Eldridge Street Synagogue / Tenement Museum

Eldridge Street Synagogue

4/18/10, Sunday

MUSEUMS:

Museum at Eldridge Street  ……….....…...  2.5 hrs

Tenement Museum …................................. 1 hr

COST:

Museum at Eldridge Street ……......……... $10 each, tour included

   Lecture on synagogue art …….........…... Free

Tenement Museum ..................................... $20 each, tour included

Eldridge Street Synagogue window

The more we get to know New York City, the more we realize that this city of immigrants is not a melting pot, it’s more like a kaleidoscope.  Manhattan and most of the boroughs are broken up into distinct regions, often with visible boundaries, defined by the widely divergent cultures, languages and attitudes of the groups that live there.  Several neighborhoods have had cultures so powerful that they became iconic, forever changing the fiber of the city in a way that echoes even after the neighborhoods have shifted and moved on.  These neighborhoods have names like Harlem, South Bronx, Hell’s Kitchen, Park Slope, Little Italy and East Village; names that evoke a zeitgeist and identity that have become part of NYC’s landscape.  Today we visited one of these legendary neighborhoods: the Lower East Side.

The Lower East Side has long been a starting point for families immigrating from far away lands.  Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, Irish, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Chinese and just about every other nationality that has passed through this city have settled here en masse at one time or another.  The Lower East Side includes some of the most infamous areas in NYC history (the Bowery, Five Points and Alphabet City), as well as some of the most celebrated (East Village and Chinatown).   The region is continuously reborn with each new wave of immigrants, and is a mix of old and young, rich and poor, hipsters and hippies, and small shops and large conglomerates.  Currently, this traditionally lower class neighborhood is undergoing a gentrification of sorts, but its roots are clearly visible.  Landmarks like the Essex Street market, Katz’s Deli and Gus’s pickles still do a brisk business, and old tenement buildings stand shoulder to shoulder with the gleaming glass and steel condominium towers of modern NYC.

Eldridge Street Synagogue

Not surprisingly, this neighborhood is absolutely chock-full of museums.  There are several art museums, notably the controversial New Museum of Contemporary Art.  However, most Lower East Side museums focus on the history of this great neighborhood, like the Museum of Chinese in the Americas and the Museum of the American Gangster.  Today’s museums both focused on immigrant lives around the turn of the century.  These museums were the Museum at Eldridge Street (which exhibits the Eldridge Street Synagogue) and the Tenement Museum.

Eldridge Street Synagogue woman's balcony

The Eldridge Street Synagogue is one of the oldest Eastern European Orthodox Jewish places of worship in North America.  When it was completed in 1887, close to 400,000 Jews lived in this neighborhood, and the synagogue demonstrates the wealth and piety of this community.  At the time, local press marveled at its imposing Moorish inspired edifice, elaborate brass fixtures and stained glass windows.  We fell in love with its beautiful murals, arches and spectacular circular windows.  It reminded us of mujedar places of worship that we’ve seen in southern Spain, and we both felt it was a jewel of NYC architecture.

Synagogue before restoration

For fifty years, the Eldridge Street Synagogue flourished, not just as a place of worship, but as community center where Jewish immigrants could get help, lodging, food, and jobs. However, as time passed, the congregation dwindled.  Immigration laws began to limit new arrivals, the Great Depression reduced congregants' fortunes and many Jews moved out of the city into less crowded housing in the suburbs.  In the 1930s, the shrunken congregation moved out of the great sanctuary and began to use the smaller, cheaper-to-heat house of study in the basement.  By 1950, the roof leaked, widows were broken, the inner stairs were unsound, and the remaining congregants cordoned off the sanctuary.

Thus the beautiful sanctuary room remained empty for twenty-five years, falling slowly into ruin.  Fortunately for us, New York was unwilling to let this treasure fade away, and in 1986 the non-sectarian, not-for-profit Eldridge Street Project was founded to restore the synagogue.  The restoration has been extensive, taking 20 years, $18.5 million, and legions of artists, but, with the installation of the stunning circular sanctuary window, it was finally completed in 2010.

