Archive for February 2013
anxious band
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I keep coming up empty at Calvary lately. Today’s examination of the great polyandrion of the megalopolis centers around an odd monument of somewhat ambiguous vintage. It likely dates back to the time of the Civil War, give or take ten years on either side. The face of the piece is in rather bad shape, exhibiting a partnership between natural weathering and acid rain coupled with what would appear to be impact damage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An attempt to describe the inscription:
I read the first grouping as:
“In Memory of Jeanne Du– obscured text is possibly a P and a U- Epan in Pau FR– obscured text is likely ANCE or France.
There is a Pau in France, so that means she was likely French!
The stone follows:
“On the– obscured text is possibly 14th- of November, 18- X5, – obscured text is possibly DIED- in the City of New York, November 10 18- X5.”
“In memory of– obscured text”
“John P. Ferr– obscured text is possibly an E. Born in– obscured text is likely France. Died Jan – obscured text is possibly an 18 or 28- – obscured text is likely 1876. Aged– obscured text likely 73 or 78- Years.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All attempts at searching for the couple, using variations of Jeanne D’s name likely for someone of her ancestry and variations of the gentleman’s name, failed. This is deucedly odd, as Calvary normally gives up her secrets to me. The monument is remarkable for the double portrait, incidentally, which is a signifier of social standing and material wealth. I will continue to research this spot, which is nearby the Connell monument recently discussed at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
passages beneath
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Confession is offered, lords and ladies, that your humble narrator has been experimenting all over the neighborhood. Trick shooting, long exposure times, specialized equipment- the whole shameful arrangement has been employed in a vainglorious attempt to alleviate tedium. It has literally been months since I’ve had anything but ground under my feet, and I can’t even remember the last time I was on a boat by gum.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A desire to just go and ride the Staten Island Ferry, braving the cold and weather, forms in me. Too timid to actuate even such a mundane plan as this, instead retreat is made to the usual and familiar, so a scuttling across the frozen concrete and urban desolations go I. An attempt has been underway to utilize some of the older cameras which have accumulated on the shelf, as well as to grow practiced with some newer gear. I’ve also been try and “slow it down” a bit, process wise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
During the summer, at whatever adventure I happen to be participating in, things pop up fast and furious- photo wise- and speed is essential for the successful capture of a quality image. A dolphin or giant snapping turtle isn’t going to just hold a pose while you fumble around with settings on your dslr after all. Problem is that the speed you develop becomes a habit, a shortcut to the shot. At the moment, I’ve actually got some time to experiment, and I plan on using it.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
last reserves
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s all so depressing, but at least I’m having a better time of it than one of the neighbors. He found himself carted off by the FDNY to the hospital the other night for reasons unknown to one such as myself.
A short post today, meant to spotlight what was an extremely difficult exposure and photographic capture to pull off, and all from the relative safety of my porch. It has been a VERY long time since I noodled a photo as much as this one. Worth it?
My neighbor seems to have pulled through, as I’ve seen him wandering around the neighborhood and wildly gesticulating at unrelated strangers since.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
phantom processions
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s funny how you can walk by things just about every day and not take notice of them. Case in point are the stubby streets which intersect with Jackson Avenue when turning west out of Queensboro bridge plaza. A couple of them have been mentioned in recent weeks- Dutch Kills and Queens Streets come to mind, but the ones closer to Queens Blvd. haven’t.
Pictured above is the fore mentioned Queens street, for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What drew me down Orchard Street wasn’t affected by the inquisitive NYPD patrol car which slowly followed this odd looking fellow in a dirty black raincoat who was taking photographs of warehouses, for I was following the amazing pattern of reflected light emanating from the blue glass of the newly constructed Gotham Center. The cops were intensely curious as to my purpose, but not so much that they rolled down a window or got out of the car.
Lucky day, thought I, to have a personal bodyguard watching my back while I captured a few shots of the Rosenwasser Bros. facade.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Confession that I had indeed noticed the signage of this facade before must be offered, but for some reason, a conviction that the company had something to do with water tanks had always possessed me. Couldn’t be further from that, it turns out, as the Rosenwassers were magnates in the rag trade. They started out, like many Jewish garment tycoons, in the shirtwaist business in lower Manhattan. Running what 21st century eyes would process as a sweatshop, they accumulated enough money to set up a large industrial combine in Queens shortly after the opening of the bridge in 1909, and won several military as well as civilian contracts.
