← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
How New York Arose from the Sea
00:21:43
South Street Seaport Museum president Capt. Jonathan Boulware and director of collections and exhibitions Martina Caruso preview “Maritime City.”
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WNYC Studios Announcer
WNYC Studios is supported by Carnegie hall, which presents the American Composers Orchestra featuring works by Alice Coltrane and Tonya Leon and premieres by Edmar Castaneda, Clarice Assad and more. March 10. Tickets@carnegiehall.org Listener Supported WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Coming up later on the show, we'll take a look at the streaming service Spotify and how it has affected both how we consume music and how artists make it. Liz Pelly is the author of Mood, the Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist. She joins us. Plus, this Saturday night, the Brooklyn Public Library's main branch is going to be open until 2am you heard that right. We'll learn about some of the events that will be happening like music and dance talks and poetry and psychotherapy and clothes mending and a man recreating the sounds of birds. Lots of stuff happening at the Brooklyn Public Library. That is happening in about an hour. But coming up now, we're going to learn about New York's maritime history. Amid the daily hustle of living in New York York City, it's easy to forget that we are surrounded by water and that geography has played a key role in how the city developed. A new exhibition at the South Street Seaport Museum tells the story of how New York became a hub for the exchange of goods, ideas, languages and cultures. It's called Maritime City. Throughout the extensive three floor exhibition, there are 540 objects detailing new York City's rich history as a seaport, including a 22 foot long 1935 built model of the retired ocean liner Queen Mary, a wheel from the French liner SS Normandy, and pieces from famous maritime painters such as James Edward Buttersworth, Antonio Jacobson and Gordon Grant. It starts next Wednesday, March 12th. And joining us now for a preview of Maritime City is South Street Seaport Museum President Captain Jonathan Bulbar. Hi Captain Jonathan Good day.
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Captain Jonathan Bulwar
Thank you for having us.
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Alison Stewart
Also joining us is South Street Seaport Museum's director of collections and exhibitions, Martina Caruso. Hi Martina.
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Martina Caruso
Hi. Thank you for having us.
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Alison Stewart
So Jonathan, this is an extensive three floor exhibition. Why was this much space needed to tell New York's maritime history?
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Captain Jonathan Bulwar
That's a great way to put that question. I think it's worthwhile putting it into some context. We are, you know, the premise here at the core of this is is New York is a maritime city. We all know that it was but it still is. And I think that shows up practically. It shows up financially, it shows up culturally. And so when we think about the. The archetypal truths about New York, when we think about the city that never sleeps, when we think about the concepts of sort of ambition that this is the city of, for many people, final destination, the goal. It's known around the world as an international and global city. All of that is rooted in the core founding concepts of the city under Dutch New Amsterdam. It continues to be the case as a shipping port. But all of These things, including 800 languages and dialects spoken in New York City today, the most in the world ever, all of these are fundamentally stories that have to do with New York's connection to the water and via the water to the rest of the world.
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Interviewer
So, Martina.
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Martina Caruso
Yes.
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Interviewer
How did you organize all these different aspects of New York City's maritime history?
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Martina Caruso
Yes, well, I have a great luck to work with an incredible art collection and archives. The museum start collecting in 1967 when we open and never stopped and collect all kinds of things from beautiful fine arts painting, as you mentioned, to really quirky object, maritime object, that they're related to different trades that connect us to different part of the world, to China, to Africa, to Europe. We have incredible photograph, incredible documentary materials that allow us to tell this story.
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Interviewer
I understand, Jonathan, that the building itself is an artifact. Could you tell us more?
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Captain Jonathan Bulwar
Yeah. The building is an 1868 metals warehouse. A.A. thompson & Co. Was the building. But actually more important than the building itself is the building's context, which is the South Street Seaport Historic District. And it's what New Yorkers know as the South Street Seaport, which sort of suggests that this was the port, but it's what's left of the port. And you know, again, sort of the city and the port are the same thing. The city exists because there was a water's edge that, yes, was here on the east river of Manhattan, but it was also up to Corlear's Hook and around into the north river. And in Brooklyn and Staten island, it was a watery city from the beginning. So within the district, which is the 10 city blocks of preserved market architecture, mercantile warehouse architecture from the early to mid 19th century, there are a number of precious buildings, particularly Schermerhorn Row, which is arguably the most important extant historic building to the story of the port of New York. And this one, this building is a little bit of an also ran right. It's not in and of itself a particularly special building. Other than that it is architecturally beautiful 1868, a little later. But the thing that was amazing about the lead up to this exhibition is that the building had basically been almost entirely unmodified from 1868. It was an unrestored building. And so we were able to enter with Bayer Blender Bell. The celebrated preservation architects do a very light touch to bring the building forth while also bringing it up to code, making it accessible, making it safe for artifacts.
