None of the church’s history, spirit, and beauty would survive and remain today, however, if not for the committed congregants in this Hudson Valley church in the year 2022. That sense emerged in my walk of the historic church to highlight Trinity Episcopal Church’s participation in the 2022 Sacred Sites Open House weekend on July 23-24, which the New York Landmarks Conservancy held in concert with partnering organizations. Trinity Episcopal was one of dozens of ecclesiastical places throughout New York State — churches, temples, synagogues, and other spiritual sites — that offered tours and programs for the public. It was the Conservancy’s 12th annual Sacred Sites Open House after a hiatus during 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid pandemic. (In July, I wrote about Trinity Episcopal and its plans for the Sacred Sites weekend for Hudson Valley One.)

This yearly event gives people around New York State an opportunity to take in and appreciate the sacred presence, architecture, cultural importance, and community contributions that spiritual places embody over generations, as Trinity Episcopal has. Moreover, the church reflects the intertwining of the church with the history and transformation of the village and area surrounding it. It is the oldest Episcopal Church in Ulster County and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Saugerties was a tiny village before this church existed, and the church’s founding is one of the integral pieces of the village’s major change and growth into a new industrial town in the early 19th century. Henry Barclay, a New York City-based importer who decided to focus on building water-based industries, saw opportunities in obtaining the water rights of Esopus Creek in the village area. Barclay constructed a dam on the creek and established a paper mill in 1827 and the Ulster Iron Works in 1828.

Barclay, who was devoted to the practice of his Episcopalian faith, set out to create not just industries but a full-fledged “model village.” He built a bridge over the Esopus Creek and a hotel. Barclay and his wife, Catherine Watts Barclay, had ties to Trinity Church in Manhattan, and along with Catherine’s brother, John Watts Kearny, they founded and built Trinity Episcopal Church in 1831-1832. (The village incorporated as Ulster in 1831 and changed its name to Saugerties in 1855.) As Barclay brought iron workers from England to the Hudson Valley village, he encouraged the workers to attend the new Episcopal Church. Similarly, a couple of years afterward, Barclay was instrumental in supporting and helping to oversee the construction of a Catholic church for the Irish immigrants who worked in the mills, St. Mary of the Snow. Trinity Episcopal and St. Mary of the Snow churches grew as their respective congregations drew from those working in Saugerties’ mills and settling in the town.

Trinity Episcopal Church exterior

Buildings reflect changing societal values and tastes. In the architecture and art of Trinity Episcopal during the 19th century, one can see how the congregation overcame a major setback and transformed the church’s worship space in architectural style, features, and design for a new age. As with banks, courthouses, and other public structures in the 19th century’s early decades, architects designed churches in the early Classical Revival style. The style dominated in an era when the young nation sought to emulate the temples and other edifices of ancient Greece and Rome. It was a visual statement that conveyed the desires in the new republic to have lasting greatness.

Trinity Episcopal exemplified this approach in what was then a growing community. Ralph Bigelow is said to have designed the church, which was among the first Ulster County churches to employ the form of an ancient Greek temple, as architectural historian William Rhoads writes in his book, Ulster County, New York: The Architectural History and Guide. Set at a prominent site along the Ulster-Kingston Road, the simple yet stately church possessed four fluted Doric columns, a triangular pediment, and a very high front door in the center. Around 1840, the church gained a tapering spire atop a two-stage tower, Rhoads notes. The church has since lost its spire but otherwise still has the straightforward, unadorned look of an early 19th century structure.

If the church’s exterior evokes a simple classical form from its earliest days, the interior evolved differently. Its main features and furnishings exhibit Victorian-era embellishment, beauty, and intricacy. By the 1860s, the Gothic Revival had taken hold in public buildings and was favored for ecclesiastical design. In 1867, a major fire severely damaged the southern end of the church. To design a new chancel (the space around the altar), the congregation chose Edward Tuckerman Potter, a prominent architect whose work included the 1871 Mark Twain house in Hartford, Conn., and the Harvard Street Congregational Church in Boston.

The most stunning addition to the church’s chancel occurred during this rebuilding: a splendid eight-panel stained glass window at the front of the church that Potter secured. The London firm of William Morris, the artist, philosopher, and foremost advocate of the Arts and Crafts movement, crafted the window. It was the first window by Morris’ firm – Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. – that an American client commissioned. Striking in its vivid colors and evocative facial expressions, the window depicts scenes of Christ’s life, alternating with panels of angels holding scrolls with Latin inscriptions. The church’s purchase of the window, which was $3,000, occurred due to the generosity of longtime supporter Else Vanderpoel, in honor of her late husband, Judge Aaron Vanderpoel. She was the benefactor whose support underwrote the purchase of Potter’s furnishings, in honor of the judge and other members of the Vanderpoel family, according to Rhoads.

William Morris’ firm — Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. — created this stained glass window for Trinity Episcopal Church.

This panel from the William Morris window depicts a scene from Jesus Christ’s life.

Slowly walking the church’s interior with congregation member Linda Adorno, I was struck by the various other furnishings and features that are intact from the 19th century, which she pointed out, particularly how much remains from the work Potter had done. The church’s slender lectern is one such piece, with four carved wooden embedded figures that represent the evangelists – Matthew as a winged man, Luke as a winged ox, Mark as a winged lion, and John as an eagle. A stone wall tablet memorializes the church’s co-founders Henry and Catherine Barclay, and John Watts Kearny, who died within several weeks of each other, in December 1850 and January 1851.

St. Mark as a winged lion, a detail of the church’s lectern, with carvings that show the four evangelists in varied images

Adorno has been a Trinity Episcopal member for 44 years, since moving to Saugerties in 1978, and is a member of the Vestry. In the parish hall, Adorno brings out a scrapbook showing families sharing in the festive gathering for the 175th anniversary some 16 years ago. In talking with her as we walk the church and the grounds, and with Stephen Shafer, the church Warden, I sense the pride each takes in the church as well as their commitment to it and to its continuing community presence into the future.

The parish hall contains another treasured facet of the church property – a set of Tiffany-style windows. Rudolph Geissler of the New York firm Lederle and Geissler executed the triptych. The Overbagh family donated the windows in 1922 in memory of a son who had died, John C. Overbagh. The main window’s scene of the blue-green mountains against a variegated sky, framed by purple irises in front and a brook running through the center flanked by two trees. It corresponds perfectly with the church property’s serene setting that affords a view, from the back portion, of the Catskill Mountains horizon in the distance.

The Tiffany-style windows in the church’s parish hall

To maintain and keep up repairs on an 1831 church and the other buildings on the property is highly demanding, in cost and time, for a parish with a committed though smaller congregation than the prior century. Yet Trinity Episcopal Church has been a resilient presence in Saugerties for nearly 200 years.

In its annual Open House weekend, the New York Landmarks Conservancy aims to highlight diverse ecclesiastical places such as Trinity Episcopal as not only historically significant, picturesque, and treasured sites but congregations that continue to serve their communities in the 21st century. The Saugerties parish is active in the community and seeks in the present day to be an inclusive congregation. Parishioners and the church’s clergy in recent years have worked to ameliorate hunger, help those in financial need, and join in social justice causes, as the church’s Web site states. During the Covid pandemic, for instance, Trinity Episcopal has donated significant funds to local and Ulster County hunger relief and resilience programs.

To remain vital, the parish is also working with the Episcopal Diocese on initiatives to enhance community and draw new congregants. As Trinity Episcopal approaches two centuries, it’s crucial to look to the future as well as to honor the past. As Adorno summed up its stance to be an inclusive congregation, “In other to be a growing church, you have to be welcoming to all.”

The scenic view of the Catskill Mountains from the rear grounds of Trinity Episcopal Church

Another close-up of the Morris window shows its vivid colors and expressive faces, in a scene from Christ’s life

The post Trinity Episcopal’s Storied History first appeared on Mindful Walker.