 

Eldridge Street Synagogue Sanctuary Window, by Kiki Smith

The synagogue is seen with a guided tour that lasts about 30 minutes.  Our tour guide was an immigrant herself, from Eastern Europe, and her tour covered the history of the building and neighborhood, and also gave a highly informative hands-on comparative religion course on the rituals of Orthodox Judaism, all of which was definitely new to us.  We felt the grooves in the floor were men slid their feet as they prayed, learned the difference between a cantor and a rabbi, and stood at the head of the synagogue and slid open the beautiful carved doors of the ark where Torah scrolls were kept.  We loved experiencing pieces of a house of worship that were at once both foreign and familiar to us, and by the end of the tour we could almost hear the voices of ghostly cantors echoing in this beautiful building.

RATING: Eldridge Street Synagogue 

Pauline: 9 out of 10.  Stunning architecture, interesting history and a great tour.

Paul: 9 out of 10. A beloved building built by a community, for a community and saved by a community.

The Tenement Museum

A few blocks from the synagogue is the Tenement Museum, a museum in an old tenement apartment building.  Tenements were once the first homes of the newly immigrated in New York City and this building is the complete opposite of the synagogue; instead of beauty, wealth and spaciousness, tenements are ugly, poor and cramped.  Yet despite the surface differences, its interesting to note these museums cover the same time period, and the same people who lived in these tiny, crowded apartments may have worshiped at the synagogue down the street.  The contrast for these people must have been staggering, as it certainly was for us.

Stairway in entrance hall of tenement apartments

The museum is in a real tenement building, which served as extremely high density housing from the time it was built in 1863 until it was shuttered in 1935 for not meeting building codes (codes requiring un-reasonable things like heat and toilets).  As with the synagogue down the street, the building was a near ruin by the time it was discovered in 1988, but, as it had been uninhabited for 50 years, the building had never been restored and was still in largely original condition, which was exactly what the museum founders were looking for. 

The museum is only seen via guided tours, with each tour telling the story of the actual families who lived in the building and showing their apartments.  An estimated 7000 people lived in this building between 1863 and 1935; the museum has identified 1,300 of them and focuses on just a few families.  You learn about their day-to-day lives: what they did for a living, what they did for fun, their tragedies (like the deaths of their children) and their triumphs (like starting a successful business).  Every fact has been meticulously tracked down from public records (births, deaths, census and tax records), neighbors and descendants.  The museum has also done thorough dissections of the walls and floors in order to restore the original look of the apartments, and the appropriate furnishings were determined from floor marks, living descendants and crime scene photographs.  Every piece of every apartment was meticulously researched, from soap to sofas, and it definitely feels authentic.

Jane Moore, daughter of James and Bridget

We’ve visited the museum twice now and taken two tours: The Moores (an Irish-Catholic family) and Getting By (German-Jewish and Irish-Catholic families), and they covered different parts of the building and had very different stories.  To me, the Moores had the most impact.  This tour focused on people fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, covering the childhood of Bridget Meehan during the famine, the price of her escape and her new life in 19th century New York married to Joseph Moore.  We heard the details about the horrors of the public outhouse (only 4 toilets for the entire building including the bar downstairs), sanitation levels in the neighborhood (garbage and rats everywhere), and the scandalous milk scam that took the life of at least one of Bridget’s children.  It really brought home what early immigrants were up against, and the miracle that many members of the Moore family not only survived but thrived.  Even though Bridget herself died at the early age of 36, her descendants are alive and well in NYC and elsewhere.

RATING: Tenement Museum 

Pauline: 7 out of 10.  Interesting and accurate history, but tours can be inconsistent.

Paul: 8 out of 10.  Excellent preservation of a part of New York's history that should never be forgotten.

NOTES ON VISITING THE TENEMENT MUSEUM:

The Tenement Museum is one of New York’s newest museums, and has received a ton of attention from the local press.  This museum has been touted as a new kind of museum, one devoted to the contributions of the common man instead of the wealthy.  Hence this museum is very popular, and we ran into dense crowds on our weekend visit.  Also, the museum is not well organized and we’d advise a little preparation work before your visit. 

Despite the sign, this is not the entrance.

The first problem is finding the museum entrance, which is actually in an unlabeled gift shop across the street from the museum’s address.  Once you enter the shop you’ll see a counter with a crowd milling about in front and a chalkboard behind.  Names are written on the chalkboard, with times and check marks underneath.  After you elbow your way to the counter, you’ll need to get today’s handout, which lists the tours available.  These tours have the names of families covered by each tour.  Each tour covers only one or two apartments, and no tour covers the entire building.  Compare the handout with the chalkboard to determine what is sold out.  We recommend cruising the tours listed on the museum’s website ahead of time to determine which you want to go on.  With an admission price of $20, the Tenement Museum is one of NYC’s most expensive museums, so make sure you pick a tour that interests you.  If you’re really organized, you can purchase in advance and skip the crowds.

