Artists of the Sanitary Fair

19 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Museums, New York City

I have been off this week and am trying to write 5000 word on my book project. I came across this photograph taken at the 1864 Metropolitan Sanitary Fair and thought I would share it before I sit down for my first wave of writing. I popped a jazz cd into the record player. I find I usually can’t write when music with vocals is playing. Today is Wednesday and thus getaway day for Major League Baseball; so there will be baseball on the radio here in a few hours.

The photograph above comes from a small work, what amounts to a scrapbook, that Matthew Brady published in small quantity in 1864 called Recollections of the Art Exhibition, Metropolitan Fair, New York. Many of the leading artists of the day may various various contributions to the April 1864 Metropolitan Fair, either putting works up for sale or on display where patrons who paid the fundraising entrance fee could see them. It was at the 1864 New York sanitary fair that New Yorkers saw Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” What I am trying to do in my book make New York City a more central aspect of the American Civil War.

Unfortunately the artists listed here are not annotated. The one we do know for certain is Brady seated in the center. It was his studio’s photographs after the battle of Antietam, which were shown in his New York studio shortly after the engagement, that brought the war “home” to most New Yorkers, who lined up to see them in fall 1862.

(image/Library of Congress)

Grand Army Plaza, June 11

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Monuments and Statuary, Museums, New York City

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I was at the Brooklyn Museum of Art this afternoon to meet with officials about the walking tour I am doing on Sunday 11 June from 12:00 – 1:00 pm for the museum. The idea was to do a walkthrough of the presentation to see if it fits into the time slot and to decide if any changes or additions might be in order. I ran two people though the walking tour, and we had a fun and productive time running though the thing. I got some good feedback as well. There is nothing like the live audience to keep you humble. Grand Army Plaza was laid out by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted in the years just after the Civil War. The area is one of the places of Civil War memory not just in New York but in the United States. So many people walk past it all every day with no idea. I am looking forward to this event.

Living–and telling–history

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Memory, Museums

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Museum of Jewish Heritage, 29 January 2017

This past Sunday morning I was at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on the Battery to see my friend Sami Steigmann participate in a ceremony to remember the Holocaust and other crimes committed in Europe in the twentieth century. Sami Steigmann was born in 1939 in Bukovina, one of those regions whose nation status changed hands numerous times in that span during and after the World Wars. The other day I wrote about the 135th anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That may seem like ancient history, but it is incredibly humbling to meet people like Sami Steigmann, whose lives were changed through the decisions made by the leaders of the twentieth century. Sami and his parents were imprsoned in a concentration camp, where as a toddler he was the victim of medical experiments. Just typing these words is difficult.

We have known Mr. Steigmann for eight years now. I even wrote a book chapter about it that was published last year during the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service. I am glad to see that Sami is becoming an increasingly prominent national figure. Even while we are still early in the new year, his 2017 calendar is already filling up with speaking engagements. And why not? Still a relatively young man in his mid-seventies, he is uniquely positioned to tell a personal narrative of the mid twentieth century in a way that few people today can. Sunday’s event had just the right balance of seriousness and levity. There was even a young all-male song and dance troupe of boys strongly reminiscent of what one might have seen at a borscht belt camp ground circa 1955, and that’s a compliment. When it was all over I didn’t stay long. The crowd to meet Sami was so deep that I said a quick goodbye and headed out the door into the January light.

One Tuesday in January . . .

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Museums, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Ulysses S. Grant

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Yesterday morning I submitted a piece (to which I will link when the time comes) and then headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Holiday Monday. It was not as crowded as I thought it would be. I suppose the warmer weather had people outside. I saw this bust Grant that I had not previously seen before. I intentionally left a portion of the vase in the lower right hand corner for scale. In a sense he was an opponent of the Roosevelt family because Grant ally Roscoe Conkling vehemently opposed Theodore Roosevelt Senior’s 1877 nomination to lead the Port of New York. Perhaps that partially explaining the strained relationship between their sons, Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Dent Grant, had a strained relationship when they were on the NYC Board of Police several decades later.

It is still the intersession and I am off this week to write. The original plan was to go to Washington and work but with the inaugural taking place it seemed wiser to stay away. They say it’s going to rain today and tomorrow, which makes for good writing weather.

Lincoln’s Peekskill

06 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Heritage tourism, Monuments and Statuary, Museums

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Sculptor Richard Masloski created this Lincoln and other works one will see in the Lincoln Depot Museum.

Sculptor Richard Masloski created this Lincoln piece and other works one will see in the Lincoln Depot Museum.

A friend and I took a day trip to Peekskill, New York yesterday to visit the Lincoln Depot Museum. The LDP opened about fifteen months ago and, though small, is a testament to what can be done through good decision-making and a strong sense of purpose. The founders of the museum created something special. We did not quite plan it this way but it proved a good 1,2 punch with the Transit Museum’s satellite space inside Grand Central Station displaying its annual holiday train display. Trains were the theme of the day. And yes it was like Grand Central: packed with holiday-goers. The timing was not entirely coincidental; I was determined to get there in 2015 while the Civil War sesquicentennial is still technically on.

