A Landmarks hearing was held on July 19, 2016

by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Committee (LPC) to determine if the Empire State Dairy complex (5 buildings at 2840-48 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn) and its two Arts and Crafts tile murals would be landmarked or thrown open to development. The LPC and the current administration has acted in pro-development ways in the past, and the East New York section of Brooklyn, where the Empire State Dairy buildings reside, had just been rezoned to make it easier to "develop" the area.

The first speaker was the attorney for the owners of the building. I was told that she was also once an LPC commissioner. The attorney asked that one building, built in 1907, be removed from landmark consideration because it was architecturally unworthy.

The building that the owners' attorney wants to remove from landmark consideration.  This picture post card shows the southwest corner of Atlantic and Schenck Avenues, with Schenck on the right hand side of this view. The postcard was used as part of “The East New York Project” (http://www.tapeshare.com) started by Riccardo Gomes. (Courtesy of the Brian Merlis archives, http://www.brooklynpix.com)

She then asked that the hearing be continued to September so that an environmental report could be completed on the need to clean up a leaking, underground 5000 gallon oil tank on the property. After taking testimony from everyone, a continuance to September 13 was granted.

The two American Encaustic Tiling Company murals separated by three window bays on the Atlantic Avenue side of the building. In about 1924 the Borden Dairy Company bought the building and changed the name above the murals. (Color photos courtesy of Michael Padwee unless otherwise noted)

Community members and preservationists were also allowed to give testimony for the record. Zulmilena Then, the founder of "Preserve East New York", spoke on behalf of the needs of the East New York Community and against the loss of East New York's architectural history. She and Susan Tunick, the founder of "Friends of Terra Cotta" (FOTC), were dressed in costumes they used for a pop-up postcard signing a few weeks before at an Historic Districts Council meeting. 

Zulmilena Then with her cardboard mural sign-board and Susan Tunick with her cow mask at the pop-up postcard signing.

Susan Tunick and FOTC organized a postcard campaign in favor of landmarking the complex and sent hundreds of postcards to the Commission over the past few months. In fact, there is still time to send a postcard or letter to:

Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
One Centre Street, 9th Floor
New York, New York 10007 
U.S.A.

Obverse and Reverse of Empire State Dairy postcard campaign. Some FOTC postcards are still available. If your organization can use 10 or more, please contact me through the comments section below. (Courtesy of FOTC)

Susan Tunick spoke in favor of landmarking and read a statement from Andrew Dolkart, Professor of Historic Preservation, Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, who asked that the LPC not forget that the buildings, in and of themselves, were historically worthy for landmark designation. The buildings were architecturally representative of the type of manufacturing taking place in the area a century ago. They should be protected, restored and reused and remain as part of the East New York community.

In an email, Professor Dolkart said he wanted to emphasize the importance of the buildings in his testimony. The buildings need to be saved because they are our architectural history along with the murals that are New York's irreplaceable art history. They are integral parts of each other and should be kept together.

I spoke and two representatives from the "Historic Districts Council", Kelly Carroll and Barbara Zay, also gave their support.

The original 1913 architechtural drawings of the Empire State Dairy buildings. The 1907 building (top, right) is the building the owners wish to separate from the landmark designation. The top (Atlantic Avenue elevation) drawing shows the two murals, two "capped towers" above the murals, and a clock tower, now missing. Also the three doors/loading bays under the windows have been cemented over. The bottom drawing is the Barbey Street elevation. (Permission to publish the drawings given by Donald Marchese, owner of the Royal Plastic Company)

The two tile murals on the blog masthead are site-specific to the building, and are illustrated on the 1913 architectural drawings. These were made under the direction of Leon Solon, the Art Director of the American Encaustic Tiling Company. The murals are probably the largest made by this company that are still existing since the entire tiled facade of the AET building/showrooms at 16 East 41st Street, Manhattan was stripped of Leon Solon's art tiles in 2014.

16 East 41st Street in 2014 after its renovation. The art tiles were stripped off and trashed so that the building wouldn't be designated a landmark. (Courtesy of Google Maps)

This was only a portion of the 1922 tiled facade. In 1993 it had been partially stripped of its first floor tiling to make room for the windowed storefront of a pizzeria. At that time the LPC declined to designate the building a landmark.

A full news report about this hearing and testimony can be accessed at http://newyorkyimby.com/2016/07/landmarks-holds-hearings-on-designation-of-midtown-east-buildings-empire-state-dairy.html.

Many people from across the country, as well as from other countries deserve to be thanked for sending letters of support and postcards to the LPC. Some of those were members of the Tile Heritage Foundation, which has become a major voice in the preservation of existing installations of rare and unusual ceramic surfaces, the American Art Pottery Association, the Mosaic Artists of Michigan,  and Hans van Lemmen, President, Penny Beckett, Chairperson, Lesley Durbin, Conservation Advisor, and other members of the British Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society.