Proceed with some caution: the Tenement Museum has worked hard to restore six apartments, but the building is still a work in progress.  Most floors have construction zones, and other areas have been left deliberately un-restored to show the original condition of the building.  You’ll see holes in the walls, exposed plumbing and hanging wires on every tour.  Additionally, due to the fact that this building was built before most building codes, it’s a rough place to walk.  Stairs are step and narrow, hallways are dark, floors are uneven, and rooms are very small.  The museum is not handicapped accessible, and if you prefer not to navigate the stairs and cramped quarters, the museum also gives several good walking tours of the neighborhood.

New York Transit Museum

Empire Express by Raúl Colón 2001

8/7/2010, Saturday

MUSEUM: New York Transit Museum

TIME: 1 hr

COST: $5 each

At most museums, exhibits are behind velvet ropes or glass, out of reach, untouchable and completely off limits.  I remember visiting museums as a kid and being told, “put your hands in your pockets and keep them there.”  The hands-off attitude can make museums feel stifling, and sometimes even adults want to experience something with more than one of our five senses.  However, today we found a museum where visitors are welcome to touch everything, and exhibits are meant to be pushed, poked, sat on and messed with.  This is great for kids of course, but surprisingly today’s museum is not a kid’s museum.  It’s the New York Transit Museum.

The New York Transit Museum is run by the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), the public corporation with the monumental task of coordinating most public transit in and around New York City, including tunnels, bridges, buses, commuter railways and subways.  Considered the largest transportation provider in the Western hemisphere, the MTA has a ridership of 12 million people per day.  It seems inevitable that an operation this enormous would sprout a museum.  As is fitting for a museum run by the same operation as the subway, the New York Transit Museum is a bit worn in spots and could use a good cleaning, but it delivers a good product for a low price, and does it with a certain gritty New York panache. 

Entrance to New York Transit Museum

Right from the beginning you can tell that this is not your average museum.  The Transit Museum is located within a decommissioned subway station in Brooklyn Heights, and is thus entirely below ground.  The museum kept the traditional no frills entrance of a NY subway station, and two long flights of stairs lead down below the sidewalk into a tiled room with turnstiles, metal bars and an old token booth.  (One word of warning: at the moment, the stairs are the only entrance and this museum is not wheelchair accessible.  It looks like a difficult climb for strollers as well.) 

There are several levels to the old station, packed to the gills with exhibits that examine public transportation from all angles: historical, mechanical, nostalgic, and even artistic.  Much of the top level is taken up by a mock tunnel containing the exhibit “Steel, Stone, and Backbone,” with stories and fun facts on the building of New York City's 100 year-old subway system.  The tunnel is framed with burlap and rough wood beams, with wheelbarrows full of rocks to lift, so you can heft what early tunnelers were carrying.  The exhibit is full of pictures, films and stories of the people who built the old tunnels during the early 1900’s, detailing the backbreaking, dangerous work, particularly in the tunnels under the Harlem and East Rivers.   

This floor also has a fun section on turnstiles and fare collection with a large collection of historic turnstiles that you can actually push through.  This was one of our favorite sections of the museum and Paul and I jumped through the turnstiles with gusto, comparing the action of early turnstiles with modern ones.  The opposing wall has a display on the 50-year history of the NY subway token, displaying every token type ever used and why, with cool sidebars on “slugs” and other ways people beat the fare before the current electronic cards.

The next floor down focuses on surface transportation, with the exhibit “On the Streets: New York's Trolleys and Buses.”  This floor houses actual buses and a horse drawn trolley (sans horse), plus a recreation of an intersection with “Don’t Walk” signs, fire hydrants and parking meters.  Much of this floor was set up for children, and there were several having a good time driving and refueling the buses, but there were also exhibits for adults.  We marveled over the insanely detailed models of every trolley that ever ran in Brooklyn (over 50 models) built by Dr. George T.F. Rahilly, and enjoyed the story of Elizabeth Jennings Graham (1830 – 1901), an African-American schoolteacher who won a landmark legal decision determining that people of color could ride any public conveyance on New York City's streets, 100 years before Rosa Parks. 

