American Museum of Natural History – A New Yorker State of Mind

Unnatural History

In my last post we visited the Central Park Zoo, circa 1931, and found a collection of animals displayed as curiosities in barren enclosures that in no way resembled natural habitats.

Aug. 29, 1931 cover by Constantin Alajalov.

It’s hard to say if those creatures were better or worse off than their cousins at the American Museum of Natural History, a short walk across the park to the northwest. Unlike the zoo, the tigers and rhinos at the museum were displayed in naturalistic, almost dreamlike settings. But then again they were dead; indeed, all that remained of them were their skins, skillfully fitted over skeletons of wood and clay.

SIMULACRUM…Clockwise, from top left, American Museum of Natural History staff mounting rhinoceros and Indian elephant, circa 1930; preparing African buffalo group diorama; staff cleaning elephant skin in preparation for mounting on a frame consisting of a skull and some wood. This would be covered with clay before the skin is fitted. (vintag.es)

E.B. White stopped by the famed museum to take a look at its new Asiatic Hall, and filed this report for “The Talk of the Town.”

The animals pictured below came from a couple of British big game hunters, gathered during expeditions in the 1910s and 1920s…

PLEASE HOLD STILL…American Museum of Natural History staff prepare the tiger group diorama in 1931. The display was in the new Asiatic Hall referred to by **E.B. White**. (vintage.es)

SURVIVORS OF A SORT…Nearly 90 years later, the tiger group is still on display at the American Museum of Natural History, now in the Hall of Biodiversity. (AMNH)

STILL THE SAME…This Asiatic leopard diorama, which so impressed E.B. White, also survives to this day, in the Hall of Asian Mammals at AMNH. (atlasobscura)

NEVER-ENDING BATTLE…The Sambar stag diorama, dating to 1911, is also mentioned by White in his article. (atlasobscura)

I am delighted that the AMNH (which I visited in December as an avid fan of diorama art) preserves these exhibits, which not only display animals — many now endangered — but also the artistry of painters, sculptors and taxidermists from a century ago. Sadly, many museums are scrapping these cultural treasures and replacing them with gaudy, interactive displays and video screens. An article in Newsweek (“Museum Dioramas Are as Endangered as the Animals They Contain,” Aug. 2, 2015) notes that around 2008 “the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., closed two diorama halls and reopened them with video screens, interactive features and stand-alone specimens where the dioramas had been.” In other words, the specimens were removed from naturalistic scenes and displayed as stand-alone curiosities, rather like those poor animals in the Central Park Zoo of yesteryear.

* * *

Everyday Icons

Gilbert Seldes profiled industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904 – 1972), who along with contemporaries Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes was among celebrity designers of the midcentury. Like Bel Geddes, Dreyfuss was a well-known Broadway set designer who would go on to become an industrial designer in the era of streamlining. But unlike Loewy and Bel Geddes, Dreyfuss went well beyond mere styling, taking a practical, scientific approach to problems that would not only make products better looking, but also safer and more comfortable to use. An excerpt:

GOT MY START IN SHOW BIZ…**Henry Dreyfuss** in 1946, and his 1930-31 design of the RKO Theatre in Davenport, Iowa (now the Adler Theatre). (Wikipedia/qctimes.com)

ICONS OF EVERYDAY LIFE…Some of Dreyfuss’s designs included, *top row:* the Western Electric Model 500 telephone (center), which replaced the clunkier Model 300 (left) in 1950; the Hoover model 150 vacuum cleaner, from 1936; *middle row:* Dreyfuss designs for the New York Central Railroad’s streamlined *Mercury* train (1936); and the NYC Hudson locomotive for the *Twentieth Century Limited* (1938); *bottom row:* Dreyfuss designed things as varied as tractors for John Deere (1960); the Honeywell T87 circular wall thermostat (1953–present); and the Polaroid SX-70 Land camera (1972).