Central Park is the most iconic, the beautiful jewel “Greensward” that Olmsted and his partner, the architect Calvert Vaux, designed and created over 18 years, 1858 to 1876. After the Civil War, Olmsted reunited with Vaux to plan and fashion the gem of Prospect Park as a green space separate from the street grid in Brooklyn. Its landscape contains formal, pastoral, and rustic elements, with its vales, Long Meadow, Ravine, Concert Grove House, scenic vistas, winding pathways, and old-growth forests. The Emerald Necklace today remains a verdant string of five parks stretching over 1,100 acres of Boston, which Olmsted intended as a place where people would go after the day’s work “seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets.” In Newburgh, N.Y., Downing Park — the last landscape that Olmsted and Vaux produced together – is a 35-acre treasure with meandering paths, water features, structures of natural stone, a great variety of trees, and a large, peaceful pond.

Yet, there was so much more that this one man, the foremost pioneer of landscape architecture, gave to us in shaping parks, park systems, campuses, neighborhoods, scenic reservations, preserves, communities, and more. Just to cite a selection: Belle Island Park in Detroit; park systems in Buffalo and Rochester, N.Y.; New York City’s Morningside, Riverside, and Fort Greene parks; Montreal’s Mount Royal Park; Hubbard Park, Meriden, Ct.; The University of Chicago main campus; the University of Rochester campus; and Wellesley College campus. The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s newly released digital guide, What’s Out There Olmsted, encompasses more than 300 North American landscapes designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., as well as his successor firms, such as Olmsted Brothers, the one that his son Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and stepson and nephew John Charles Olmsted led.

In April, we marked the 200th anniversary of Olmsted’s birth, on April 26, 1822. This bicentennial provides a fitting point to reflect on and be grateful for the astonishing legacy of Olmsted, whose life spanned much of the 19th century just past the turn of a new century till his death in 1903. A key initiative, Olmsted 200, has highlighted and continues to point to events and resources devoted to the Olmsted bicentennial.

Olmsted’s landscape jewels have survived and thrived though the 20th century and well into the 21st, even as many came under threats again and again. I believe the survival of these cherished places is nothing short of a miracle (and one that many dedicated people have helped ensure constantly). Yet most people who are hiking, strolling, having picnics, skating, attending concerts, touring gardens, reading, studying in, and otherwise experiencing beauty and untold pleasure likely do not even known Olmsted’s name as they do so. But, wow, do we owe so very much to Olmsted!

Frederick Law Olmsted – Oil painting by John Singer Sargent, 1895, Biltmore Estate, Asheville, N.C.

Genesee Valley Park, originally called South Park, one of the parks in the Rochester system that Olmsted designed
Photo: Daniel Penfield, CC BY-SA 4.0 Via Wikimedia Commons

We can learn the facts and figures, the number of parks and other sites, that comprise Olmsted’s work. His impact goes beyond these facts. Olmsted knew precisely what he envisioned, spoke of and wrote about, drafted, and rendered in landscapes for all people, the principles and landscape architecture practice that became real places of public good. He delivered in ways that still influence the profession and certainly many lives.

Ultimately, however, the experience of Olmsted’s landscapes is individual to each of us. I cannot possibly count up all of the hours I’ve spent over decades in Central Park. Yet I have memories of certain days or gatherings, or the decades-long passion about certain activities when Central Park has provided peace, beauty, joy, and sustenance beyond measure. On a day 28 years ago when I had to let go of my beloved and ailing cat Quinton, taking a walk in Central Park and allowing myself to be mentally and spiritually bathed in the greenery was so soothing. One chilly, foggy February afternoon, I rollerbladed and the allée was nearly deserted, a few people silhouetted at a distance. As I glided under the canopy of majestic trees, the park felt like my own world.

In this spirit, one can look at the offerings for the Olmsted bicentennial as a touch-off point not just for a year but many years of reveling in the gifts Olmsted has left us. Special events, exhibits, and project launches are marking Olmsted’s 200th birthday bicentennial. True to a man whose planning of and sculpting wondrous landscapes took much time, in honoring Olmsted’s incredible contributions to our world, we can savor them over time this year and beyond. Thankfully, various parks and landscape architecture initiatives are offering many ways – a digital guide, exhibits, an annual painting invitational, and in-person explorations – to do just that. Here are several offerings and places sure to spark your own appreciation.

Olmsted 200 and an Example Community

Olmsted 200, a coalition of civic, nonprofit, and professional partners that the National Association of Olmsted Parks has coordinated, has been spearheading and promoting advocacy and education about Olmsted’s legacy. Through its digital hub and social media, you can explore the content, programs, and events about Olmsted, Olmsted landscapes, and the preservation and maintenance of historic parks.

The Olmsted 200 commemoration shows that an honoring of this genius is much more than a look back at what Olmsted designed and produced in the 19th century. It illustrates how the Olmsted parks and other landscapes are living entities that continue to provide much enjoyment and inspire preservation and new natural spaces modeled on Olmsted’s concepts today. One example community is Riverside, Illinois.

Riverside’s Olmsted 200 Exhibit

Riverside, just west of Chicago, represented Olmsted and Vaux’s first fully planned residential community. Over the last year and through 2022, the suburban village is paying tribute to Olmsted and renewing his landscape principles through an exhibit, the creation of a new overlook to be named after Olmsted, and a series of seed hunts and tree plantings. Olmsted and Vaux’s 1868 plan for Riverside set aside nearly one-third of a 1,600-acre tract along the Des Plaines River for preserved streamways, scenic views, gas streetlights, and wooded areas for public use, as the Riverside exhibit explains. Riverside is a National Historic Landmark.

The exhibit, “Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscapes for the Public Good,” is a collaboration between the National Association of Olmsted Parks and the Virginia-based nonprofit Oak Spring Garden Foundation. The Riverside Public Library, which had the exhibit on display from January to April, is now presenting it outdoors (depending on the weather) from May to October along the Des Plaines River or in Guthrie Park.

A key group in the yearlong campaign to mark the bicentennial of Olmsted’s birth is The Frederick Law Olmsted Society of Riverside. The society is funding and planting an Olmsted Overlook, a public natural space where volunteers are planting trees and shrubs in ways that reflect Olmsted’s philosophy that such landscapes foster health, well-being, and serenity.

A panel from the Riverside, Illinois exhibit, “Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscapes for the Public Good”

The society also is commemorating Olmsted’s work in Riverside through an innovative artistic endeavor, the Olmsted 200 Botanical Box. The group has partnered with botanical artist Shilin Hora, who owns a Riverside shop called The Seed. Throughout last year, the society sponsored a series of guided community seed hunts. The ultimate objective, through fundraising and the artist’s work, is a museum-quality botanical box to be donated to the Riverside Public Library. The artwork will be accompanied by a seed identification key showing Riverside’s diverse flora.

Plein Air Painting: Olmsted’s Places and Inspirations Today

To understand that Olmsted’s landscapes speak to artists and anyone treasuring the outdoors and nature today, look to Atlanta’s Plein Air Invitational. The invitational, now in its eighth year, welcomed dozens of accomplished plein air artists in the United States to document and depict Olmsted landscapes and parks, with a special nod to Olmsted’s birth bicentennial. Judges chose winning paintings. The invitational’s paintings were available for viewing in-person in April.

Olmsted Plein Air Invitational Painting: “Jogging Home” by Suzie Baker

Now the Plein Air Invitational is providing an opportunity to experience the breadth and richness of landscapes and vistas through a virtual gallery. It went live on May 1. An online gallery/catalogue presents the artworks, which are for sale. I am enjoying viewing the splendid images of the paintings and seeing those that captured awards in various categories. These include “Jogging Home” for the Judges Award of Merit”; the “Secret of Deepdene” for Best Painting in Atlanta’s Olmsted Linear Park; and “Tybee Light” for the Cezanne/Best Light in Landscapes work.

Hartford: A Tribute in Olmsted’s Birthplace

Olmsted’s lifelong embrace of landscape and its positive effects came from his earliest days. When he was a child, Olmsted loved seeing the open, verdant views of the countryside as he rode with his father, John, on horseback and took in the scenery “from the pommel of my father’s saddle,” as he later wrote. He called these experiences “my earliest special education.”

Olmsted was born in Hartford, Conn., and is buried in Old North Cemetery in the city. He was a member of the eighth generation of his family to live in Hartford, though his life took him to various other places far and wide. Here, the city’s public library is paying tribute to its native son. During the bicentennial of Olmsted’s birth year, the Hartford Public Library is hosting a special exhibition, “Returning Home to Hartford – Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscapes for the Public Good.”