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Interviewer
We're discussing a new exhibition at the South Street Seaport Museum highlighting New York City's history as a seaport. It's titled Maritime History. It opens next Wednesday, March 12th. I'm speaking with Captain Jonathan Bulwar, President of the South Street Seaport Museum, and Martina Caruso, director of museum collections and exhibitions. Let's talk about New York City's origin story a bit. Before European settlers, Martina, the Lenape created trade routes connecting Manahatta to the sea. What do we know about how the Lenape used waterways in New York?
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Martina Caruso
Sure, I think what we know is what we tell in the museum exhibition and what you can learn from current Lenape people and Chinooka people and all indigenous people in the region. So Lenape people were fishermen, were hunting people. They used the resources, the nature to really make their live look as you could guess, everyone would have done in a beautiful natural harbor and collection of rivers and lakes and natural resources.
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Interviewer
How have you collaborated with indigenous people on this show?
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Martina Caruso
So for this current exhibition, we collected contemporary art piece by a Shinnake Nation contemporary artist. His name is Jeremy Dennis. It's an up and coming photographer. So we worked with him in the past for other temporary exhibitions on our pier related to the water edge. And then we work with him to collect a few more of his pieces. And also we had an important gift from the Lenape Ramapo. We got gifted by them a land and water acknowledgement, which is slightly different than many other institutions do in the city. We have a land and water acknowledgement because the south street seaport, it is actually standing on man made land. We're walking on the thresh of the 19th century, for lack of a better word. So actually our building, our campus, our piers, our ships, everything below Water street is actually on water technically from the original Lenape inhabitants of the island. So that is a really powerful and really important piece for us. That is right in the vestibule at the entrance of the museum.
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Interviewer
We had historian Russell Shorto on the show yesterday for an hour discussing the history of Manhattan. His book is called Taking Manhattan and sort of the Battle between the Dutch and the English for control of the island. Jonathan, when we talk about that, we're talking about the kind of goods that were available at the time. Can you tell us what kind of goods became popular to trade in the 1600s?
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Captain Jonathan Bulwar
Well, first of all, you had the best with. You had Russell Shorto. And in fact, we have him coming to our museum on March 10 to discuss his book. So for your listeners, that is available on our website, seaportmuseum.org I'm not your expert for 16th century commerce, but what I will say I'm going to just bring us forward a little bit in time to do this is that the way that the city that we know emerged as a mercantile center started with geographic advantage. The New York harbor was deep. It was protected from the North Atlantic gales, and it had already an inroad via the north river pretty well inland. And that's even before the Erie Canal and the barge canal that would turn New York from an advantageous position to a completely dominant position from the standpoint of a mercantile port. One of my favorite parts of our show that is up right now is a pair of artifacts that actually illuminate some of these trade good things. So the artifact is a Chinese bowl from 1820, and then a painting that represents Canton, the port of Canton, which was the first port open to the west and the United States, a young United States, was a trading partner to that. What I like about these paired artifacts, and they're on two different floors within the show, is that Canton opened and then a while later, around when Schermerhorn Row was built, this. This bowl was manufactured and imported to New York. We know that much. We don't know for sure that it landed on the museum's Pier 16. We don't know that it was stored within Schermerhorn Row, but we don't know that it's not true. And so we have these two artifacts that in my romantic imagination connect a 200 years ago moment in New York City where trade with Asia was beginning. And Skerrim Horn Row itself was built as a sort of opportunistic real estate hustle to take advantage of the warehousing that would be necessary with the burgeoning China trade. And so this is the material culture of that story, that moment in time. And so those are my favorites.
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Alison Stewart
Martina, in the show you have this item called Sailor's Valentines, which are these little boxes of seashells. What's the tradition behind them?