Dr. George T.F. Rahilly Trolley and Bus Study Center

Catch a Ride, by Greg Ruth, 2010

One thing we veteran museum goers did not expect in a transit museum was art but, shockingly, this museum has an extensive art exhibit detailing the “Arts for Transit” program.  As part of a massive rehabilitation project launched in the 1980’s, the MTA installed over 215 pieces of art in subway and commuter rail stations, with another 70 in production.  The program sponsors many different kinds of art and artists, including a poster series, photography exhibits (called The Lightbox Project), Music Under New York, and tile mosaics worked into the subway walls themselves.  In celebration of the program’s 25th anniversary, the Transit Museum hosted several walls of posters and pictures of these colorful, often whimsical pieces of art, designed to amuse and inspire the NY commuter. (We wish the artists luck in this seemingly impossible endeavor.)  Paul loved this part of the museum, pointing out that not only did New York City build one of the worlds largest and most traveled subways, but it took the time and effort to make it beautiful, which says a lot about this city.

Urban Oasis, by Ann Schaumburger, 1997

The lowest floor of the museum is the “platform level” of the old station.  Nineteen antique subway cars line up on either side of the platform, including the first subway car ever built for NYC (called the R1), with wicker seats, hanging lamps and brass fixtures.  (Can you imagine how long that would last on a modern subway?)  All cars are open for exploration, and many have period advertising.  We particularly liked the very 50’s R11 train, with green interior, stainless steel trim and circular windows.  Stepping through the shiny doors and grabbing the white leather ceiling strap felt like a trip back in time. 
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Historic subway cars, from the exhibit "Moving the Millions." The R1 car is on the far left.

For an even better time travel experience (pun intended), the museum runs “Nostalgia Tours” a few times a year, taking its antique fleet of subway cars out for spins to popular spots.  Occasionally, the museum also gives tours of decommissioned subway stations like the old Brooklyn City Hall Station.  This posh 1904 subway station has chandeliers, leaded skylights and a vaulted Guastavino ceiling, but has been closed since 1945.

Brooklyn City Hall Station, built in 1904

In summary, the NY Transit Museum was larger, more varied and more exciting than we ever imagined a transit museum could be, and we both strongly recommend it.  This museum is popular with kids, particularly the bus and trolley section, but even adults will have a good time pushing century old turnstiles and sitting in (sometimes riding in) subway cars from nearly every decade of the 19th century.  We loved being able to physically interact with pieces of our history and it was great to marvel over 100 year old engineering projects that still look impossible today.

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Times Square Mural, by Roy Lichtenstein, 1994

Endurance, by Bascove 2007

Images in this post, from the top: Empire Express, by Raúl Colón, mixed-media on paper, 2001.  Poster text: "Raul Colon's mixed-media fantasy celebrates two New York City Icons: The Empire State Building's art deco pinnacle ringed by subways. MTA's network keeps New York City at the top of the world of commerce;"  New York City subway token, used from 1970-1980;  Entrance to the New York Transit Museum, in the old Court Street subway station;  Archival image of the building of subway tunnels, from the exhibit "Steel, Stone and Backbone;"  Historic turnstiles;  Street car in the exhibit "On the Streets: New York's Trolleys and Busses;" Dr. George T.F. Rahilly Trolley and Bus Study Center, featuring over 50 models of trolleys and work cars created by Dr. Rahilly, a trolley enthusiast;  Catch a Ride, by Greg Ruth, 2010.  Poster text: "In Greg Ruth's fantastical view of Midtown Manhattan, jumping rainbow fish have joined the MTA bus fleet, traveling upstream with the flow of traffic. But a commuting angler has snared the catch of the day -- the Fifth Avenue local bus;"  Part of Urban Oasis, by Ann Schaumburger, 1997.  A menagerie of animals and birds from the Central Park Zoo, rendered in glass mosaic, can be seen throughout the subway station;  Three antique subway cars from the exhibit "Moving the Millions; New York City's Subways from its Origins to the Present;"  The Brooklyn City Hall subway station, built in 1904, closed in 1945; Time Square Mural, by Roy Lichtenstein, 1994, porcelain enamel on steel.  This mural is 6 feet wide by 53 feet long and was given as a gift to the city by the well known artist Roy Lichtenstein, a native New Yorker.  The mural hangs at the main entrance of the Times Square subway station;  Endurance, by Bascove, oil pastel on D'Arches watercolor paper, 2007.  Poster text: "The Robert F. Kennedy Bridge links Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan. Bascove's painting uses vibrant colors in sinuous curves to capture the dynamic power in the bridge's massive structure."