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Movie Palaces, Part 1: Loew's Valencia Theatre

Recently, we went on two tours of 1920s movie palaces in New York City. The first was a church-sponsored tour of the Loew’s Valencia Theatre in Jamaica, Queens, and the second was a tour of the Loew’s 175th Street Theatre in Manhattan sponsored by the Historic Districts Council. Both tours were interesting and informative and allowed people like myself to take photos of usually off-limits areas. Our grateful thanks to the Tabernacle of Prayer Church, the United Palace Cathedral, Mike Feitelson and the United Palace Theatre, and the Historic Districts Council.


In the middle of a block on Jamaica Avenue, near 165th Street, in Queens, hemmed in by other buildings, is a small, but amazing building facade. Built in 1929, designed by the architect John Eberson, the Loew’s Valencia Theatre, one a of a few “movie palaces” in the New York Metropolitan area, still exists in all its glory. The polychrome terra cotta and brick facade leads through a terra cotta-and-tile-decorated lobby into the much-larger theater section of the building.

(Color photos courtesy of Michael Padwee, unless otherwise noted)

For many years an elevated train ran along Jamaica Avenue, and the top of this facade could only be seen clearly from the 168th Street train station.

Photo taken in 1956 by Frank Pfuhler at the 168th Street Station of the BMT Nassau Street/Jamaica Line, now demolished; http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?75581. 

Even though dingy, the blues and reds of the terra cotta carvings snap out at the passersby.

“Marcus Loew [...1870 –1927] was an American business magnate and a pioneer of the motion picture industry who formed Loews Theatres and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Loew)

(MGM). ...By 1913, Loew managed several theatres in New York City… . ...In 1920, Loew purchased Metro Pictures Corporation. A few years later, he acquired a controlling interest in the financially troubled Goldwyn Picture Corporation… . Loew [needed someone to manage his Los Angeles companies and] recalled meeting a film producer named Louis B. Mayer and [hired Mayer and...] his Chief of Production, a former Universal Pictures executive, Irving Thalberg. ...Loew, Mayer, and Thalberg set about to create the world's premier film studio…, [MGM].”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Loew) 

The design of the Valencia Theatre followed the classic design of an early twentieth-century movie palace.

The exterior ticket booth.

“Among [the movie palace’s] most distinguishing characteristics were its numerous appointments, lavish decorations, and enormous size.  ...All the iconographic features of the exterior of the movie palace were designed to make the front of the theater a ‘show window’ that invited the customer to attend the performance. The most common type of entrance consisted of a broad unobstructed recessed exterior vestibule or ticket lobby which was either open in the front or enclosed behind double glass doors.

Looking into the front lobby from the interior ticket booth vestibule.

The interior ticket booth.

The back of the exterior ticket booth.

“[...This] vestibule had to provide ‘a generous and alluring glimpse of the interior' of the theater. ...The exterior and interior of the theater were lavishly decorated in a romantic but highly eclectic historic mode to distinguish it from the other buildings around it and to give it the stamp of legitimacy. With the help of materials like terra cotta and plaster, architects combined their own improvisations with exact reproductions of entire renowned buildings or parts of buildings to achieve their effects.”  (Charlotte Herzog, “The Movie Palace and the Theatrical Sources of its Architectural Style”, Cinema Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2, Spring, 1981)

MGM lions decorate the ticket booth vestibule.

MGM lions and the coffered ceiling.

John Eberson (1875-1954), the architect of the Valencia, was born in Cernauti, Bukovina in Romania. He left this

(http://historicdetroit.org/architect/john-eberson/)

rural region to attend high school in Dresden, Germany and then moved to Vienna, Austria to study at the university in the vibrant period at the end of the nineteenth century when design innovation and fantastic theatricality were part of the city's culture. Eberson emigrated to the United States in 1901… .” (http://blog.timothypflueger.com/category/john-eberson/)  The “...theaters Eberson designed during the nineteen-teens were in the conventional style of the era. However, his Wichita Orpheum and Houston Majestic of 1922-1923 started a revolution as the first ‘atmospheric theatres’. ‘Atmospheric theaters’ were in many ways the first act of the show. They sought to pull the audience from the quotidian to a suspension of disbelief and state of impressionability. On the exterior, they resembled fantastic castles or Moorish palaces. Their interiors often suggested outdoor settlings such as gardens or grottoes.”  (http://www.victoriansecrets.net/eberson.html) “While other theater architects concentrated on creating evermore lavish interiors for their buildings, Eberson set about creating lavish exterior spaces within the walls of his theaters.

Auditorium photos.

“Instead of resembling oversized palace ballrooms, Eberson's auditoria were gardens-the interior walls like building exteriors with windows, balconies and sections of red tile roof all lavishly set with statuary and flower urns. Atop the garden walls were full sized artificial trees and vines which trailed down the facades.