* * *

Body-Building Barnum

Another well-known figure of the 1930s was Bernarr Macfadden (1868 – 1955), an early proponent of physical culture who would prefigure such notables as Charles Atlas, Jack LaLanne, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But none of them were quite like McFadden, who also created a pulp publishing empire (among his magazines: Liberty, True Detective, True Story, True Romances, Photoplay and the notorious tabloid newspaper The New York Evening Graphic).

READ ALL ABOUT IT…Macfadden’s *Evening Graphic* was all about scandal, and especially sex and murder.

Macfadden also established numerous “healthatoriums” across the East and Midwest, including (in 1931) his latest venture, the Physical Culture Hotel near Dansville, New York. E.B. White explained, in his “Notes and Comment”…

MCFADDEN SHOWS OFF HIS BOD in 1910 (left) at age 42, and at age 55 in 1923. (Wikipedia)

BEFORE AND AFTER…Mcfadden acquired the 1882 Jackson Sanatorium near Dansville, NY in 1931 and renamed it the Physical Culture Hotel. Circa 1930s images at top contrast with the condition of the property today — it fell into disrepair after MacFadden’s death in 1955, and closed for good in 1971. Known to locals as the “Castle on the Hill” in its heyday, it can still be glimpsed by motorists traveling on I-390. (bernarrmacfadden.com/abandonedplaces.livejournal.com)

* * *

For the Birds

When I came across “Farewell to Birds,” on page 17, I thought for a moment it was one of James Thurber’s animal parodies (there was even a Thurber cartoon at the bottom of the page), but then I noticed our writer was Will Cuppy, (1884-1949) who wrote in the Thurber vein (Cuppy was ten years Thurber’s senior) and like Thurber, was a bit of a curmudgeon. From 1931 until his death Cuppy wrote satirical pieces for the New Yorker that were later collected into books (also like Thurber). Here is an excerpt from “Farewell to Birds.”

THE SIMPLE LIFE…Satirist Will Cuppy (center, in 1932) and two of his early books. *How to be a Hermit* (1929) was a humorous look at his life residing in a Jones Island seaside shack from 1921 to 1929 (he was escaping city noise and hayfever); *How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes* was a 1931 compilation of Cuppy’s articles, including the one above.

* * *

Puttin’ on the Ritz

Lois Long, newly divorced from cartoonist Peter Arno, concluded her fashion column (“On and Off the Avenue”) by telling readers about her “swell new hairdo”…

HAVE A SEAT, LOIS…The perm room at Charles of the Ritz, 1932.

* * *

Your Majesty

Speaking of new looks, Central Park West was boasting the addition of a new “skyscraper apartment building” called the Majestic. “The Sky Line” reported:

APTLY NAMED…The Majestic at Central Park West. (Pinterest)

Another building making its mark was the Parc Vendôme on West 57th, offering more than 600 apartments with annual rents ranging from $1,100 to $6,600. Condos in the same building today range from $495,000 to $5,495,000.

BREAD BOX INCLUDED…The Parc Vendôme on West 57th. (street easy.com)

From Our Advertisers

Henry Mandel, one of New York City’s most ambitious developers in the 1920s and early 30s, touted the Parc Vendôme in this advertisement…

…I wonder if Lois Long (see above) got one of these “dos” at the Ritz…I love the snob appeal of this ad — “The New Paris Way of Doing Your Hair”…

…which seemed to work…here is a random sample of Hollywood stars in 1931, all wearing the look…

DOING THE WAVE…From left, **Tilly Losch, Constance Bennett**, and **Barbara Stanwyck.**

…other ads appealing to the Continental lifestyle…a very understated yet elegant ad for Guerlain lipstick, and Nellie Harrington-Levine gave us a disinterested deb sporting “the wave,” a cigarette and a velvet dress…

…and Pond’s continued its parade of rich society women to sell its cold cream…here we are presented with “Mrs. Morgan Belmont,” aka Margaret Frances Andrews (1894 – 1945), a Newport socialite and prize-winning show dog breeder…

Andrews didn’t limit herself to cold cream, here appearing in a 1927 ad for Simmons mattresses…

**Margaret Frances Andrews** was a noted dog breeder, seen above at the Newport Dog Show around 1915; below, Andrews had a small role in the 1920 **Mary Pickford** film *Way Down East.* Andrews, at left, was credited as “Mrs. Morgan Belmont.”