The Helen S Kaman Rose Garden is part of Elizabeth Park in Hartford, Conn. Olmsted drafted the plan for a network of parks in Hartford, a plan that the city executed, resulting in Elizabeth Park and four others. Added to the park in 1904, it was the first municipally owned rose garden in the United States.
Via Wikimedia Commons

Through photos and drawings, the exhibit, on view through June 9, delves into Olmsted’s life and his and his firm’s contributions to Hartford and especially its park system. Hartford was a wealthy, growing city with burgeoning industries and a strong civic and activist character in the mid- to late 19th century. The exhibit helps highlight Olmsted’s impact in drafting a plan for a network of parks and parkways. Images showcase Keney, Pope, Riverside, and Goodwin parks, all part of Hartford’s municipal park system, one of the earliest in the United States.

The exhibit builds on work done last year to digitize thousands of photographs that were donated to the public library’s Hartford History Center. A collection of these historic Parks Department images is available at an online exhibition, entitled Hartford Springs Into Summer.

What’s Out There Olmsted: A Digital Guide to Hundreds of Landscapes

To grasp the breadth and number of places and landscapes that are Olmsted’s legacy, What’s Out There Olmsted is an exceptional resource – deep, meticulously organized, and richly illustrated. The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has produced and launched this digital guide to more than 300 North American landscapes that Olmsted or his successor firms designed. As Charles A. Birnbaum, TCLF’s president and CEO, said, “The impact of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., on the nation’s identity and the profession of landscape architecture is inestimable.”

What a guide the TCLF has made for a variety of uses, including in-person exploration and adventures, virtual experiences, or academic and other research. It has an illustrated introduction and a searchable database of hundreds of landscapes, each complete with text, media gallery, and landscape categorization according to style and other data. The TCLF is highly experienced in producing these guides: The new Olmsted one is its 20th What’s Out There digital guide. It’s optimized for iPhones and other handheld devices.

The landing page for What’s Out There Olmsted
Image: Courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The guide provides nearly 100 biographical entries of the Olmsted firms’ employees, consultants, and collaborators. This is one of the most fascinating ways to learn how Olmsted’s influence radiated through many places and decades. Warren Manning, for one, worked with Olmsted, Sr., for eight years, and he went on from this stint to establish his own firm and work on more than 1,700 projects.

Here’s one of my favorites to exemplify how illuminating the digital guide is: Downing Park, close to home in New York’s Hudson Valley. A photo of its lush greenery and stately trees tops the entry (and it’s complemented by a media gallery of eight photos). The sketch details how the 35-acre Downing Park was the last collaboration between Olmsted, Sr., and Calvert Vaux, constructed over three years, from 1894-1897. Olmsted and Vaux did this collaboration pro bono in honor of their mentor and Vaux’s former partner, Andrew Jackson Downing, a native son of Newburgh. Also, it is the only known commission that included Olmsted’s stepson John C. Olmsted working with Vaux’s son Downing Vaux.

The guide discusses the original elements and characteristics that Olmsted and Vaux planned in Downing Park, the highlights that others added later, and some components that have been lost over time. In this way, it allows an overall sense of how much Olmsted’s and Vaux’s spaces survive over time. Downing Park possesses many signature facets of their Picturesque-style creations, such as a great and sloping lawn; a significant water feature – Polly Pond (named after pollywogs); meadows; scenic woodlands; and meandering walks. Downing Vaux placed an observatory atop a hilltop and a bandshell, which allowed a view of the Hudson River (neither survive today). In the early decades of the 20th century, others added a pergola and various memorials in Downing Park, including a Volunteer Fireman’s Memorial in 1910 and a Civil War monument dedicated in 1934. Manning guided the original planting as a superintendent for Olmsted’s firm. Many of the park’s original trees survive today.

Since its opening in 1897 in the middle of an industrial city, Downing Park has been an anchoring place of gathering, recreation, culture, and solitude. It remains as an important civic place and lovely park off a historic residential neighborhood, continuing to be a setting for events, fun, and the contemplation of the seasons.

Mission Accomplished – and Ongoing

From his earliest days as a child accompanying his father, Olmsted experienced and understood the beauty and benefits of the outdoors, nature, vistas, and verdant landscapes. Later, he would see and know the darker, brutal sides of life beyond his home. In his 30s, under an assignment from the then-New York Daily Times, he witnessed and chronicled the atrocious conditions of slavery in first-person accounts from a journey in the antebellum South. Heading the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War and tending wounded soldiers, he saw the horrors of war. He was horrified by mistreatment that whites exacted on Native Americans and Black and Chinese people during his stint managing a consortium of gold mines in California. Through these experiences, Olmsted became more convinced of the civilizing and restorative power of nature and carefully formed landscapes such as parks, park systems, gardens, and wilderness preserves.

Working with Vaux on Central Park, then Prospect Park from 1865 to 1873, and on through the rest of his life, Olmsted found and never wavered from his mission: to plan and provide natural landscapes that would foster health and well-being. His life’s work resulted in the many, many marvelous, delightful landscapes that we love today.

Further Exploration

Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America – Film from WNED PBS History

Olmsted at 200: Exploring Lesser-Known New York Connections on the Bicentennial of His Birth – Article from the New York State Urban Forestry Council

Olmsted-Designed New York City Parks – Article, Photos, and A Key to Further Reading, via the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation’s Learning Hub

The post Olmsted’s Gift of Magnificent Places first appeared on Mindful Walker.

History is a critical avenue where we can turn to educate, sustain, and inspire us. From history, we see levels of suffering and depravity that shock, yet many acting with integrity, bravery, and a sense of justice. The efforts to resist and overcome the evils of slavery present a crucial historical example that resonates today and a legacy we must continue to address. People are digging deeper and sharing more so that we can understand the realities and how human beings overcome such massive suffering and evil.

Events and exhibits during Black History Month, and of course throughout the year, provide ways to face the darkest chapters of our history and be inspired by courage and resilience. Here are three arising from recent revelations and scholarly work about slavery in New York’s Ulster County. A presentation via Zoom on a long-ignored part of the history of slavery and slaves’ lives in Ulster County and the Shawangunk Mountain region will be given today, Feb. 21. (For those who missed the presentation, here is a recording.) The other two involve a new exhibit and a discovery of historic evidence in the New York State Archives long thought to be lost, both concerning the life of Sojourner Truth.

Ulster County Courtroom Exhibit

Within the frames one views on the Ulster County Surrogate Court in Kingston are documents that show a newly freed slave’s legal fight, ultimately successful, to obtain the freedom of her still-enslaved son. A local man had sold the son as property to an enslaver in Alabama, separating mother and son. Thanks to the efforts of Ulster County officials, an exhibit in the Surrogate’s Court makes more plain and powerful the utter horror and dehumanization of Sojourner Truth’s enslavement as a young girl. The exhibit’s other artifacts and documents tell of her battle in the court system to regain custody of her son Peter and end his enslavement. Known then as Isabella Van Wagenen, she become the first Black woman to win a lawsuit against a white man in the United States.

The exhibit contains an array of documents and images relating to Sojourner Truth’s life. Entitled Sojourner Truth: From Slavery to Activism, it is in the Surrogate Court courtroom, on the third floor of the Ulster County Building ar 240 Fair Street, Kingston. It is open for public viewing, by appointment, on Fridays. The sources range from Ulster County’s archival records to the Michigan State archives. Truth was born in Ulster County into a life of enslavement, as slavery was legal in New York State until 1827. She escaped from slavery in 1826, walking away in the pre-dawn hours from the household, after the man who enslaved her reneged on a promise to release Isabella that year.

The documents and images on view depict the raw, horrific reality of slavery and the actions Sojourner Truth took within two years of escaping her own enslavement. The exhibit includes a Surrogate’s Court document from 1808 that lists the young girl as an asset in the estate of her deceased owner, Charles Hardenbergh; a bond document she filed in 1828 in the lawsuit to obtain custody of her son; two newspaper accounts of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech; and her own probate documents, according to the Daily Freeman in its article about the Ulster County exhibit.

The exhibit is a cooperative effort of Ulster County Surrogate Judge Sara McGinty, Ulster County Clerk Nina Postupak, and County Archivist Taylor Bruck. “The archival material in the Clerk’s Office provides a lens into the past and highlights the struggles the Black community has endured for hundreds of years,” said Postupak in the county’s announcement about honoring Black History Month through various ways.

