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Owning History Making Room for Controversy, Opinion, Rumor and Conjecture

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Owning History Making Room for Controversy, Opinion, Rumor and Conjecture Vol. 5 No. 4 Fall 2010 History begins at Home. The Historic House Trust is a not-for-profit organization operating in tandem with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Our mission is to provide essential f 212 360-8201 212 f support for houses of 212 360-8282 212 architectural and cultural significance, spanning 350 New York, NY 10065 NY York, New years of New York City life. Room 203 Room These treasures reside within The Arsenal Arsenal The city parks and are open to 830 Fifth Avenue Fifth 830 the public. owning history Making room for controversy, opinion, rumor and conjecture inside this issue, read about: Connecting the past to the present through controversy: reclaiming the environment around the Old Stone House, rumors at the Morris-Jumel Mansion Museum, gender rights at the Alice Austen House Museum, and immigration and domestic labor at the Merchants House Museum. PLEASE VISIT WWW.HISTORICHOUSETRUST.ORG OR CALL 212.360.8282 FOR MORE INFORMATION Printing oF this news- letter is generously underwritten by Forbes sland Historical Society. i A 2010 recreation of Alice Austen’s “Group on Tennis Grounds, July 23, 1886.” Photographer Steven Rosen presents published quarteRlY a conjectural interpretation of Alice Austen’s original image. Austen’s family built a tennis court, and many of bY the HistoriC HOuSe her photographs were taken during tennis parties there. They included a wide range of family and friends whose TRust of New York City. personal relationships would, at times, seep through the images. Some of these photographs, although they appear No part of this newsletter may to be impromptu, are in fact and out of necessity highly planned and choreographed tableaux. They include nuanced be reprinted without the symbols—the placement of tennis racquet, wine bottle, or cane, the angle of a hat, a shoulder slightly touching or permission of The Historic House a directed glance. These signs, seen as a language, give us clues for a fuller reading of gender, class, and social Trust of New York City, Inc. standards of the day. In recreating the image, photographer Steven Rosen magnifies these signs in the original ISSN 1083-379x. photograph to produce new images full of conjectures about interpersonal relationships in 2010. AliceAusten House Museum and Staten Merchants House Museum Alice Austen’s “Hester Street, egg stand group” (1895). Fall 2010 H i STOR i C H O u S e T R u S T O F N e w Y O R k C i TY H i STOR i C H O u S e T R u S T O F N e w Y O R k C i TY A Note from He Smell Of A DelIcious dinneR wafts Rebecca moved with elly to Franklin D. Vagnone through Rebecca lurie and her partner Brooklyn from their apartment in southern Manhattan when Executive Director elly Spicer’s 1920s row house in Park Slope, T they decided to have children. Brooklyn. The brick house, built to house single They were drawn to this house people who worked for wealthier residents at the after reading an ad saying that “He knows instinctively that this space identified with his This issue has been organized to test the notion northern end of the neighborhood, now sings of it had three original Murphy solitude is creative: that even when it is forever expunged of authenticity. Is it authentic to tell the whole story, from the present, when, henceforth, it is alien to all the family. Rebecca, a volunteer at the Old Stone House, beds. Intrigued, the couple or is it better to frame the story in a way that may promises of the future, even when we no longer have a lives here with her partner, elly, and sons Tyler, 17, came to take a look and found a exclude conjectural or controversial aspects? Our garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains and cameron, 12. house virtually untouched since hope is that in raising these more difficult topics, we the 1940s. TR u S T S TA F F the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic.” ————————————— The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard open up a new and more complex discussion of house Rebecca Brainard museums and the stories they tell. Preservation Crew Member his issue has not been an easy one to In addition to these questions we asked: What stories do our historic houses tell that are relevant to Sarah Brockett produce. It is about stories – not necessarily contemporary culture? What stories are difficult to Manager of Grants and T about architecture. It, perhaps, begins to tell, complicated to explain, or nuanced in a way so Public Programs address the primary quality of a valued historic house: habitation. complex that an hour tour won’t do justice to them? Caroline