50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Grace Church Concert

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The first worship service at Grace Church was held on Sunday, December 21, 1808 in a modest building at the corner of Broadway and Rector Street, some two miles south of where the church sits today. That humble site is where the Empire State building stands today.

New York City was expanding northward, and in 1843 a site was chosen and property purchased in what was then an apple orchard owned by Henry Brevoort, Jr. at Broadway between Tenth and Eleventh Streets. The commission to design the church was given to , James Renwick, Jr., a civil engineer who had never built anything so grand. His largest previous work had been a part of the Croton Reservoir at 42nd Street.

The rector, Thomas House Taylor, toured Europe extensively looking at church designs around the continent. He returned energized and adamant that the new church would be in the Gothic style. Renwick poured himself into the project, sketching a Gothic design mainly from books and collected anecdotes. The building was completed in 1846, and consecrated on March 7th of the same year

Due to significant financial strain, the new church was far less ornate than what stands today. The windows were of lightly tinted glass and the steeple was built of wood rather than marble. The marble steeple was eventually added in 1883.

Carriage House

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At the Phantasmagoria photo shoot in Sanford, the carriage house behind the historic home was turned into a dusty attic space filled with props from past shows. Thin lace hing fro the rafters like spider webs and draped itself over an antique wooden wheel chair.

Each cast member in turn searched the space while the photographer took shots.  Each actor explored the space in their own unique way. Puppets from past performances were hidden among the attic clutter. Punch sat comfortably in his rocking chair while a human skull dominated an end table.

It was a rather hot day and two large fans circulated the air in the room. There is clearly no insulation in this old carriage house structure. Since each photo shoot was over in an instant, I struggled to piece together one performer by taking bits and pieces from multiple performances.

Summer Camp

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Teaching Elite Animation Academy virtual summer camps has lead me to drawing some odd stuff. One issue beginning students have is not knowing what to draw. In a world full of billions and billions of things to draw I find this notion confounding.Many beginning students are caught up in drawing cartoon characters to impress friends and family. I try and break them away from that habit to draw the world around them.

In the foundation drawing class I ask students to first draw their hand while not looking at the page. You can tell when a student looked when a drawing comes back where the line touches where it began. We attack that assignment a few times until I convince them to make an absolute mess.

Then we do the same thing but glance down every time the pencil needs to be re positioned to start a new line.  Each line is a bit meandering since it moves at the same pace as the eye across the object. This idea of visually touching the object takes time and practice to convey.

Then we turn to any object in the room. I chose this rough carved panther head which is an unused book end for my book case. Lines don’t close off shapes and there are dozens of mistakes but there is some very deliberate observation in each line put down. If you add some color, it all pulls together.

Studio in May

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For my Elite Animation Academy virtual Urban Sketching class, I usually ask the students to sketch the room they are in. It is a good lesson in one point perspective and adding objects inside a space. I have been teaching seven days a week all summer, so I have done a few of these studio studies. The first thing I teach is to find a vanishing point and a horizon. Sine we are not outside the horizon isn’t obvious. a clue can be found in the lamp shade against the far wall. The bottom of the shade arcs down meaning it is below the horizon, and the top of the lamp shade arcs up meaning it is above the horizon. The horizon might be the top of the roll top desk, or just below. The vanishing point is above that small stack of books just to the right of THOR.

Since my students usually work much slower than I do, I tend to have time to add paint and push the piece a bit further than just the line drawing. This particular piece started with me blocking in all the foreground elements in a warm yellowish tone. The studio lights were on and the far room lights were not, so they got very different color treatments. The outdoors were painted pure white to start and light versions of outdoors colors were added over the white to keep the outdoors bright.

Like most of my sketches done on location, I had to finish in about 2 hours. When class was over, I closed up the tablet and had to consider it done.

Mackay Elementary School

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I have been teaching virtual drawing classes seven days a week all summer. Each time I teach foundation drawing I like to do a demo in two point perspective by drawing a building. I always encourage the students to draw their own home or a place they go to often. To keep the assignment interesting for myself I always draw a new building from my past using google maps as a reference.