This image shows a bond document that was part of the court case in which Sojourner Truth filed to gain custody of her son Peter, who had been sold illegally to an enslaver in Alabama.

Seeing these historical records has moved those who have been involved in creating and administering the exhibit. Judge McGinty told the Daily Freeman that the document showing the young Isabella listed as a property asset “has haunted me since I first saw it.” She wrote, according to the Daily Freeman, “It set me on a path to create a history in our courtroom of Sojourner Truth’s life as a means to educate our community about the history of slavery in New York State – and specifically, Ulster County.” Nicole Shultis, the judge’s administrative assistant, said that she, too, has been moved by seeing the Ulster County documents that list human beings as property. “It’s really special to be able to do this because a lot of people have no idea that at the time their existence was [considered] only as an asset.”

Members of the public can make reservations to view the exhibit on Fridays by contacting nshultis@nycourts.gov.

An Archives Find in Albany

Ulster County’s exhibit draws attention to both the reality of slavery in the Hudson Valley and Sojourner Truth’s path-breaking court case. Just north, an archivist’s remarkable find in the New York State Archives in Albany has yielded the actual court documents in Truth’s successful suit. Within 5,000 boxes of historical court records, archivist James Folts found the original 1828 court records, just eight pages, of then-Isabella Wagenen’s case against Solomon Gedney to obtain custody of her son Peter and win his freedom, a discovery detailed in the Times Union newspaper. Gedney was the man believed to have had Peter in his possession when he was sold in Alabama.

These documents were thought to be lost to history. However, thanks to the sharp eye of Folts, who is Head of Research Services at the State Archives as well as a historian and author, they have been restored to the historical record. Knowing that Truth’s name had once been Isabella Van Wagenen, he found the court case documents when he was revisiting his Duely & Constantly Kept: A History of the New York Supreme Court, 1691-1847 and an inventory of three Supreme Court offices, including Albany’s, according to the Times Union. Under this name, she had filed the suit in the New York State Supreme Court in Albany. She had taken the surname Van Wagenen from the family who helped her after she escaped from the household of the enslaver John Dumont.

When she escaped on foot, Isabella was only able to take her infant daughter Sophia and had to leave three children behind. After her escape, Dumont sold her son Peter, only 5 at the time, to Dr. Eleazar Gedney (also known as Eleazar Gidney). In her narrative, Sojourner Truth writes that the doctor, on his way to England, sent Peter back from New York City to his brother Solomon Gedney in Newburgh. Gedney then sold Peter to a slaveholder in Alabama.

You can see digital images of the 1828 records for the case People vs. Solomon Gedney, which the State Archives provides for research and educational purposes, through its Digital Collections. They encompass the writ of habeas corpus and related documents “issued for an enslaved Black child named Peter and his release,” and include Isabella Van Wagenen’s deposition, Solomon Gedney’s response, and the order of the court.

The recovery of these court documents, nearly 200 years after the case, not only further authenticates Sojourner Truth’s historic court battle for her son. It helps bear witness to her courage as a newly free young woman in challenging the profound injustice of a white-ruled court system.

“Where Slavery Died Hard”

A key lesson of history is that lesser-known or first-neglected records and stories, once uncovered, can be telling, important, and compelling. Such is the case with the historical work and presentations of the fuller story of slavery and slaves’ lives in the North, specifically in New York and particularly in Ulster County. Many people do not realize the extent of slavery that existed in the Hudson Valley and know little about the slaves’ lives.

In recent years, two archaeologists, authors, and historic preservation consultants, Wendy E. Harris and Arnold Pickman, have researched, unearthed, and presented an important part of this long-neglected history. The award-winning video documentary they wrote and directed, Where Slavery Died Hard: The Forgotten History of Ulster County and the Shawangunk Region, delves into and reveals the long-ignored history of slavery and of slaves’ lives in two rural Hudson Valley areas and the visual evidence that remains to the present day. The Cragsmoor Historical Society in the Town of Wawarsing produced the documentary, and it represents a collaboration between the authors and the Cragsmoor community.

Various opportunities exist to learn about this local history that reflects slavery’s existence and persistence in portions of the North. An opportunity to see a presentation about the project, geared toward historians and others interested in finding out more, will occur today, Feb. 21, at 6:30 p.m. EST, through an Ulster County Historians Mini-Conference via Zoom. As one of the video’s authors, Harris plans to discuss the project, its evolution, and the resources and repositories available for researching the history of enslavement within Ulster County. (Update: Here is a recording of the presentation.)

The documentary, which is available for viewing on YouTube and at the Cragsmoor Historical Society site, is eye-opening, multifaceted, insightful, and poignant. One can understand foundational facets – who, what, where, and why – of the history of slavery in a northern county from the 1660s to the 1840s. The documentary also illustrates the painstaking historical and archaeological research methods and sources to document the lives of slaves in the households of two Hudson Valley rural communities. I know I will need to watch it several times to take it all in.

Significantly and very helpfully, the documentary Where Slavery Died Hard sets the context and theme in the early going. The Dutch colony of New Netherland, of which New York was a part, in the early 17th century had a larger enslaved population than any other colony, northern or southern (though the South surpassed it relatively quickly). Slavery was, the documentary notes, deeply rooted in Dutch settlement and culture. After the American Revolution, New York State remained a stronghold of slavery in the early years of the Republic. The documentary’s name comes from sources that had once called Ulster County a place “where slavery died hard.”

The numbers convey this reality. In 1790, New York State had 21,193 slaves, out of a total population of 340,120 people. The highest percentage of slaves was in the counties of Ulster, Kings, Richmond, and Queens. Ulster County had 2,906 slaves, about 10 percent of its population of 29,370 people. In New York State, elements of these so-called “Dutch counties” were resistant to efforts in the late 18th century to end slavery and vocalized their opposition to antislavery measures in the New York State Legislature.

This is the middle panel from a 1733 painting known as the “Van Bergen Overmantel.” The documentary Where Slavery Died Hard included an image of this painting, which Martin Van Bergen commissioned to hang above a mantel in his Hudson Valley farmhouse. Among the others in the painting, it shows two Black male slaves and two Black female slaves working on the New York colonist’s farm.
Source: Wikipedia

Historians and others have focused their work on slavery on Ulster County’s more populated communities, such as Kingston and New Paltz. But the “rural hinterlands” haven’t received enough attention, as the documentary states, and its story concentrates on two Ulster County rural towns: present-day Wawarsing and Shawangunk, where farming predominated. Framing the research and presentations is the insight of A.J. Williams-Myers, the renowned late author and professor of Black Studies, who urged those documenting enslavement to take a more personal look and present a “tangible, substantive image of these people and their owners.”

Where Slavery Died Hard and an article by Harris and Pickman on the forgotten history, indeed, produce a much fuller picture of enslavement and slaves’ lives in these rural areas of Ulster County. It comes through meticulous examination of many sources, such as wills, maps, census data, court records, written narratives of the time, architectural research of houses and other buildings in the communities, the National Register of Historic Places, and other resources.

The Dutch and Huguenot families who moved from the population centers to the rural areas used slave labor, which filled out the farms’ requirements in producing and processing crops (primarily wheat) and accomplishing related farm and household needs, in addition to the work of indentured servants, hired hands, and family members. In Shawangunk, the Jansen family – two brothers and a cousin – were large slaveholders. The brothers Johannes and Col. Thomas Jansen each enslaved 9 men, women, and children, while their cousin, Thomas, owned 15 slaves.

The wills are a source to understand the brutal dehumanization of slavery. In Johannes Jansen’s will, the documentary relates, he bequeaths to his wife his two best horses, cows, a wagon and harnesses, treasured silver tablespoons, and a Black slave named Piet whom he refers to as his possession. Slaveowners repeatedly referred to the enslaved Black men, woman, and children with the possessive “my.” The contents of such wills “still have the power to shock in their relegation of human beings to the level of property somewhere between farm animals and furniture,” the documentary observes.

Where Slavery Died Hard captures details of the slaves’ lives and some agency that they ultimately possessed, for instance, the story of one enslaved family in the Town of Wawarsing: Caesar DeWitt and his wife Jane DeWitt, both born in the late 18th century. In a house now known as the DeWitt-Benedict House and landmarked by the Town of Wawarsing, lived a farm family of substantial means, Stephen and Wyntie DeWitt; their five children; and eight enslaved people, according to the 1790 census. The next generation of this DeWitt family, John S. and his wife, Sarah, took up residence in this house. The slave, Jane, took care of the younger DeWitts’ son, Stephen Egbert, who apparently had a disability and died at age 19.