R. Drabik Curatorial Associate To achieve this authenticity – paradoxically, we asked the question: Is there room in preservation for recent newspaper headlines begin David C. Mandel controversy, opinion, rumor and conjecture? Almost to suggest answers: Director of Education every historic house site that I have been directly • An 18 year old Rutgers student jumps off the & Interpretation involved with has the “old wives’ tale” about one of George Washington Bridge because he is “outted” Jonathan Mellon the inhabitants. I have wondered what things would as a gay man online. (NEw YORK CITY HAS ABOuT 5.76% OF ITS Resident Engineer POPulation IN SAME SEx HOuSEHOlDS. THIS PuTS uS IN THE TOP 10 “gayest” be like if we as preservationists actually owned the Rebecca’s quiet residential CITIES IN THE COuntry.) Tara Kiernan rumors – imbedded the controversial and questionable street is just blocks from the Administrative Coordinator • A toxic waste reservoir collapses in Hungary and into our tours and stories? I wonder if including This is My Gowanus canal and the old Meredith A. Sorin these ideas of conjecture make historic houses more floods 16 square miles of residential houses. At least industrial neighborhood Deputy Director intimate, approachable, and oddly enough – authentic. 4 people are killed and hundreds are sent to the that surrounds it—an area now poised for change. An As I have done with most other newsletters, hospital with burns caused by the substance. (IN 2009 Mikel Travisano abandoned brick power plant I sent out an email to the house staffs for article THERE wERE 222 SuPERFuND SITES IN NEw YORK State AlONE, AND THE GOwANuS Architectural Conservator known as the “Batcave,” a ideas. I usually am swimming in suggestions relevant CANAl wAS ADDED TO THE lIST THIS YEAR.) Nahn Tseng NEIGHBOR- former squat with powerful • The divorce rate is the lowest it has been in 40 Senior Architectural to the newsletter theme. Not so this time! Some of interior and exterior graffiti, years, and is still over 40%. (NEw YORK STATE’S NO-FAulT DIVORCE Conservator the responses I did get came with caveats: “we try to stands as a testament to this stay away from controversial topics” or “these ideas lAw, THE lAST OF ANY STATE, wENT INTO EFFECT IN OCTOBER) Rebecca Lurie transition. It had been slated Franklin D. Vagnone CApTions bY Tara kiernan and are too far afield from our period of interpretation.” I • Deportations of illegal immigrants from the United for the development of luxury Executive Director kiM MAieR, Old Stone HOuSe understood everyone’s concerns, but those caveats States hit a record high of 392,862 this September. HOOD: housing until the combined (IN 2000, NEw YORK CITY HAD 2.9 MIllION FOREIGN-BORN RESIDENTS, THE lARGEST impact of the Superfund were the very reason that I thought this issue of the designation and the drop in NuMBER IN ITS history. OF THESE, 43% ARRIVED IN THE PREVIOuS TEN YEARS AND newsletter needed to be published—nothing is as the real estate market. 46% SPEAK A lANGuAGE OTHER THAN ENGlISH at HOME.) clean and contained as we portray it. I suspect that Photograph by nathan On OuR cOveR: even our 23 houses were never as orderly and clean as Political battles rage as we adjust to these statistics; Kensinger. Photo by Steven Rosen. marriage and divorce rights, cleaning up our Top row: Leo Wyatt, they are now as house museums. Anna catherine, Reggie This newsletter is conceptually tied to the three industrial past, and regulating immigration capture Resino, Sam Devries, preceding issues by a common goal – to provide headlines almost daily. In this issue we look at Shana carter, Frank- expansive ideas for historic interpretation and to how historic interpretation can contribute to our lin vagnone, Matthew question the traditional paradigm of historic house understanding of these issues. Karl Gale. Bottom row: museums. nelson Santos, Richard Presser, Zahra Hashem- ian, John Yeagley, vic- We salute our Corporate supporters toria Arrington, claire Rebecca is an active Rebecca loves her neighborhood, despite vagnone, Alexander volunteer at the nearby the shadow of a dirtier past lingering nearby. encarnacion. Styling by Old Stone House, where The subway is close, the schools are good, she teaches local kids how victoria Arrington. the restaurants abundant. “Once in a while, to garden in carefully tended planting beds. Two you find some gems,” she says. Historic House Trust blocks away, this empty 830 Fifth Avenue lot awaits its fate as part The Arsenal of a proposed Whole Foods Nathan kensinger's photographs of New York Room 203 project that has been City's abandoned, industrial waterfront have been NY, NY 10065 delayed indefinitely due to exhibited at the brooklyn Museum and the Museum of 212 360-8282 brownfield remediation.
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