Museum of Jewish Heritage / Tribute WTC Visitors Center

Becks on Vacation, 1933 Crikvenica, Croatia

5/9/2010, Sunday 

MUSEUMS:

Museum of Jewish Heritage …….......…. 2.25 hrs

Tribute WTC Visitors Center ….........…... 2 hr (with tour)

COST:

Museum of Jewish Heritage …….....…... $12 per adult, plus $5 for audio tour

Tribute WTC Visitors Center ……............ $10 per adult, plus $5 for tour

Most of the time, we select the museums we see in a day based on geographical proximity.  Generally museums are only open from 12 to 5, so, if you want to see more than one or two in a day, it's important to keep transportation times between museums to a minimum.  This necessity has lead to some amusing museum combinations, like last weekends High-Brow/Low Brow combo (United Nations Headquarters followed by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not), Old/New pairings (the Tenement Museum followed by the New Museum of Contemporary Art), and just plain weird contrasts (the Ukrainian Museum followed by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts). 

Gardens of Stone, by Andy Goldsworthy

Occasionally we are able to work in a few theme days, intentionally or not, such as Tibet Day (Rubin Museum of Tibetan Art followed by Tibet House) and Performing Arts Day (NY Library of Performing Arts followed by the Rose Museum at Carnegie Hall) or the Day of Money (American Numismatic Society Coin Collection followed by the American Museum of Finance).  Today was one of those theme days, in this case completely unintentional.  In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to see the two bleakest, most depressing museums in New York City on the same day, but as Paul said, if we had seen the mythical “Museum of Sunshine and Rainbows” today, we’d still be depressed.  And it would ruin the sunshine and rainbows.

Destruction of the WTC on 9/11

Badge used to label Jews during WWII

Today’s museums were the Museum of Jewish Heritage (the Holocaust museum in NYC), and the Tribute WTC Visitors Center (about the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001), so the theme for the day was, essentially, death, mass murder and the horrible consequences of religious intolerance.  Regrettably this was also the day that we had persuaded Priti, a friend new to the area, to come along on a museum trip for the first time.  Not surprisingly, we haven’t been able to talk Priti into a second trip.

Museum of Jewish Heritage

However I don’t mean to give the impression that either of these were bad museums.  They were both interesting and thought provoking, effective at evoking the loss and horror of their respective subjects.  The Museum of Jewish Heritage, befitting the scope of Holocaust, was by far the larger of the two museums and had a wide spectrum of detailed multi-media exhibits in a modern hexagonal shaped building with tiered floors and a memorial garden (called the Garden of Stone, see picture above).  The museum is built right on the water at the southern tip of Manhattan, and has a great view of the Statue of Liberty and the New York harbor.  Paul and I have been to a number of Holocaust museums, both in the U.S. and in Europe, and we both felt this was one of the best.  We liked the fact that, while it certainly covered events of the Holocaust, it didn’t focus on just the tragedy.

Alder Family Having Tea, 1924 Vienna

The Museum of Jewish Heritage is divided into three distinct floors.  The first floor, titled “Jewish Life A Century Ago,” covered Jewish life in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before World War II.  No other Holocaust museum that I’ve been to spent so much time on how Jews lived before the Holocaust, and it was eye opening.   To me the most surprising thing was how much it revealed that Jewish people in Europe were a disparate group, living in many different countries and influenced by different cultures, and they didn’t always agree.  One exhibit had 5 different video screens, each featuring people arguing different schools of Jewish thought: Zionist, Conservative, Orthodox, Reformed and Socialist.  It was also interesting to note points where Jewish culture had influenced the people around them.  For example, Priti is from Poland, and realized that, although she is not Jewish, her mother believed it was unhealthy to eat meat and dairy together.  That belief is part of kosher dietary law and probably came from Polish Jews.