…and we move on to this sad little ad from the back pages, featuring something called “Peeko,” which apparently mimicked the flavors of Rye, Gin and Rum…it must have tasted awful…

…our cartoons feature Perry Barlow, and I can’t quite tell if this guy is drinking a soda or some bootleg gin, which was often sold at select gas stations…

…a two-page sequence from Gardner Rea…

…Otto Soglow went fishing…

…and commiserated with a couple of unemployed guys whose plight is ignored by the celebrity-obsessed media…

…Alan Dunn hit the lecture circuit…

…Kemp Starrett sketched some wink-wink, nudge-nudge at the men’s store…

…and we close with James Thurber, and the trials of our elders…

Next Time: Bonfire of the Vanities…

Death Avenue Revisited

For nearly 100 years, giant steam locomotives (and later diesels) rumbled through the streets of Manhattan’s West Side, serving warehouses and industries via a route known as “Death Avenue.”

Jan. 18, 1930 cover by **Constantin Alajalov** (who apparently had just visited St. Moritz, home of the 1928 Winter Olympics).

Beginning in 1846, freight trains began operating at street level along 10th, 11th and 12th avenues. When mixed with an ever-growing crush of pedestrians, wagons, cars and trucks — hundreds were killed or mutilated, many of them schoolchildren. One of these streets, 10th Avenue, earned the moniker “Death Avenue” for its large share of fatalities. Although protests over the unsafe rail lines had been going on for decades, it wasn’t until 1929 that an agreement was reached to build an elevated rail system (which is now the popular High Line elevated park). In late December 1929 Mayor Jimmy Walker pried out the first spike at 11th Avenue and 60th Street. In “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White wryly observed:

GOOD OLD DAYS…Freight trains were introduced to the west side warehouse district in 1846. Block-long trains would run through cross streets and congested traffic, maiming and killing along the way (image at left circa 1920). At some point in the late 19th century trains were required to send a man ahead on horseback waving a red warning flag (see images at right, circa 1900); nevertheless, in the decade 1890-1900 nearly 200 deaths were recorded, mostly schoolchildren from nearby tenements. **please** **click image to enlarge.**

WESTSIDE COWBOYs…Clockwise, from top left, a steam locomotive rumbles down 11th Avenue near 41st Street in the 1920s; men on horseback, known as the West Side Cowboys, rode ahead of the trains to warn pedestrians. Image at top right is of cowboy **William Connolly** on 11th Avenue in 1932; the last ride — **George Hayde** led the final ride of the West Side cowboys up 10th Avenue on March 24, 1941; aerial view of the High Line from 18th Street heading north. Opened in 1934, the elevated track lifted most freight train traffic 30 feet in the air. Today the High Line serves as a mile-and-a-half-long elevated park, and is one of New York’s biggest tourist draws. (Forgotten NY/AP/NY Times/thehighline.org)

A New Yorker illustrator/cartoonist who spent a lot of time hanging around the working class neighborhoods on the West Side was Reginald Marsh. One of the first cartoonists employed by the New Yorker, Marsh was also a “Social Realist” painter who had studied with the Art Students League. The prevailing theme at the League was life among the working poor, the unemployed, and the homeless, especially after the market crash of 1929. For the Jan. 18 issue Marsh contributed this cartoon featuring a Death Avenue subject…

…more than two years earlier (the Nov. 5, 1927 issue) Marsh provided this illustration of life on Death Avenue…

* * *

Birds of a Feather

And speaking of the down and out, E.B. White commented on the thousands of panicked citizens who had flocked to the New York Life Insurance Company in search of some peace of mind under the wing of its leader Darwin P. Kingsley (1857-1932). Kingsley steered the company through the market crash relatively unscathed, thanks to its investments in government bonds and real estate, and not in common stocks.