After 1972, I moved to Tenafly, New Jersey and transferred to Mackay Middle School. I remember that in one class I was encouraged to make use of my drawing skills to make political cartoons. I remember drawing Nixon and Kissinger in class. It might seem a bit odd for a 10 to 13 year old to have an interest in producing political cartoons, but I enjoyed interpreting the news of the day. My dad had a subscription to the New York Times and he taught me how to scan the headlines to find the articles I wanted to read. This is a habit that persists to this day.

It is funny that it took many years before I came back around to the interest that I had back in middle school. Though my COVID series has slowed down due to the summer work load, I continue to create illustrations that some might consider political cartoons. I consider them my explorations of the theater of the absurd.

This school and the high school were close enough to the Knickerbocker home so that I walked there and back. I never took a bus to school.

Knickerbocker

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After my mother died when I was ten years old, my father quickly re-married and we moved to 363 Knickerbocker Road Tenafly, New Jersey. It was a Brady Bunch type of situation with two families quickly merging. Sons and daughters in both families were of the marrying age so not every sibling moved into the new house.

One of my older brothers stayed in the basement of our former home in Dumont, New Jersey. That home was rented out and the renters completely demolished the place from what I heard. One of my older step sisters was having a shouting match with her mom the first week we moved in. Shortly after she moved to California. All told, there were ten brother and sisters including myself. I don’t think all ten ever lived in the home together. If I remember right, an older step sister lived inn the attic while my step brother, who was just about my age, and I shared a bunk bed. My younger sister had her own bedroom.

There was another bedroom at the top of the stairs and an older sibling must have been there. I took that bedroom while I was going to the School of Visual Arts in NYC. After commuting to college each day by bus, and working at a mail sorting facility to pay for it, I had a bit of a meltdown and had to leave home. I bought a tent, panniers, a sleeping bag and a bike and started camping in the back yard to test out the tent.

In the middle of winter, I left to bike across the country. My older brother had gotten a job out in Seattle and that became my final destination. This was my way to leave the nest and take flight. It wasn’t an easy flight, but now every choice was my own. If I could make it across the country I could accomplish anything I set my mind to.

SS “Lost” Texts

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The US Secret Service (SS) erased text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, shortly after they were requested by oversight officials investigating the agency’s response to the US Capitol riot, according to a letter given to the House select committee investigating the insurrection and first obtained by CNN.

The National Archives and Records Administration is investigating the “alleged unauthorized deletion” of a large cache of text messages sent by Secret Service officials in the days surrounding the attack. There are only two explanations for the deletions, one is stupidity and the other is malicious intent to hide evidence.

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general, who is charged with overseeing the Secret Service, has criticized the agency’s handling of the matter and said some of the messages were deleted after he requested them in February 2021.

The SS ushered then-Vice President Mike Pence to a secure loading dock beneath Capitol grounds while the Jan. 6 attack was underway. Pence aides have described efforts by his detail to get Pence to leave the Capitol in his motorcade, which Pence refused to do, contending that he wanted to remain in the Capitol until the counting of electoral votes was complete. The vice president’s motorcade retreating from the insurrection would have been seen world wide as a symbol of defeat. Was the SS complicit in wanting to achieve that defeat?

The Homeland Security Department’s watchdog has opened an investigation into the loss of Secret Service text messages. The January 6 committee is seeking missing text messages from 24 Secret Service employees related to Jan. 5 and the day of the Capitol attack. The committee has subpoenaed the texts for clues to what happened that day, including reports of then-President Donald Trump being blocked by agents from accompanying his supporters to the Capitol.

Senator Gary Peters, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called the allegations “concerning” in a statement August 11, 2022. “We need to get to the bottom of whether the Secret Service destroyed federal records or the Department of Homeland Security obstructed oversight. The DHS Inspector General needs these records to do its independent oversight and the public deserves to have a full picture of what occurred on January 6th,” the Michigan Democrat said.

Phantasmagoria Photo Shoot

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I went to the magnificent Sanford home of Phantasmagoria founder and director John DiDonna to sketch photo and video sessions to promote the upcoming season. A black drop screen was set up behind a single stool with multiple lights to get a warm ambient lighting effect.