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Martina Caruso
Yeah, it's. They're a beautiful object. And the funny thing that despite their title Sailor Valentines, they have actually no connection with Valentines Day or February 14th. Those are souvenir that were made by women in the Barbados and in the West Indies and they were sold to mariners in local souvenir shops. There was this false narrative that seafarers somehow crafted these pieces on long voyages. And this tradition, this legend went on until the 1960s until actually someone restoring those pieces found in early 1800 newspaper clipping that tell that story of these women making those beautiful objects in this island and sell them to mariners. They were completely different and dressed differently. Long story short, we know now and we have more documentation. We have images of these Caribbean islands where you see those women making those pieces. So they're really powerful in many ways. And also they re elevate the role of women in maritime context that sometimes is not really always up there in the mind.
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Interviewer
Jonathan, the show you have blacksmithing tools.
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Alison Stewart
That belong to a free black blacksmith. Could you tell us a little bit.
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Interviewer
About who he was and how these.
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Alison Stewart
Tools fit in to the context of.
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Interviewer
New York City's maritime history?
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Captain Jonathan Bulwar
Well, I'm going to actually turn it over to Martina for the objects and then I'll. And then I'll plug it in on the.
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Martina Caruso
On the context for sure. I think what is powerful of this object and many other tools is that they're often not signed. Right. So tools are usually. We know a little bit about the people that maybe own them, but it is really rare. And with the many millions of metal workers and carpenter and shipwright and other craft people, they shape New York over century. They're mostly anonymous. These objects are particular because luckily we know on them. It was this gentleman was. His name was Simon Douglas. He was enslaved in South Carolina, but then freed himself and joined the Union army during the American Civil War. After the war, he settled in New Jersey and he made these tools and he was really famous to made and use these blacksmith tools that they helped in construction of vessels and different kind of other trades. The story that it's really particular is that near the end of his life when he was a centenarian, he was rediscover in newspaper and he was noted as one of the first black men that actually cast a vote in his town, Englewood in New Jersey.
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Interviewer
And Jonathan, you wanted to tie it. You wanted to tie that into the maritime history.
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Captain Jonathan Bulwar
Well, I think that. And I'll come back to. To the subject matter, but the. There is a. There's a sense, I think sometimes whether it's maritime museums generally or this Museum, specifically, that it's got to do with boats. And it doesn't really. I mean, only in the sense that New York was built by maritime trade. So in New York, maritime history is New York history. We are a museum primarily of New York. And yes, it's viewed through a maritime lens, but it's actually the biggest and clearest lens one can use to consider New York. There is a direct and literal connection from south street to Wall Street. There is a direct connection from south street to the Broadway to Fifth Avenue to all of the boroughs. Right. So that every story can be traced back to this place. But I think it's also common for people to associate maritime museums with yachting or with the business of trade that was populated primarily by certain demographics of people. But the practical reality is the maritime business was everybody, Right? As Martina was saying earlier, it was the Lenape who were here before, but also collaborated with and had treaties with the Dutch who were interacting on the waterways and guiding crews that would be in the ships that we have as part of our collection here. The waiver tree out on Pier 16, for example, that was an English flag ship that called here at New York during the 19th century. But the crew would have been made up of Western Europeans and Australians and Poles and free blacks and native people and Polynesians. There'd be a multilingual polyglot crew. And so when we think about telling the stories of New York as a maritime city, it has to be a story that reflects all of those people. And as I sit to you, I'm sitting here in my office within Scurmerhorn Row, within that block and just downtown from us on Wall street was a slave market. Everybody knows about that. Just uptown from us on Pec Slip was a slave market. Less well known. The stories of ship owners and enslavement and trafficking of humans. The addresses, the physical addresses shown in history are all within a biscuit toss of where I am right now. Beaver Street, Front Street, Maiden Lane, et cetera. So having Tools of a Free Black Blacksmith as a part of a show is an inclusion that is deliberate, but it's also part of the kaleidoscopic view of what is a real sort of essentially New York story.
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Alison Stewart
We got a text from a very invested listener who's asked, and you can hopefully, you can talk about it or not. Can they talk about Captain Kidd who lived at 47 Wall street, round the cor me across from the other Pirates building at 40 Wall Street?