“...The ceiling of an atmospheric theater was an unornamented plaster dome painted dark blue. Tiny electric lights arranged in constellation clusters twinkled through this finite ‘sky’* and electric projectors concealed behind pavilions and fountains created, with startling realism, the effect of floating clouds.” (Craig Morrison, “From Nickelodeon to Picture Palace and Back”, Design Quarterly, No. 93, Film Spaces (1974), pp. 13,15; http://www.jstor.org/stable/4090905) In a 1926 Tampa Tribune interview, Eberson explained how he got the idea for his “atmospheric theatres”. “I have been wintering in Florida for the past several years, and it is from this state that I got the atmospheric idea. I was impressed with the colorful scenes that greeted me at Miami, Palm Beach and Tampa. Visions of Italian gardens, Spanish patios, Persian shrines and French formal gardens flashed through my mind, and at once I directed my energies to carrying out these ideas.” (Christopher Gray, “ Loew’s Paradise Is Once Again Worthy of Its Name”, The New York Times, November 19, 2006; http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/realestate/19scap.html?_r=0)    


*[This “sky” still twinkles in the Valencia/Tabernacle!]

The front lobby.

The back lobby.

The Depression effectively ended Eberson’s “atmospheric theatre” designs, but he changed with the times. “By the time that the building climate improved in late 1935-1936, Eberson had fully metamorphized [sic] into the Fred Astaire of theatre design. His new ‘Classical Moderne’ style incorporated such art deco elements as streamlining, rounded corners, and sweeping marquees. His designs became ‘cool, restrained, and practically unadorned’, with ‘speed stripes’ and hard edges that led the eye to follow their lines. Instead of ceilings with projected clouds, his interiors featured sumptuous use of patterned color, with a bold geometrically patterned screen curtain as the individual hallmark of each theatre.” (http://www.victoriansecrets.net/eberson.html)   

Eberson’s Penn Theatre, Washington, DC. (Photo courtesy of “The Victorian Secrets of Washington, DC”; http://www.victoriansecrets.net/0)

Although I do not know which terra cotta company made the polychrome exterior, I have been able to determine which tile company made the art tiles that adorn the walls, lobby fountain and floors of the Valencia. A number of the tiles on the walls are pictured in Norman Karlson’s Encyclopedia of American Art Tiles. 

Tiles in the front lobby.

Tiles in the back lobby.

The company that made the tiles was the American Encaustic Tiling Company, which had factories in Zanesville, Ohio, Los Angeles, and Perth Amboy, New Jersey. 

American Encaustic Tiling Company, picture post card canceled in 1912.

It was the largest American tile company just before the Depression.

The wall of the lobby to the Men’s Room. I have one of the 6” square ship tiles in my collection.

There was one tiled fountain and pool in the back lobby, 

but there may also have been other, smaller tiled fountains in the back lobby and on the floor with the Men’s and Women’s rooms. These floors have tiled areas where there are now more modern fountains, or places where there could have once been a fountain or a food concession.

Floor tiles in the back lobby.

Tiles in the balcony lobby.

There is/was another “atmospheric” theatre built in Flushing, Queens, the RKO Keith-Albee Theatre, designed by Thomas Lamb in 1928, which contained thousands of Batchelder tiles and Batchelder-tiled fountains. It has lain deserted, and has been vandalized for decades, even after it was landmarked in the 1980s, then de-landmarked illegally so it could be developed. Compare the Loews Valencia as seen above with the Flushing RKO Keith’s Theatre photos:  http://www.wideimaging.com/Queens/Landmarks-Preservation/Flushing-RKO-Keiths-Theatre/8166185_DHZQqx#!i=466771971&k=gzKVjMh.

*****

I would like to thank the Tabernacle of Prayer Church, 165-11 Jamaica Avenue, Queens for preserving the exterior and interior of this historic building, and then for opening their church for architectural tours. Sister Forbes and her volunteers were very helpful and knowledgeable about the building’s history. A large thanks also goes to the Scouting NY blog which first brought attention to the Valencia Theatre and to the role of the Tabernacle of Prayer Church in the preservation of the building. It is partially because of the publicity generated by Scouting NY that the Church opened its doors to these tours.

Thanks to David Pirmann and his incredible website, NYCSubway.org, for permission to use Frank Pfuhler’s photo of the 168th Street El station from 1956. Sadly, Mr. Pfuhler died recently. And, thanks to Susan Tunick of Friends of Terra Cotta and to the Tile Heritage Foundation for their help.

*****

UPDATE to "ERNEST BATCHELDER IN MANHATTAN"

In October I posted an article about four buildings in Manhattan that had halls and lobbys covered with tiles made by the Arts and Crafts tilemaker/designer Ernest Batchelder. (http://tilesinnewyork.blogspot.com/2013/10/ernest-batchelder-in-manhattan.html) Two of those buildings were designed by the architect Emery Roth. The Real Estate section of the 26 Jan. 2014 New York Times had an article about Emery Roth's penthouse at 210 West 101st Street, Manhattan that was for rent (over $15,000/month!). Photos showed the apartment's tiled entrance lobby: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/realestate/emery-roth-lived-here.html?_r=0. One of the rental websites had other photos including one of the fireplace: http://www.blocksy.com/nyc/rental/9304610-210-west-101st-street-ph11#/0.