The enslaved DeWitts, Caesar, Jane and their daughter Elizabeth, ultimately gained their freedom through the New York State’s 1827 emancipation law. They purchased land from John S. DeWitt, and the Black family, which now included a son William Henry, and resided in a house built on the land, Harris and Pickman write. When John S. DeWitt died in 1845, in his will he bequeathed cash gifts to William Henry and Elizabeth. Moreover, he left the equivalent of $9,000 in today’s money to the now-free Jane, describing it as “a small compensation for her faithful services to me and to more especially for her unremitting care of and attendance on my lamented son from his cradle to his grave.” When John S. died, he had no heir and the land passed out of the DeWitt family who had enslaved people there over generations. The land that the former slaves, Caesar and Jane, had acquired remained in the possession of their descendants for 135 hours, the authors write.

The documentary and the article both highlight the history of slavery and slaves’ lives in these rural areas that has been disregarded far too long. In the details, names, and many actions and circumstances they relate, they bring that “tangible image” that Dr. Williams-Myers cites. In their article conclusion, Harris and Pickman write, “It is important to acknowledge this dark chapter in our local history. It is also important, however, that we not blame those of us whose ancestors may have benefited from this practice. Instead, the memory of those who suffered this injustice can inspire all of us to work together towards obliterating all forms of racism that exist in our country today.”

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The exhibition’s objects span thousands of years of human history. The library has selected 250 rare items from its renowned research collection of some 56 million objects including rare books, prints, photographs, ephemera from pamphlets to flyers, letters, audio and moving images, household items, theatrical props, furnishings, and more. Each extraordinary object tells its own story, reflecting the intricacies of a turning point in history, a memorable cultural moment, a witnessing document or other object from a movement, or a time of great discovery, tragedy, or resilience. In this debut of the “Treasures,” the New York Public Library has organized the exhibition into nine sections: Beginnings, Performance, Explorations, Fortitude, The Written Word, The Visual World, Childhood, Belief, and New York City.

The exhibit is in the newly restored and renovated Gottesman Hall on the main floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. It is open to the public and free. Admission is by reserved, timed entry, through the New York Public Library’s site, nypl.org/treasures. The exhibition is the first-ever permanent exhibition spotlighting the library’s research collection. It is made possible by a $12 million gift from philanthropist Leonard Polonsky.

As New Yorkers welcome an active, thriving city after suffering through the Covid pandemic’s shutdowns for a good chunk of the past year-and-a-half and tourism returns bit by bit to New York, this exhibition is a thrilling addition. Still, many remain quite cautious about indoor public settings and travel. So it’s even more heartening that the thoughtfulness evident in the exhibition’s creation extends to a robust online experience (with images and text) and an Audio Guide focusing on a selection of objects.

The exhibit’s aim, in spanning 4,000 years of human history, is to build on the library’s legacy to make new connections that expand understanding of the world and each other, and, in doing so, to shape a better future.

Here are just some highlights on view in this first iteration of the Treasures exhibition. The exhibition will change and evolve over time, in its themes and selections, which will allow the public to experience the depth of the vast collection within the library’s research collections.

Photo: Robert Kato, New York Public Library

Thomas Jefferson’s Handwritten Copy of the Declaration of Independence. This is Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, which scholars date between July 4 and July 10, 1776. His handwriting is small and neat on the paper, which is off-white and unruled.

This paper serves as a witness to how the history evolved. Congress debated and revised Jefferson’s original draft. He wrote out this version afterward and underlined when Congress made changes. In this version, Jefferson had written a denouncement of the slave trade in strong terms, calling it a “cruel war against human nature,” and on “assemblage of horrors.” Yet Jefferson was an enslaver who owned more than 600 human beings throughout his life. The Congress excised the denunciation of the slave trade in the Declaration’s final version.

In the audio guide, Anna Deavere Smith observes, “…Jefferson’s omitted passage allows us a solemn opportunity to imagine how history might have been different if, from the beginning, the United States had taken a stand against the evils of enslavement.”

Photo: New York Public Library

Bill of Sale to a Freed Black Man, 1778. To read a textbook summary of slavery is one thing. To see a weathered document of 1778 – a Bill of Sale in which a freed black man purchased the freedom of his daughter – is something tangible and powerful. It is firsthand documentation of slavery’s horrible dehumanization, and the actions black people undertook to gain freedom when possible.

The Bill of Sale names the free black man, Adam, who provided sixpence to a woman so that he could purchase freedom for his daughter, Jenny. The enslaver was Isabella Kearney, who signed this document, dated Oct. 19, 1778, in New York State. Two witnesses also signed this contract.

The document exemplifies a father’s care. It’s concrete proof of how slavery broke apart families in that Adam had no existing legal right of fatherhood until purchasing his daughter’s freedom. The archives of slavery often do not capture the interior lives of enslaved people, explains Michelle Commander, curator of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery as the Schomberg Center, in the exhibit’s audio guide. So, as Commander says, we have “to infer from the documents” such as this one: “Of course it’s very heartbreaking that we have a father who has to purchase his daughter’s freedom.” This sparks questions and some speculation: What might this document have meant to the father and daughter? What kind of protection did it offer? Where might Adam and Jenny gone after he purchased her freedom?

Photo: New York Public Library, Robert Kato

Umbrella Belonging to Mary Poppins Author P.L. Travers. In the Treasures exhibit, you can see an author’s possession that became an inspiration for an object with extraordinary powers – P.L. Travers’ umbrella. In her classic storybook series based on a quirky, prickly, and beloved nanny, Travers employed a fanciful parrot-head umbrella that Mary Poppins used to great effect. It had incredible powers, becoming a parachute that transported Poppins up and away, off into the sky.

Pamela Lyndon Travers, born in Australia as Helen Lyndon Goff, loved fairy tales from her earliest days. She also admired a parrot-headed umbrella that a family maid carried and saved to buy one of her own. A writer of articles, travel stories, and poems, she subsequently created the stories of a magical nanny who carried a parrot-head umbrella with amazing powers. In May 1972, Travers’ American editor gave this umbrella to the New York Public Library. At the time, Travers donated a collection of artifacts that were associated with her storybook series to the New York Public Library. It is quite a back story.

Photo: New York Public Library, Robert Kato

Cuneiform tablets. The library possesses some 700 artifacts inscribed in the ancient writing system known as cuneiform. The script was invented in the middle of the 4th millennium BCE in the region of Mesopotamia, in what is present-day Iraq. Students of cuneiform learned up to 1,000 different characters, which a person inscribed into damp clay using styli made of reed or bone.

Photo: New York Public Library

Ptolemy’s Geographia. A richly illustrated 15th century manuscript copy renders the work of Claudius Ptolemy, the 2nd century geographer, astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, and cosmographer. It captures the cosmological beliefs of the Roman era, which remained strong in the 15th century.

Photo: New York Public Library

Ida B. Wells, A Red Record, Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States, 1892-1893-1894. The exhibit has an original copy of Ida B. Wells’ Red Record. In the letter to investigative journalist Ida B. Wells for the Red Record that became its preface, Frederick Douglass wrote, “Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination….” Indeed, Wells (later Wells-Barnett) launched a crusade against lynching in the late 19th century. Following on her trailblazing pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Phases, Wells used white mainstream newspapers to produce a meticulously documented exposé on lynching. Wells found that white mob violence resulted in the killings of more than 10,000 African Americans in the South between 1864 and 1894.

Photo: New York Public Library

Photograph of the Statue of Liberty Under Construction in France. Whether you see it from land, sky, water, or up-close, the Statue of Liberty inspires awe. Its history is even more amazing when you see a photograph that records the French building it in Paris before taking it apart piece by piece and shipping Lady Liberty to the United States. Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi conceptualized and designed the copper sculpture while Gustave Eiffel’s skeletal structural system incorporated a massive central iron pylon to stabilize Lady Liberty.