One can only imagine what Lincoln was thinking as he watched the Hudson Valley roll by on his way to Washington during the secession crisis in winter 1861.

Lincoln was in Peekskill for a whistle stop in February 1861 on his way to Washington City and his inaugural. Four years and two months later his body passed through and stopped in the town once again on its way back to Illinois. I believe the Lincoln Depot Museum is about to close for the season but if one is in New York and has a few hours it is well worth the trek. It is a five minute walk from the Metro North train station with a good bakery and restaurants right there.

Bearing Lincoln

09 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Museums, National Park Service

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Late last week I went to the CUNY Graduate Center to hear Martha Hodes discuss her new book Mourning Lincoln. Dr. Hodes, a professor at New York University, explained that while writing her book she used the events of 9/11 as a springboard to analyze the Lincoln assassination and especially its aftermath. What she meant was that today, fourteen years after the World Trade Center attacks, the tendency is to think that there was a universal quality to Americans’–and even New Yorkers’–responses to that event. Old photographs she dug up of people congregating at Washington Square reminded her that the immediate response was more complicated than her fading memory. Such is the nature of these types of events.

The ultimate example of this phenomenon is the murder of Lincoln. Today the tendency is to believe that all Americans responded with universal grief and solemnity when nothing could have been further from the truth. Many–and not just below the Mason-Dixon line–were euphoric. This was especially true here in New York City, where Copperhead sympathies predominated throughout the war. No photographs exist of Lincoln’s assassination or the scene at his deathbed. The closest thing we have is artist Carl Bersch’s painting Lincoln Borne by Loving Hands. As far as is known this is the only rendering to have been done by an eyewitness. The provenance is unclear, but Bersch seems to have painted the work sometime later in 1865. It’s what we have.

A friend sent me an article about the ongoing restoration of the painting, which is in the care of the National Park Service. The painting has not been seen by too many people over the past century and a half, though it did go to Russian four years ago as part of an exhibit to mark the parallel lives of Lincoln and Czar Alexander II. The czar had freed the serfs in 1861 and would himself later be assassinated. I would not put too fine a point on it, but in a way Lincoln’s killing can be seen as part of the wave of political assassinations that were so common between his killing in 1865 and Archduke Ferdinand’s in 1914. Bomb-throwing revolutionaries killed Alexander II in 1881, and it was Leon Czolgosz’s shooting of President McKinley twenty years after that that brought Theodore Roosevelt to power. And those are just a few of the most prominent examples. Anyways, here is that piece from the Washington Post about the painting’s restoration. The restoration work began in August and should conclude in early 2016 with the painting going on display at Ford’s Theater.

Thomas Sully’s Jonathan WIlliams

22 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Governors Island, Museums

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Though born in Boston, Jonathan Williams was very much part of Philadelphia society. He rests today in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

I was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Museum yesterday. Imagine my shock when I turned a corner and came across this large portrait of Jonathan Williams. The name may not be familiar to everyone, but Colonel Williams was the engineer who modernized Governors Island’s Fort Jay and built Castle Williams. And those were just a few of his many accomplishments. I have never understood why Williams is not a better known figure in American history. He was a grand-nephew of Benjamin Franklin and a good friend of Thomas Jefferson. President Jefferson appointed Williams first superintendent of West Point in 1801. Williams codified many of the Military Academy’s early practices and incorporated a curriculum strong on science and engineering. This should not be a surprise; Williams and his great-uncle shared a fascination with science and technology.

At West Point Williams founded the United States Military Philosophical Society to promote science and engineering among the cadets. In this pursuit he was encouraged by President Jefferson. The MPS only lasted a decade or so, eventually giving way to the intense preparations for the War of 1812; Williams was in New York by Jefferson’s second term helping to fortify New York Harbor.

It is fitting that the painting above is in Philadelphia. Williams had returned there and spent the remainder of his life in the city of Brotherly Love. Among other things he was active in the American Philosophical Society, which is probably what led to this portrait. The APS provided studio space for artist Thomas Sully, who executed this portrait in 1815. Williams died that same year. Alexander Biddle gifted the painting to the museum in 1964.

Francis in Philadelphia

10 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Gettysburg, Museums, Union League Club

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Gettysburg National Cemetery

I read with interest that when Pope Francis appears next month at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall he will be speaking from the lecturn used by Abraham Lincoln when the president gave the Gettysburg Address. The podium, originally part of Wert Collection, is currently on longterm loan to the Union League Club of Philadelphia. I have never visited the Union Club in Philadelphia, but I have been inside the one here in New York. Both institutions date to winter 1863 and have vast collections of Civil War and Gilded Age memorabilia.