Joseph Fuchs, 1945 Germany

The second floor was titled “The War Against the Jews” and focused on the events of the Holocaust, told through the people who lived through it using artifacts, photographs, testimonials and historical footage.  It was a detailed series of exhibits, and, as we were looking at and hearing actual survivors, it felt very raw.  It brought home the horror of the people imprisoned in ghettos and concentrations camps, the loss of families torn apart, and the isolation of realizing that everyone you know is dead.  The museum also covered non-Jews who came to the aid of Jews during the Holocaust (called the Yad Vashem), and had a whole room covered with their names.  Paul was grateful for this oasis of good on a floor that detailed the evil humans are capable of.

Louis Bannet, 1938 Holland

Fortunately, the museum ends in a better place.  The third floor was titled “Jewish Renewal,” and tells the story of how Jewish individuals rebuilt their lives after World War II.  Most of the exhibits featured American Jews and focused on familiar subjects, like Jewish entertainers in Hollywood.  There was even a Mah Jongg game room, telling the story of this game in Jewish-American life.  Despite the more uplifting, occasionally playful nature of this floor, we had to rush through it, as we had spent over 2 hours in the museum and wanted to make the last tour at the next museum.

Tribute WTC Visitors Center

The Tribute WTC Visitors Center is a very different style of museum.  Instead of a spacious modern building on the water, the WTC Visitors Center is in a small storefront next to a pizza parlor, across the street from the construction site that used to be the World Trade Center.  Many of its exhibits are hand made and not always well explained.  However, the rough edges of this museum served to make it more personal and heartfelt.  For example, there was an entire wall of handmade posters that families put up around the city in the weeks after the World Trade Center towers fell, each with a picture of a lost loved one and a plea for their return.  We looked at picture after picture of people playing with their children and hanging out on vacation, realizing that these people are never coming home. 

Photographs of the dead at the WTC Visitors Center

Other exhibits included things pulled out of the rubble of the World Trade Center, like a shredded fireman’s helmet and a twisted iron girder, demonstrating the destructive power of the towers’ collapse.  However the best part of the museum was the walking tour around the World Trade Center site, with a guide going over the events of 9/11.  There isn’t a lot to see on the tour, as the site is under heavy construction, but you get to look at the construction from several angles and the guide gives a lot of description of what it was like before, during and after 9/11. 

Girder from the World Trade Center

The guides are all people who were present or whose lives where profoundly affected when the towers fell, adding a deeply personal element to the tour.  Our guide was biking along the waterfront when the first plane hit, and afterward stayed in the area to help.  He painted a grizzly, hopeless picture of the rescue effort, as there were few survivors.  As he described it, the biggest task of the rescue workers was to attempt to piece together bodies, so that people could be identified and all of the correct pieces buried together.
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Eleven Tears, by Ken Smith

The tour ends at the only memorial to the World Trade Center that has been completed in the area.  Called Eleven Tears, it's a small fountain in the neighboring American Express building honoring the eleven American Express employees that died on 9/11.  However, the official World Trade Center Memorial is set to open this year, in September 2011.  The controversial design will feature two huge waterfall-lined reflecting pools set in the original footprints of the Twin Towers, engraved with the names of the 2,982 victims of the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the site (see picture of the future memorial at the end of this post).  I don’t know if it counts as a museum, but Paul and I are looking forward to seeing it.

Guided tour of the WTC site

In summary, both the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Tribute WTC Visitors Center were heartfelt, effective museums that used personal items and intimate stories to evoke the tragedies they covered.  For the sake of your emotional well being, we would not suggest that you see them both on the same day, but we learned a lot from each and would certainly recommend them individually.

Model of the future World Trade Center memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker

Images in this post, from the top: Becks on Vacation, gift of Elsa Beck, photograph in 1933 Crikvenica, Croatia; Gardens of Stone, by Andy Goldsworthy.  The garden consists of trees growing out of stone, and was planted by the artist, Holocaust survivors and their families; Yellow star, Jood, Gift of Mimi Weiner, Dutch; the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; exterior of the Museum of Jewish Heritage; Alder Family Having Tea, gift of Peter Warren in memory of his mother Heda Lieberman, photograph in 1924 Austria, Vienna; Joseph Fuchs, gift of Robert Marx, photograph in 1945 Germany, Indersdorf;  Louis Bannet, photograph in Holland 1938.  Louis Bannet was a Jewish musician known as the “Dutch Louis Armstrong.”  After the German invasion, Bannet was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but survived as a member of the orchestra, entertaining his captors and accompaning the death march of many of the 1.3 million who perished in the gas chambers during this period. Most of Bannet’s own family members were killed at Auschwitz. After the war, Bannet married a fellow survivor and eventually settled in Canada, where he continued to play music. He passed away in 2002, after recording 17 albums; exterior of the Tribute WTC Visitors Center; wall of photographs of people who lost their lives on 9/11; girder from the WTC site; Eleven Tears, the American Express memorial by Ken Smith; guided tour of the WTC site; future World Trade Center Memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker.