By the time I arrived all the actors were in costume and in make up. They were gathered in the kitchen and dining room waiting for their turn to perform solo for quick character videos. John DiDonna stood behind the iPhone camera and he would count slowly to 15 for each video performance. Each character would slowly notice the camera and then gesture towards it in a menacing or seductive way.

John is always so proud of his performers. He told me about how he met one actress when he was performing in Shakespeare‘s King Lear. There were only 3 rolls for women, so this actress performed as a male page and did so magnificently. Another newer member of the cast had just graduated from Julliard.

I was a bit nerve wracked since I knew I only had 15 seconds to complete any given performer. I asked Dion Leonhard DiDonna how many more performers needed videos shot. Time was flying by. The thought was that my question might mean I was growing bored, but quite the opposite was the case, I was desperate for enough time to finish the sketch.

A commotion broke out in the kitchen among the cast. A mouse had been spotted and there were excited squeals as they tried to corner it and capture it. One actor explained to another about how a mouse can squeeze through the tiniest of crevices. The Phantasmagoria cast tell the most horrific of Victorian horror stories. On this day the tiniest of demons squeezed in and caused chaos.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: St Peters – St Paul’s of

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In September 1836, Irish immigrant, Cornelius Heeney donated a portion of his land for the site of a new Catholic church that had been proposed for residents living on the southwest side of Fulton Street. When the new St. Paul’s Church was built, it occupied a large field on the corner of Heeney’s farm, now the corner of Congress and Court Streets.

At 234 Congress St, Brooklyn, N.Y., much of St. Paul’s church at Court and Congress Streets was designed and built about 1838 by Gamaliel King, one of the architects of Brooklyn Borough Hall, allowing the claim that this church is the oldest Catholic church in continuous use in Brooklyn. Dedication of the completed edifice took place on January 21, 1838, with the Bishop of the Diocese of New York, John DuBois, presiding. Less then ten years later, on May 3, 1848, Heeney passed away. His body was buried in the back garden of the church.

Over the years, there have been so many additions and renovations that very little remains of King’s original design. The steeple was added in the 1860’s, and other enlargements were made. The church fronts on Court Street, the chapel and former rectory on Congress Street. For a while, the parish had three names: St. Peter (from the church on Hicks Street that is now a condo), Our Lady of Pilar, and St. Paul. The signs now name it as the parish of St. Peter and St. Agnes, with services alternating between the two church buildings.

 

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Church of the Ascension

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The Church of the Ascension was incorporated as a Protestant Episcopal parish of the Diocese of New York on October 1, 1827. On April 15, 1828 the cornerstone for the new church was placed in a lot on the north side of Canal Street, just east of Broadway. This first building resembled a Greek temple. in 1839, a fire started in the lumber of a carpenter’s shop at the rear of the Church of the Ascension and smoke and flames appeared during a Sunday service. The church and adjoining Sunday School building were destroyed. The Dutch Reformed congregation at East Ninth Street and Astor Place, east of Broadway, made their church available for the homeless parish.

The new Church of the Ascension, designed by Richard Upjohn, was consecrated by Bishop Onderdonk on November 5, 1841. The parish house designed by McKim, Mead and White took a previously existing building and turned it into a Northern Renaissance-inspired building of yellow brick with bottle-glass windows. President Tyler, a widower, married Julia Gardiner, daughter of David Gardiner, at the Church of the Ascension on June 26, 1844. He was the first U.S. president to marry while in office.

In response to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the rector Donald Bradshaw Aldrich opened the doors of the church 24-hours a day for prayer and meditation, earning the church the name “The Church of the Open Door”. This policy was in effect for decades: about 30,000 people visited the church in the 1960s. Although the doors are not still open around the clock, the stained-glass windows are illuminated at night.

On September 11, 2001, New Yorkers, coated in ash from the buildings’ collapse, trudged uptown past the church. The rector, curate and staff rushed water and paper towels to use as makeshift dust masks out to the front of the church. The church doors were opened and people who were dazed, exhausted and in shock rested and took comfort in the church before heading further on their way uptown to find some way home.

The church became a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Both the church and parish house are part of the Greenwich Village Historic District, designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1969.