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Martina Caruso
We could talk about it. The listener can come to our sinister secret Walking tour. The museum on top of the exhibition and sailing opportunity does a lot of walking tour. And one of our most popular is about the sinister secret of the neighborhood in Lower Manapton. And I don't want to spoil it. So I think this person should really come following one of our walking tour.
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Alison Stewart
Well put. My guests are Captain Jonathan Bolwar, president of the South Street Seaport Museum and Martina Caruso, director of the museum collections and exhibitions. We're talking about a new exhibition at the museum. It's called Maritime City. It opens next Wednesday, March 12th. I want to talk a little bit about the RMS Queen Mary. In the show there's this 22 foot builder model of the royal mail ship Queen Mary. It's been restored, it's been installed in the museum. Martina, tell us a little bit about it.
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Martina Caruso
Sure. What is intriguing is Queen Mary is a British ship, but it has an international history. Right. But New York can sort of claim it in many way. Between 36 and 67, her primary route was England to New York. And the many passengers and crews, the crew member that were on board the ship have all kinds of background and became a really regular site in the west side piers of Manhattan. So it is a really powerful object. It's one of the only ones still around in the world and is a builder model, which means that it was built in 1935 right. Together with the ship at the same time. And the builder of the model used the same drawing of the builder of the actual ship. So it is 1 to 48 scale model. It is so big that to be able to put it inside the building, we have to open windows and crane it in with a Crane on the third floor. We have actually a program coming up on March 19th in which we're going to talk a lot about where the model used to be before coming back home at the Seaport Museum. She was on loan on board the actual ship in Long Beach. So that will be a fun one. And if you come to see the exhibition, you'll see that there's different iPads and context around it. There's images to see, bits and parts of the history of the model and the ship itself.
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Interviewer
I've been hearing about all of these amazing images and of things that are in the exhibition. Jonathan, what is something from the exhibition that you would like people to take an extra five minutes in front of?
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Captain Jonathan Bulwar
Oh, that's a tough one. I mean, I already spilled the beans with my favorite pairing from Canton and the China Bowl. I mean, I'm going to go to Queen Mary it's kind of our ruby slippers. This is a 22 foot model. It's stunning, but it's got a particular way of looking at it that is truly stunning. We hear gasps as we're sort of showing people the previews of the show. But I also think it's one of those things that makes the story so much bigger and in many people's cases so much more personal. As Martina just said, there is a period of time during which Queen Mary was regularly crossing the Atlantic from Europe to the US Many, many New Yorkers will have grandparents or great grandparents who came to New York in the first instance on the Queen Mary or maybe on the Queen Elizabeth, her sister. But it also points to this larger story of, you know, of immigration. And so some of these things come become very personal very quickly. Another example is we have the lightship Ambrose. And it's too long of a story to tell right now, but I will. The teaser is if you have a relative that came into New York harbor between 1908 and 1934, we have the vessel that was the first thing that they saw and that during the period of quotas, immigration quotas in the 20s, was the actual moment when their family sort of got the possibility of being American.
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Interviewer
What about for you, Martina, something you would like people to spend just a few minutes extra with?
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Martina Caruso
I think I have a passion for photography and this museum has an incredible glass plate connection. So, you know, early photography is kind of cumbersome. You have to bring along with you large cameras and glass plates and chemicals. It was really complicated and is something that a lot of people might forgot. Today, we know with Mars phone or digital camera, it's really fast to snap a photo and go away. Those we have these large glass plate negatives. They are backlit from the back and you go close to them and you can really see a snapshot of early 19th century, early 20th century New York. There's a really powerful one of a tramway on board the Brooklyn Bridge, which again, not a lot of people knows or remember that the Brooklyn Bridge was not available only to carriages and vehicle, but there was a tramway on it. And the amount of people that come and see it and stumble across, it's like, wait, there's a tramway there. It's just one of those tiny secrets that you are able to admire if you take a moment and look at these backlit images.
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Interviewer
Maritime City opens next Wednesday, March 12th at the South Street Seaport Museum. I've been speaking with South Street Seaport Museum President Captain Jonathan Bower. A museum director of collections and exhibitions, Martina Caruso. Thank you so much for sharing this exhibit with us.
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Captain Jonathan Bulwar
Thank you for having us.
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Martina Caruso
Thank you.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
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