Historic Richmond Town / Conference House

Christopher House c. 1720, part of Historic Richmond Town

8/15/2010

Sunday

MUSEUMS:

Historic Richmond Town ………………….….….1.5 hr

Conference House …………………………….… 1.25 hr

COST:

Historic Richmond Town ………………….….…. $5

Conference House …………………………….… $3

 

I’ve a confession to make.  Before I moved here, I thought New York City and Manhattan were the same thing.  Sure I’d heard of Brooklyn and the Bronx from TV and movies, but I didn’t realize that they were all part of the same city.  So, for all readers unfamiliar with the area, New York City is divided into 5 different parts called “boroughs”: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island.  Each of the boroughs is huge, ranging in population from 0.5 million to 2.5 million, and each has its own distinct personality and characteristics.  In any other part of the world they’d be cities in their own right. 

Ranking the boroughs can be controversial around here, but most people (who are not in Brooklyn) agree on the best and the worst.  Manhattan is generally considered the greatest borough.  It’s home to NYC’s most famous industries (banking, Broadway theater and the NY Stock Exchange), its wealthiest residents (Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, etc), and a majestic skyline recognizable around the world.  Not surprisingly, it also has the most museums (110).  The least is Staten Island, known for the Staten Island ferry, the world’s largest landfill and not much else.

Map of Staten Island; from Historic Richmond Town

Despite Staten Island’s under appreciated status, it has its share of museums: 11 by our count, which puts it on our list for a visit.  However, Staten Island is the furthest borough from our home; it takes 3 hours and about $20 in tolls for us to get there.  To save us driving time, Paul and I booked a bed and breakfast and planned a 3-day weekend to see all 11 museums in one trip.  To us this sounded like a romantic weekend adventure, but we were widely ridiculed by the locals.  Around here, saying you’re going on a weekend trip to Staten Island seems to be roughly the equivalent of saying you’re vacationing in South Central Los Angeles.  Most New Yorkers don’t have much affection for Staten Island and seem to think it contains only polluted landfill and crumbling suburban sprawl.  One local called it “New Jersey without the charm.”

Paul and I saw the landfill (it’s closed, but hard to miss) and suburban sprawl on our trip, but we also visited some fun museums, walked in lovely parks and ate at great restaurants, including one of NYC’s best pizza parlors (Denino’s).  Despite all the warnings and odd looks from our friends, we ended up having a great time and it was a remarkably inexpensive vacation (particularly by NYC standards).  Regrettably, on our last day Paul was called back for a work-related emergency, but we did see 8 of Staten Island’s 11 museums.  We’re looking forward to our return trip (and another visit to Denino’s, yum).

Staten Island's 3rd County Courthouse (1837) part of Historic Richmond Town

Staten Island has had an active historical society since 1856, and their activities have preserved a number of older buildings through several construction booms.  Thus, it’s not surprising that the largest museum on Staten Island is a collection of historic buildings: Historic Richmond Town.  Richmond Town was a small town in the center of the island, originally settled by the Dutch in the 1600’s.  After passing into British hands, Richmond Town became the county seat, with the island’s first courthouse and jail.  The town withered after the court moved to St. George, but much of it was preserved as a historic village in the 1950’s.  After the Veranzono Bridge opened in 1964, linking Staten Island to the rest of NYC, a huge construction boom changed the face of the island, and many historic homes facing demolition were moved to this site.  Now, Historic Richmond Town is a “living history village and museum complex,” occupying almost 50 acres and containing 30 historical buildings from all over the island.