French photographer Albert Fernique took many photos of the Statue of Liberty while it was under construction. The exhibition includes one of the 13 the New York Public Library owns, an 1883 albumen print. Though the photograph shows the statue surrounded by scaffolding, its magnificence is still evident as is its colossal scale compared to the Parisian buildings in the background. It’s mind-blowing to consider not only the original construction but also the accomplishment of taking it apart to transport for its voyage to the U.S.

It’s impossible to choose just a selection of objects and convey the full depth of the Treasures exhibition. Surely, varied items, artworks, and documents will speak powerfully to different individuals, whether it be the 17th century Megillah: Scroll of the Book of Esther; Charlotte Brontë’s travel writing desk; the earliest issued New York City money from 1708; the first printed version of Mother Goose; the script for the pre-Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire, and much more. I look forward to scheduling my first visit and can imagine that taking in this exhibition will require repeat visits.

Exhibition Details: In Person and Online

For those who want to see the Treasures exhibition, the New York Public Library offers information to plan your visit and reserve timed tickets. Visitors can access an Audio Tour on a laptop or one’s smartphone: an English or a Spanish version, or an accessible version with verbal descriptions. If you are not planning to visit in New York, one can construct a very rich virtual visit through the online version that captures the exhibition’s themes and content.

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Almost every day for the past few months, a juvenile Great Blue Heron has been frequenting and standing on the shallow edges of the pond, pool, and wetland area of the SUNY New Paltz campus. This young heron is beautiful, majestic, and self-possessed. Life has felt so different now, in this time of the Covid-19 pandemic – slower, quieter, at times disorienting. A heron’s patient rituals have been quite a comfort.

Always, and ever more so since the pandemic flared in the spring of 2020, walking has been centering and peaceful. For this past 18 months, walks have provided solace, beauty, and the affirmation of nature and the seasons, a source of strength in addition to dear ones, prayer, and a sense of purpose. Once the world closed in on lockdown, SUNY New Paltz’s lovely campus and some of the preserves and trails near home became the universe, a feeling many others have expressed about the environs near where they live. More than ever, observing the trees, flowers, plants, skies, ridgelines, birds, and wildlife nearby, with their changes through the seasons, symbolizes the rituals of life, of enduring a pandemic that has caused so much suffering.

Into this world came the young Great Blue Heron and, at times, a couple of fellow herons. A heron’s stillness is mesmerizing. Not to say that she doesn’t move, but everything is well-considered. Often, the heron stares at a spot in the water, and then suddenly stabs with her sharp bill to nab a fish and swallow it whole. Beyond these times of darting for prey, the Great Blue Heron’s absolute lack of movement amazes, as the bird stands and peers for many, many minutes without moving its head, body, and long, thin legs. The eyes maintain a singular focus. Then, without warning, the bird lifts in flight with graceful flaps of her wide wings.

The stately Great Blue Heron

A sunny spot on a pedestrian bridge

Spotting a fish perhaps?

Her manner of walking is, in and of itself, a matter of delight, a graceful choreography. In the shallows, she lifts one leg and moves it up into the air slightly and then forward. At times, the bird holds one leg midair below her body at a 90-degree angle, perched. Then her leg straightens and her foot lands gently onto the pond’s surface. She then repeats this move as she makes her way along the shallow edge of the water or along the grassy border. Soft and sure.

Following their breeding season, when they congregate in large colonies, Great Blue Herons spend much of their time alone. Each day on my walks, this solitary heron has been in one or the other of its places along a connected waterway, on the campus’ large, round pond (known on campus maps as “The Gunk”), north of there at the edge of an aerated pool, or farther south along a basin adjoining waterway. All about the bird, after the students returned to campus, the heron kept up its routines. Students walk by, chatting and giggling with each other. Skateboarders glide by on the sidewalks. Most go by, they in their worlds, this young heron in her own. Some stop by to watch, take a photo, or even to sit on a bench and watch the heron. Occasionally, one gets too close for comfort, and she slowly takes wing, up and across the pond or farther northward in another area.

I’ve named the heron Sunny Grace, the first name a play on the word SUNY and for the glorious, light presence of this Great Blue Heron, and the second name for her graceful movement as well as her gift to the day. Two students seated on a bench one day, watching, said they named the heron Henry.

A catch of fish

Time for sunning

At times, after I’ve headed to the campus feeling fatigued, heavy, or worried, observing this bird friend has brought joy, lightness, and wonder. I smile or chuckle seeing her movements or careful grooming. My mind and energy become blissfully clear. Each day I encounter the heron, I quietly say to her, “Godspeed. Thank you, Sunny Grace. That you for your beauty. Godspeed. Good evening!”

Embracing stillness and leaving the camera aside, I have found the sightings are richer. One Sunday evening, from a bench around the pond, the heron’s show was stunning, like a play finale. She stood in the shallows and – snap-zap! – grabbed a fish, flew across the pond with the fish in her mouth, ate it while standing on the other side, and then walked a bit around. Flying to a spot not far from my bench, she stood, rapt and erect, staring across the shimmery water. Then, bobbing her head slowly forward and back, the heron proceeded to walk in front of my bench, just a couple of feet away. Wowie! Who needs a Broadway ticket!

At some point as temperatures get colder, the Great Blue Herons, including my often-encountered friend, likely will be off for points south. They migrate alone or in flocks, during days or nights. The heron’s presence has brought priceless gifts. In the heron’s times of stillness is power and a fullness of the moment. I take it in as wisdom for always, but especially when we have needed to embrace the simplest gifts around us these past months. Be still. Embrace the stillness of moments, particularly when it is asked of us. Gather from them. Look. Listen. Observe. Be in these moments.

Great Blue Herons: Explore More

All About Birds: Great Blue Herons

Audubon: Great Blue Heron

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation: Podcast – The Stalkers: Great Blue Herons and Their Kin

The post The Gifts of the Heron first appeared on Mindful Walker.

When it opened in the autumn of 1929 as motion pictures were continuing to explode into a huge entertainment industry for the masses, the Loew’s Jersey Theatre was the blockbuster. It was one of only five Loew’s Wonder Theatres that the company constructed in the New York City area. The theater cost $2 million to build. The movie palace had a luxurious Italian Renaissance-style auditorium with a 50-foot proscenium. The three-story lobby rotunda held Dresden porcelain vases from the Vanderbilt Manion, a crystal chandelier, and a tiled Carrara marble fountain. On the exterior, the Baroque-Rococo style façade featured a terra cotta façade and a tower with a Seth Thomas mechanical clock topped by a statue of St. George on horseback slaying a dragon. It conjured an experience of Europe’s gilded entertainment palaces.

Nothing was spared for the opening evening’s entertainment on Sept. 28, 1929. It offered performances by Ben Blade and his Rhythm Kings and the Loew’s Symphony Orchestra, plus music from the Robert Morton Wonder Pipe Organ. A display ad in The Jersey Journal promised, “Dancing! Singing! Music and Pep!” The movie was Madame X, which Lionel Barrymore directed, with Ruth Chatterton and Lewis Stone.

A Palace, Then A Multiplex Phase

Brothers Cornelius W. and George L. Rapp, premier architects of hundreds of movie theaters, designed the Loew’s Jersey Theatre as a palace meant to evoke wonder and elevate the experience of the common man and woman. As George Rupp observed, “The wealthy rub elbows with the poor – and are better for this contact.” A month after the theater’s opening, the stock market crashed, setting off the Great Depression.

The Loew’s Jersey Theatre

The ornate detailing of the top of Loew’s Jersey Theatre, centered by a Seth Thomas clock and statue of St. George and the dragon

Through the Depression, World War II, and postwar America, the Loew’s Jersey maintained a presence on Journal Square for movies and entertainment, thriving and then declining. Performers who graced its stages ranged from George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bing Crosby, and Duke Ellington to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. However, the 1960s and 1970s found it facing hard times, and the travesty of a terrible division of its splendid auditorium into the multiplex-style three viewing rooms.

Ultimately, Loew’s Jersey was nearly lost. After it closed in 1986, Hartz Mountain Industries purchased the property the following year, intending to raze the theater to construct an office tower, as the site Cinema Treasures explains. These plans sparked an outcry from community residents determined to save the theater building, who subsequently formed the Friends of the Loew’s. In 1993, the City of Jersey City purchased the building. The Friends of the Loew’s painstakingly brought the theater back from the brink through grants, restoring its auditorium to single use, and presenting movies, live entertainment, and cultural events.