I was a little surprised to read that the podium had ever even belonged to the Wert Collection. I have been in many of the shops along Steinwehr Avenue and have seen many Gettysburg relics for sale. Locals such as John Rosensteel and J. Howard Wert began collecting the battle’s detritus within hours of the fighting’s end. (I have been to Belgium and north France, where I have seen the same phenomenon relating to Ypres, the Battle of the Marne, and elsewhere.) The Rosensteel Collection today forms the base of the Park Service’s vast holdings. If Wert is to believed, some of the bullets and shrapnel pieces were still hot when he gathered them in the days immediately after the battle.

What surprised me was that Wert had even acquired the lecturn to begin with. He apparently obtained it right there and then just after Lincoln’s speech on November 19, 1863, adding it to his already extensive collection of Gettysburg relics.

The Roebling Museum

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Museums

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The Roebling Museum opened in 2009 and is easily reachable by public transit.

I had an enjoyable and productive meeting in downtown Brooklyn early this afternoon with the director of the Roebling Museum. As its name indicates, the museum honors the legacy of the family who built the Brooklyn Bridge. I have always known how important John A. Roebling and his son Washington were. However, it was not until visiting the museum a few weeks ago that I grasped the family’s true significance. At one time their factory outside Trenton, New Jersey manufactured 80% of the wire used in the United States. That wire was strung on telegraph and telephone poles, elevators (Otis was a huge customer), electric cords & cables, bridges, and just about anything else one can imagine that required wire.

Today’s meeting was the product of that visit to the museum. A friend and I had a tour with a very engaging and knowledgeable docent. In the course of the conversation I mentioned the possibility of myself volunteering in some capacity. It seems I will now be writing a little content for the museum’s social media platforms and perhaps eventually work my way up to a walking tour. The Roeblings are fascinating and played key roles in many of the nation’s most important event. Washington himself was an officer in the Union Army. There are additional Interpretation opportunities regarding immigration, labor, the World Wars, and the eventual collapse of the manufacturing sector within the United States, to name just a few things. These are some of the stories I hope to tell.

Volunteering with the museum is a good fir for me because I can contribute in a modest way without taking away from the many other projects I am involved with at the moment. I would like to learn more about science and engineering as well.

As for the museum itself, I should note how easy it is to reach via mass transportation. One can get there very easily from New York or Philadelphia Penn Station to Trenton, followed by a fifteen minute train ride on the River Line. For those who drive, it is near the turnpike. It is definitely worth the time.

The Great Fair turns 75

19 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Museums, New York City

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I recently began researching a small piece for the World War I Centennial Commission social media page when I came across these remarkable photographs taken during the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. If you do the math you will note that we are currently in the middle of the fair’s 75th anniversary. It was a fascinating historical moment because the Depression was finally starting to lift, while at the same time the clouds of war were gathering in Europe. The fair began on April 30 and the German invasion of Poland was on September 1. Needless to say, these and other events wreaked havoc on the fair and its hope for a batter world of tomorrow. The Second World War also had immediate concerns for event planners from the dozens of participating nations. For instance, which constituency would represent this or that recently conquered nation in the fair’s pavilions? Would it be the resistance leaders or the representatives of the new regime? Or neither? Perhaps a country’s organizers would be better off shutting down their nation’s pavilion and washing one’s hands of the entire matter. How does one celebrate knowing the news of such death and destruction back home? These are the issues they dealt with.

The photos here are of American Civil War veterans at the fair. I wish I could date the images more precisely but as of yet cannot. I hope to do more with this in the future. In some cursory digging I discovered that Civil War veterans went to the 1939-1940 World’s Fair on several occasions. Helen D. Longstreet, Pete Longstreet’s widow, was at the fair at least twice. In June 1939 she was there to dedicate an exhibit of Confederate artifacts at the Florida Pavilion. A month later–on 2 July 1939, the 76th anniversary of the second day’s fighting at Gettysburg–she appeared again. Her appearance came one year after Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke at the unveiling of the Peace Light Memorial.

The very week the Germans and Soviets were dividing Poland Civil War vets inspected the tanks of the Seventh Cavalry Brigade at the fairgrounds in Queens. Again, it is not clear when these photographs were taken. The one of the soldiers standing in front of the Lincoln statue says it was taken on Lincoln’s Birthday. The heavy coats would seem to corroborate that. I would guess the photograph was taken in 1940 but it could have been 1939 when the final touches were being made in preparation for the opening that spring. Note the photo of Robert E. Lee. This was quite consciously a reconciliationist effort on the part of the organizers.

A young girl admires the medals of a Civil War veteran. One can imagine that Americans found comfort in the presence of these aging soldiers as war was getting underway yet again. The Second World War’s role in the reconciliation process is often overlooked.

Here are our friends in blue and grey yet again. I am not sure of the building in front of which they are standing.

This past August I took this photo of the rear of the New York City Building. This is today the Queens Museum of Art.

Here is a mosaic commemorating the fair. This area today is Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. I took these two photos on my way to a Mets game.

(images of Civil War veterans, NYPL)

The Strawfoot

~ a New Yorker's American History blog

Category Archives: Museums