the United States was getting up to speed in its war effort. The U.S. had been the “arsenal of democracy,” manufacturing tanks, bullets, jeeps, and whatnot for the Allies long prior to Pearl Harbor. Now American fighting men themselves would join the fray. As we see from the announcement the dinner was held on February 23, not Washington’s actually birthday, because the 22nd fell on a Sunday.

New York Times, February 23, 1942

Roosevelt himself did not attend the dinner, though as we see the Texas Democratic leadership was not hesitant to use his likeness, and on equal footing with President Washington no less. One must remember that Texas in this era was part of the Solid South, comprised, like the rest of the region, of Dixiecrats who since the Civil War eighty years previously had stood against the Party of Lincoln. In the 1930s these leaders, and those who voted for them, were part of the fragile New Deal coalition supporting FDR in cooperation with the Democratic machines of the northern cities. That coalition would hold another three decades until fracturing in the chaos of the Vietnam War and bitterness of the Civil Rights Movement. Roosevelt’s vice-president in his first two terms had been John Nance Garner, a Texan and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. The tension and unease in their relationship were representative of the strains within the New Deal coalition itself.

Garner was gone by 1942 and now Roosevelt was facing the war in his unprecedented third term. What we see here is the snippet of an article from the February 23, 1942 New York Times describing the mood on Washington’s birthday in those weeks just after Pearl Harbor. The first public observation of George Washington’s birthday had been at Valley Forge in the winter of 1778. Now America was facing a “new Valley Forge.” Attendees at the Fort Worth soiree did not meet Franklin Roosevelt, but they did hear him. That night he gave one of his fireside chats over the radio outlining the progress and stakes of the war, and the lessons to be learned from the experience and difficulties of Washington and the men of his Continental Army all those years earlier.