Nearly a century old, this historic theater building will be restored to its original splendor. After many decades and the commitment of the Jersey City government and the Friends of the Loew’s, the Loew’s Jersey Theatre will be restored and renovated, in ways that bring back its resplendence and update it for many years of major entertainment. As Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop announced in late February, the historic venue will undergo a $72 million facelift, as The Jersey Journal reported. The city is partnering with Devils Arena Entertainment, which operates the Prudential Center, to create a state-of-the-art entertainment venue for world-class and up-and-coming performers. Through the arrangement that the mayor outlined, the Friends of the Loew’s also will continue to produce and present diverse, affordable programs with community groups, nonprofits, and New Jersey arts organizations.

Complete Overhaul

Now the plans for the restoration and renovation are taking shape. Last month, the project architects, OTJ Architects, based in New York City, presented plans on behalf of Devils Arena Entertainment. In a presentation to the Jersey City Historic Preservation (HPC), the architects laid out schematic plans that include restoration of the terra cotta façade and ornamentation, entrance, and the marquee (to its original shape though letters will be replaced by LED panels); construction of a new entry vestibule; installation of a new elevator; and much more.

Furthermore, the plans outline a promising return to original glory with 21st century enhancements and upgrades. The project entails restoring interior ornamental finishes throughout the building and preserving important theater components such as a significant section of the stage foot light; and orchestra and organ lifts. Plans call for the replacement of all seating; up-to-date enhancements of auditorium AV and sound systems; and ADA upgrades such as required barrier-free seating. The Jersey City HPC staff reviewed the conceptual plans and requested a presentation later this year when the proposal is more fully fleshed out.

Beyond this first look by the Jersey City HPC, the Jersey City Planning Board and various state and federal agencies will need to review the project. The principals aim to complete renovations by 2025.

The Loew’s Jersey Theatre

The opulent interior lobby
Photo: City of Jersey City

The Loew’s Jersey Theatre complete restoration and renovation comes at a crucial juncture. We’ve learned even more during the Covid pandemic about the important community- and soul-affirming place of culture and the arts. As the region and world work to defeat and emerge from the Covid epidemic, this project is resilience bound up in bricks and mortar with investment and community, and is a catalyst of the Journal Square revitalization.

The theater project brings together a major successful commercial operator, a committed and successful community preservation and cultural group, and the Jersey City government in a potential win-win for all, and particularly for Jersey City and the regeneration of Journal Square. The commercial programming will help the city leverage economic development and other funding for the theater’s renovation, as Colin Egan, director of the Friends of the Loew’s, wrote in an op-ed for The Jersey Journal.

Moreover, it’s a win-win for the Earth. Buildings that are preserved, reused, renovated, and revitalized are more efficient and less costly to the environment and, critically, substantially better for the planet’s climate. Consider the situation if the original Hartz Mountain Industries plan would have happened in 1986, and the company would have demolished this palatial theater to construct a likely undistinguished 1980s office tower. This 92-year-old building remains as a majestic place for film, the arts, multicultural community events, and musical entertainment.

Indeed, this hearkens back to the intention that architect George Rapp articulated. As he observed of why the movie palaces were palatial, “Here is a shrine to democracy where there are no privileged patrons.”

As Egan wrote in the Journal column, “…the Loew’s has always been more than `just’ a business: It was built to be a local architectural icon where everyone would feel special just by being there.”

Further Exploration

Friends of the Loew’s: A Vintage Gallery

The post A New Act for the Loew’s Jersey Theatre first appeared on Mindful Walker.

Working her fifth season, Ann Parion, 13, carried 60 pounds of berries from the fields to the sheds at Newton’s farm in Delaware. At age 6, Willie Cherry helped her stepbrother at the Massey Hosiery Mill in Georgia. In a 1915 photo by Hine, an 8-year-old boy grimaces as he works to remove the top off beets. In 1911, Hine captured a line of shrimp-pickers for the Biloxi Canning Company, recording their ages in his report: “Two children of five years. One of seven years. Two of eight years. One of nine. Two of ten. Two of eleven (one who had been working at this factory two years). Three of twelve, (one working here 4 years and one two years).” Through his camera, Hine showed the work lives of these children – and many more.

Documenting these child laborers in various states, Hine risked his life, under threat of killing and other violence from factory security officers and foremen, to photograph their duress and exploitation. He used guises to elude detection or waited until he could take pictures of them outside the workplaces. Hine’s photos are so evocative and powerful that in viewing these children, one can feel the dirt and darkness of cramped factory quarters, sense the difficulty and grime of shucking oysters for long hours, and see the strain upon small arms and backs of carrying crates of fruit or bending over without a break.

In this 1910 photo, Salvin Nocito, 5 years of age, is seen carrying two pecks of cranberries to the “bushel-man” at a farm in Browns Mills, N.J.

Photo: Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress Online Catalog, Prints and Photographs Division

The finely told and moving exhibit at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz – Lewis Hine, Child Labor Investigator – offers an exceptional opportunity to see a range of Hine’s photographs that played a vital role in the passage of child labor legislation in the United States. The exhibit is on view through July 11 in the museum’s Sara Bedrick Gallery. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. (The exhibit first opened Feb. 6.) Anna Conlan, curator and exhibitions manager, and Amy Fredrickson, curatorial and collections assistant, co-curated the exhibit.

Hine’s focus on children is not surprising given the experiences of his own childhood, and how his education and training further forged a path to delve into their lives. Hine was born in 1874 and raised in Oshkosh, Wisc. When his father died in an accident in 1892, Hine had to work to help support his family financially. He worked in a furniture upholstery factory for 13 hours a day, 6 days a week, and then did other odd jobs, as a bank janitor and delivery boy, becoming determined to pursue higher education. He took university extension courses in Oshkosh and was able to enroll at the University of Chicago, where he studied sociology under economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen.

After Hine became a teacher, a school administrator whom he had known through the university extension courses, Frank Manny, hired him to become an educator at the Ethical Culture School in New York, where Manny had become the superintendent, according to Hine’s biography in the International Photography Hall of Fame. Under a school program, Hine took his students to Ellis Island and photographed the arriving immigrants. He began to grasp the ability of photography to convey the real lives of people and be a force for social change.

“Respect and Compassion”

Through his photography becoming better known and his various connections, Hine landed an assignment with the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in 1908. For the NCLC over a period of 16 years, Hine traveled from the Carolina Piedmont and Mid-Atlantic to the Gulf Coast and Midwest, logging up to 30,000 miles a year. He lugged his camera and equipment to photograph children as laborers in canning factories, mills, sweatshops, and mines, and on farms and out on the streets. He took notes of names, ages, and other details, as he talked with the children. Along the way, as the exhibit describes, Hine “listened with respect and compassion to their stories.”

The Dorsky exhibit has an excellent and emblematic range of Hine’s child labor photography, thoughtfully organized. It is comprised of a collection of gelatin silver prints that New York-based gallery owner, curator, and historian Howard Greenberg donated to the museum. All in all, Hine produced a massive number of images. The Library of Congress holds 5,100 photographic prints and 355 glass negatives in its National Child Labor Committee Collection. The Dorsky exhibit is divided into a range of industry categories that Hine investigated, such as cotton and other mills and shops, farms, and canning factories, plus the children “newsies” who sold newspapers on the streets.

This 12-year-old girl worked in the weaving room of a mill in LaGrange, Ga., for one year, helping to support a father “who works when sober.”

Photo: Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress Online Catalog, Prints and Photographs Division

Looking at the photographs and reading the captions that go with each – and taking time to really look again slowly – lets it sink in how gruesome, dangerous, harmful, tedious, and inhumane this labor was. One photo shows a group of both incredibly young and older children at the Lumberton Cotton Mills in North Carolina. Hine’s caption identifies Flossie Britt, 6, “who has been working several months steadily as a spinner” and earns 30 cents a day, as well as Lonnie Britt, 7, similarly employed as a spinner, for a year. Lonnie “Makes 40 cents a day.” A 1913 photo reveals a 12-year-old girl who worked in the weave room of Consolidated Duck Mill, LaGrange, Ga., who helps support “a father who works when sober.” The children often worked barefoot in these mills, as that made it easier to climb and reach a bobbin or thread, according to exhibit text, explaining how this led to many accidents.