By 1913, they were an established and well known Queensican company run by its President- Morris Rosenwasser.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They manufactured baseball cleats sold under Babe Ruth branding in peacetime, and manufactured military footwear and gas masks during war. Also, they supplied the Boy Scouts, and manufactured all sorts of specialty shoes. The large building with the red awning just to the east of the offices isn’t their facility, instead, that was a Steinway Piano plant.
It is presumed that the large parking lot which currently enjoys tenancy on the corner of Jackson between Orchard and Queens Streets was the location of the factory they maintained, which at its height in 1918, employed some 2,500 people.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Rosenwasser factory, during the first World War, was in possession of several valuable contracts with the Federal Government. The mill turned out an average of 6,000 pairs of shoes a day, 15,000 pairs of leggings, and an undetermined number of canvas gas masks, rucksacks, and other commodities for the war department.
A so called “open shop,” the Rosenwassers were prime movers in a case (Rosenwasser Bros. Inc. v. Pepper et al, NYS Supreme Court October 1918) which defined the rights and limitations of organized labor during wartime for a generation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that the United Shoe Workers of America, a Boston based trade union, sent an organizer to the Rosenwasser factory to create a new local. Aggressive tactics and a general unwillingness to compromise brought production to a halt, threatening the company with default and failure to deliver on its Federal contracts. After wrangling with the organizer and his masters in New England, Morris Rosenwasser decided to sue.
The resulting case declared that whereas labor has the right to organize and negotiate for better conditions of employment, the essential nature of war production trumped their rights to “go out”, and binding Federal arbitration would be labors only recourse.
It should be mentioned, Lords and Ladies, what the name of that labor organizer from New England was…
Sources list no first name for him, only a surname… which was Gilman.
from 1919’s THE MISCELLANEOUS REPORTS OASES DECIDED IN THE COURTS OF RECORD OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK OTHER THAN THE Court of Appeals and the Appellate Division 01 the Supreme Court, courtesy google books
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
whispered warnings
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is fleeting, foot prints in the dust of eternity. Water will always win, and the accomplishments of an age of miracles will someday melt away into rust and sand. Like some ancient mariner, with his hands frozen to the wheel of a sinking ship and lost in tempest, so too does your humble narrator resist this and other truths of the world.
Welcome and nepenthe are found only amongst the tomb legions, so off to the polyandrion scuttle I.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A fairly early monument, by Calvary standards, is the 1858 obelisk and accompanying freestanding sculpture of the Connell monument.
It dominates in a prominent section of the great cemetery, occupying a position of prestige and the monument is evidentiary of a family possessed of certain material wealth and standing in the pre civil war era of 19th century New York City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was the age when Tammany was born, and the teeming masses of Europe were arriving in daily tides to lower Manhattan. The City was bursting at its seams, and the inequality of wealthy and poor was never as wide as it was then. This is a New York that let pigs loose in the street to eat up the garbage, in which plumbing seldom extended beyond the ground floor, and in which children slept five to a bed just to stay warm. It was the time of the B’hoy and the mob.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Connell family has been difficult to track down, despite their obvious wealth and influence. Evidence of a Thomas M Connell, a “Commissioner of Deeds” during the early stages of the Tammany era who was forced from office might be one of the fellows who is buried here, but the obscured lens of the historical record makes this speculation at best.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Glaring and obvious to most, but always startling to me, is the manner in which important or at least famous members of the City’s upper crust just drift away. At the time of the Connell family’s residency in NY society, they were likely familiar and oft spoken of members of the community, either famous or infamous.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the world suffered by most in the 19th century, anybody who could afford to erect a thirty foot marble obelisk and surround it with free standing sculptures in Calvary Cemetery was clearly well off. Consider also, the societal standing and respect needed for Church officials to allow such a grandiose monument to be erected here.
Calvary is considered to be part of the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral by the Archdiocese, a holy of holies, and not a place to allow some “new money” bourgeois merchant to show off.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All else I can tell you of the woman who inspired this extravagant monument is of a singular nature.
Her name was Mary Frances Connell, who died on a Saturday- July 17- in 1858, and she was nineteen years old.
Over at NYTimes.com, a short obituary for Ms. Connell. Click here.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
The Newtown Pentacle 