Staten Island Historical Museum

This sounds like a bigger deal than it is.  In reality, only a few buildings are restored, and visitors are only allowed into those that are on the guided tour or occupied by a docent that day.  Paul and I saw only 5 buildings during our visit.  We started in the Staten Island Historical Museum, housed in the former County Clerk's Office and exhibiting a nice collection of artifacts from Staten Island’s historical industries (fishing and textiles), housewares and folk art.  The tour started there and moved to the oldest house in the complex; Voorlezer's House c.1695.  The house was built by the Dutch Reformed Congregation and served as a church, school, and residence for the Voorlezer (lay minister and teacher).  It’s the oldest schoolhouse in the nation, and a national landmark. 

Voorlezer House c 1695, part of Historic Richmond Town

The tour guide painted an interesting picture of the Spartan life of the first settlers, particularly of the minister/teacher, whose tiny 2 room residence was also the church, school and meeting house (and we think current NY apartments are small and lack privacy).  Apparently, it was a mark of great prosperity for a town to be able to house a minister, even under these poor conditions, but they couldn't afford him for long and he left in 1701.  Next door was the Boehm House (c.1750), which was not fully restored but the exposed timbers and plaster were used as an exhibit on early building techniques.  We also saw Staten Island’s third courthouse.  (The first burned down; the second was destroyed by the British army.) 

Staten Island Historical Museum

All in all, while Paul and I enjoyed the glimpse into the lives of the area’s early settlers, we were a bit disappointed in Historic Richmond Town.  We expected more demonstrations, stories and interaction in a “living history” museum, and overall the museum seemed a bit unkempt and under funded.  However, Paul admired their dedication in saving so many pieces of Staten Island’s history with little to no budget.  Also, we should note that the museum does have demonstrations and events on its calendar, so perhaps it would be better to come on a day when something is scheduled. 

Conference House c 1680

We visited another historical Staten Island house today.  Called the Conference House, it’s was built c. 1680 by Captain Christopher Billopp, the Collector of Customs for Delaware.  The house was home to a loyalist family and served as a headquarters for the British Army during the Revolutionary War, but it is best known for being the site of a famous peace conference.  On September 11, 1776, the newly formed Continental Congress sent John Adams, Edward Rutledge, and Benjamin Franklin to met with the King’s representative and commander of the British forces, Lord Richard Howe, at this home in an attempt to stop hostilities at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.

Beach at the Conference House

The conference was a failure of course; the British would not consider independence and the congressional representatives had been authorized only to negotiate independence.  Thus, war was decided to be inevitable.  Four days later the British occupied New York City and the city would remain in British hands for most the War.  Every year on September 11th, the Conference House holds a popular reenactment of the conference, complete with boats, period costumes and an ersatz Ben Franklin.

In summary, the Conference House is beautifully restored and has a well researched and detailed tour, but I thought the best part of the museum was the surrounding park.  It has 267 acres of coastal forest and seashore overlooking a picturesque bay, with broad well maintained walking paths.  Paul and I walked down the beach a ways to see the “South Pole,” a large red pole marking the southern tip of New York State.  We were both highly amused and thought that only in New York would they think to celebrate something so innocuous.

"South Pole," at the southern most point of New York State

Images in this post, from the top: Christopher House c.1720, at Historic Richmond town, relocated from Willowbrook.  This fieldstone farmhouse was the home of Joseph Christopher, a member of the Richmond County Committee of Safety prior to the Revolution.  Map of Staten Island from the Staten Island Historical Museum, at Historic Richmond Town. The 3rd County Courthouse c. 1837, at Historic Richmond Town. Preceded by two smaller courthouses, this Greek Revival structure was Staten Island's first monumental county building. It served as the Richmond County Courthouse until 1919.  Rocking Horse from the children's toys exhibit at the Staten Island Historical Museum, at Historic Richmond Town.  Voorlezer's House c.1695, at Historic Richmond Town.  This structure was built by the Dutch Reformed Congregation and served as a church, school, and residence for the Voorlezer (lay minister and teacher) until 1701.  It was used as a private home and store until 1936.  This building is a National Historic Landmark.  Painted Wooden Statue of a Saint, Staten Island Historical Museum, at Historic Richmond Town.  The Conference House (formerly known at the Billopp House),  a two-story, rubble stone masonry building constructed circa 1680 by Captain Christopher Billopp.  Beach in front of the Conference House.  The South Pole, placed at the southern most tip of New York State.