Hine said, “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.” Still, the words that he recorded, for captions and reports, are at times piercing, about the conditions and about his outrage. A 1908 photo of a “glass blower and mold boy” shows a young boy bent over slightly, holding a mold and obviously aiming to keep this position, as an adult glassblower stands opposite him. “Boy has 4½ hours of this at a stretch, then an hour’s rest and 4½ more: cramped position.” These “mold boys” crouched for many hours, opening and closing molds for adult glassblowers in factories, according to glass industry resource UrbanGlass.

The exhibit points out how Hine particularly detested conditions in the canning factories, “A line of canning factories stretches along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana,” he observed. “I have witnessed many varieties of child labor horrors…but the climax, the logical conclusion of the ‘laissez-faire’ policy regarding the exploitation of children is to be seen in the oyster-shuckers and shrimp-pickers in that locality.” Children of 8 and 9 years old stood for long hours at tables shucking oysters, at times starting shifts at 3 or 3:30 a.m. and shucking until 5 p.m. The exhibit photos show many children as oyster-shuckers or shrimp-pickers laboring in these appalling conditions in places such as Dunbar, La., and Biloxi, Miss.

A line of shrimp-pickers, in 1911, the youngest of whom are 5 and 6 years old
Photo: Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress Online Catalog, Prints and Photographs Division

Progressive reformers such as the National Child Labor Committee and others campaigned for years to abolish child labor, and the exhibit summarizes the setbacks, ultimate successes, and Hine’s instrumental role. The effort took decades. As industries boomed in the late 19th and early 20th century, the number of children under the age of 15 who worked for wages in industrial jobs climbed from 1.5 million in 1890 to 2 million in 1910. In 1916, Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act, which would regulate child labor by banning the sale of products from shops, factories, and canneries that employed children under specified ages and limited working hours for others. However, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Act as unconstitutional in 1918. Finally, in 1938, during the Administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which, among various measures, vastly curtailed child labor by regulating the minimum ages for their employment (though it excluded agricultural labor).

This victory for children came just two years before Lewis Hine’s death, at age 66 in 1940, at a hospital near his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He had gone on to create a prolific and magnificent oeuvre, from his photographs for the Red Cross during World War I, of refugees, nurses, wounded soldiers, and others, to his commission chronicling the construction of the Empire State Building, from the pit to the skyscraper’s top. The Dorsky Museum exhibit conclusion eloquently expresses the timeless resonance of Hine’s photography: “His images still have an extraordinary power to stir minds and move hearts” in a continuing fight for children still trapped in poverty and by hunger – “as needed today as it was on the day his camera captured its first photograph.”

A boy holds a mold for the glassblower, in a cramped position for many hours, in this 1908 photo.

Photo: Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress Online Catalog, Prints and Photographs Division

A young girl at the Cherokee Hosiery Mill, 1913

Photo: Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress Online Catalog, Prints and Photographs Division

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This week, two men, Matthew Spady and Joseph Amodio, are leading a tour, “Ferry to Freedom: The Abolitionists of Washington Heights.” They will share the stories of Harris and others through a walk – virtually – from the sites of a sugar refinery on the Hudson River that Harris ran to an abolitionist church in this neighborhood to the extant building at 857 Riverside. Spady, Amodio, and others with the Upper Riverside Residents Alliance have been working to save this house from demolition by urging a city landmark designation. They led a virtual walk on Monday, May 3, and will do another on Wednesday, May 5, at 9 a.m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time).

If you miss this one, this week you can take a video tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s waterways with the garden’s President, Adrian Benepe; do a virtual walk of the architecture and history of Staten Island’s West New Brighton; learn about the Syrian Quarter of Lower Manhattan; or check out, online, the Slavic East Village through its food, its shops, and its houses of worship. These are all part of Jane’s Walk NYC 2021, which the Municipal Arts Society of New York (MAS) presents. The Washington Heights virtual tour is one of literally hundreds of explorations of all kinds that Jane’s Walk New York is offering from May 3-9. In its 11h year, Jane’s Walk NYC is suspending in-person, guided walks and opting for a wide range of offerings and activities such as live, self-guided tours; Zoom and other online virtual walks; and on-demand programs that one can access any time. True to New York City, the show must go on.

This initiative is much in the spirit of what has energized Jane’s Walk from its founding in 2006, shortly after Jane Jacobs passed away that year. That is when friends and colleagues in Toronto sought a way through walks and citizen engagement to honor Jacobs, the writer, activist, and urbanist whose work and life in New York and then Toronto inspired a strong movement empowering the voices of communities and ordinary people in shaping vibrant, walkable neighborhoods. From a handful of walks for the first event in Toronto in 2007, Jane’s Walk has flourished to encompass citizen-led walks, tours, and walking conversations all over the world, happening annually in early May, to honor Jacobs’ birthday on May 4. (Discover more about Jacobs’ life in Greenwich Village and the places that defined her work and impact, through Village Preservation‘s Urban Archive story.)

857 Riverside Drive. 1937
Photo: Berenice Abbott / New York Public Library Digital Collections

857 Riverside Drive, today
Photo Source: Save Riverside

Yet during the past two spring times, the Covid pandemic has put a heavy strain on our ways of gathering, walking, and sharing in groups. A moment of why Jane Jacobs and Jane’s Walk resonates particularly this year: I have stayed quite close to my Hudson Valley home and, like many writers and tour guides, suspended the kinds of neighborhood experiences that Jane Jacobs inspired. The year has been one of much reflection and prayer; distress that so many millions of people are suffering due to Covid; connection with family and community (both near and far); and gratitude for nature’s solitude and the resilience of the birds and other wildlife in the backyard. Yet, it has felt like an exile from New York, the city that I love and that is part of my soul, while I have engaged in activism and connection in the ways that have been possible.

To that end, Jane’s Walk 2021 is rich, albeit on a different platform. Normally, it would be the first weekend of May, and filled with hundreds of in-person tours and walks, with groups gathering all over New York City. I led a Jane’s Walk based on the writer Joseph Mitchell’s love of building details on his long walks in New York. This year, the festival is a full week, with hundreds of programs and virtual tours in every corner of the city that can spark awareness, knowledge, enjoyment, connection, and activism. To be sure, its full slate can provide inspiration of places and sites to follow up on, post-pandemic – to walk. Furthermore, its virtual reach means people all over the globe can do Jane’s Walk NYC this year.

A Small Sampling

Here are just three Jane’s Walk activities as highlights. Be sure to consult the Jane’s Walk NYC 2021 site and prepare to be blown away by the sheer diversity of offerings.

Queens: Around the World in 90 Minutes – On Thursday, May 6, at 11 a.m., a Zoom walk will take participants through “the World’s Borough,” where 183 languages are spoken. The tour promises to “traverse the length and breadth” of Queens, learn about who lives where and why, and get a taste of various neighborhoods.

Virtual Walk: Sandy and Sheepshead Bay – Superstorm Sandy devastated this community in 2012. Through a virtual self-guided tour via Zoom on Saturday, May 8, at 10 a.m., architects who were involved in the neighborhood’s reconstruction will host this look at the renewal of this area of bungalows. Homeowners will be featured in interviews as part of the tour.

Hunts Point: Village of Murals, Environmental Justice, Print Day in May: On Sunday, May 9, at 11 a.m., this Instagram Live “walk” will focus on public art and environmental justice in Hunts Point in the South Bronx. In this birthplace of hip-hop, delves into “how industry, community, and nature intersect to fuse art, environmental, and social justice” in a city neighborhood.

Find the full listing at the Jane’s Walk NYC 2021 site.

An event on Sunday, the last day of this year’s Jane’s Walk NYC, perhaps sums up the difficulty and challenge that Covid brought during the past year and how cities are emerging with new realities, opportunities, and questions. In “New York Versus Barcelona: How the Pandemic Is Transforming Our Cities,” on May 9 at 11 a.m., a live walking tour (via Zoom) will be held in both New York City and Barcelona. Two New York-based Catalan architects will hold a conversation with a Barcelona-based artist collective and address questions such as: “How have public spaces been transformed? Could this stay forever or is this just temporary? What are the local communities’ visions?”

No doubt this liveliness, connection, and vital work are Jane Jacobs’ legacy.

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