DARWIN’S LAW…**Darwin P. Kingsley** saw the New York Life Insurance Company through the stock market crash. The company’s assets weathered the crash thanks to investments in government bonds and real estate, and not common stocks. At right, the New York Life Building at 51 Madison Avenue, designed by architect **Cass Gilbert** and opened in December 1928.(retropundit.wordpress.com)

* * *

Oh Dear Me

As I’ve noted before, the New Yorker loved taking swipes at the New York Times, especially when the somewhat puritanical “Old Gray Lady” found it challenging to cover the more salacious side of life. In this case, according to E.B. White, it was the subject matter of a 1930 Broadway play Waterloo Bridge…

LES BELLES IMPURES…Actress **June Walker** (pictured here circa 1920) portrayed chorus girl Myra Deauville in the 1930 Broadway play *Waterloo Bridge.* In the play Myra finds herself out of work and stuck in London during World War I. She resorts to, um, prostitution to support herself. (IBDB)

* * *

Nerd Alert

White also got a kick from reading accounts (presumably in the Times) about Albert Einstein’s “lecture” at the American Museum of Natural History. According to the New York Times’ Michael Pollak (F.Y.I., Aug. 10, 2012), “an unruly crowd of 4,500 stampeded through the (museum) to see a movie about Einstein’s work…it became known — relatively speaking — as the Einstein riot.”

* * *

Not Ready For My Closeup

The actress Gloria Swanson (1899-1983) was a major star during the silent era who saw her career wane with the advent of the talkies, and then suddenly soar again with her unforgettable portrayal of reclusive silent film star Norma Desmond in the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. In her profile of the actress, Helena Huntington Smith seemed to suggest that Swanson was something of an ugly duckling who managed to transcend her looks through a process of graceful maturation (Abe Birnbaum’s caricature notwithstanding). Some excerpts:

GLORIOUS FACES…**Abe Birnbaum** no doubt drew from images like these for his caricature of **Gloria Swanson**. From left, Swanson in a cloche hat in an undated photo; publicity photo for her 1928 film *Sadie Thompson*; publicity photo for 1929’s *The Trespasser*, Swanson’s first all-talking picture. (Pinterest/pixels.com)

* * *

Good-Bye and Good Luck

Not too many 33 year olds write autobiographies, but then again Robert Graves was no typical 33-year-old. Good-Bye to All That, which Graves later described as “my bitter leave-taking of England,” was reviewed in the Jan. 18 “Recent Books” column. Note in the first paragraph how the reviewer (A.W.S.) suggested that writing about World War I (which ended less than 12 years earlier) was getting better “as the shock of the actual catastrophe wears off.” This is not unlike the writings (and films) about Viet Nam that began to emerge in the 1980s and 90s. An excerpt:

A LOT ON HIS MIND…from left, **Robert Graves** served in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in World War I (photo is probably from 1915); first edition of his autobiography *Good-Bye to All That,* which he published at age 33; Graves in 1935. (Oxford U/Wikipedia/fundaciorobertgraves.org)

* * *

From Our Advertisers

We begin with this elegant ad for a new art deco beauty salon at the Abraham & Straus department store on Fulton Street in Brooklyn…

…for reference, a photo of salon, from 1930…

…the Jan. 18 issue contained a slew of ads enticing New Yorkers to flee the winter and head south — smartly attired, of course — like the couple in the upper right hand corner who look fashionably disinterested as they head out for some “playtime” in Havana (love the man’s combo black tie and bucket hat)…

…and you have to hand it to the folks at Sterling, who put the chic into high-powered boat engines…

…this has to be one of the very few times, perhaps the only time, that a toilet seat was advertised in the New Yorker…note how the folks at the Church company played on consumers’ social anxieties, proffering the suggestion that an old toilet seat might be the one thing that lingers in the memories of your houseguests…

…of course a lot of people eased their anxieties by lighting up, something they didn’t have to worry about because they were told it was actually good for their health (the manufacturers of Old Golds, for example, claimed their cigarettes created a “smoke screen” that kept away colds and other “throat dangers”). Not to be left behind, the makers of Lucky Strikes claimed their “toasting” process removed “dangerous irritants”…