Nicolas Tesla was an inventor and engineer. He made several important discoveries including AC current and the Tesla Coil. The unit for measuring magnetic induction is called the tesla in his honor. He did some of his research in New York. He worked with x-rays on Fifth Avenue and mechanical resonance on Houston street. He did his radio wave research on 27th street. He lived at the Waldorf Astoria. He died at the New Yorker Hotel which, ironically, ran on DC current at the time. Tesla's adversary, Thomas Edison was a promoter of DC current and fought something referred to as the War of Current with George Westinghouse who was pushing AC with Tesla. They had a contract which would have made Tesla the world's first billionaire, but he tore it up. He didn't care about money and died penniless, with debts.
I have had a hard time with Tesla. There is so much information about him and very few images. Apparently he didn't like to sit for portraits so this is the picture that appears most often.
I tried working with it because he looks kind of handsome in a period sort of way. But the pose is so awkward, the jacket buttons in a strange way, and I had a horrible time with his hair. This was a few weeks ago when I was exploring drawing. I would spend all day working from this picture. I hated everything I drew. I don't know why I needed to relive the drawing vs. photography polemic at this time in my life but there you have it. Meanwhile, I continued sifting through the information on Tesla, finally coming to the conclusion that he was pretty crazy. He had obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was celibate even though the ladies of the day thought he was quite a catch. He had a deep love of pigeons, especially a white one which he claimed to love like a wife. Personally, I truly dislike pigeons with their stupid faces and ugly beaks. They always seem to have some horrible disfigurement from living in the city, like a missing claw. While I was struggling with Tesla's picture, I would walk the streets and the pigeons would wobble around me, cooing and mocking me. Finally a friend suggested I try a different picture which is how I ended up with the image at the top of the post. I drew in the lines missing from the low res image and added a little color. I like how he looks a little like George Clooney and I love the lines on the high frequency transformer.
I went out last Saturday to hang the pictures of Tesla. The morning light was excellent and the wind was not too strong.
I made a mistake looking for Tesla's South Fifth Avenue laboratory. The address was where West Broadway is today. I put his picture on regular Fifth Avenue. On the bright side, he might have strolled up that way back in the day. And considering a fire destroyed his Fifth Avenue laboratory along with his research on x-rays, he might have preferred a place with better memories.
It was very pretty by 10th Street with all the trees in bloom. I do not think it is so nice on West Broadway.
The lab where Tesla worked on Houston Street is gone, an ugly modern building with a Bank of America is there. Across the street is the Puck building which was there when Tesla's mechanical resonance experiments were disturbing the neighbors.
He had to smash the electromechanical ocillators with a sledgehammer when those experiments got out of control. I guess that didn't help his reputation for madness.
I think that Tesla would have liked all the modern changes to the city.
There is a commemorative plaque to Tesla at the Radio Wave Building which was called the Hotel Gerlach when he lived there. I did not really search out the plaque, but it is visible on the lower left, behind the tattered strapping tape on the pole.
There are NYPD signs promising security cameras along the street.
The Hotel New Yorker has maintained its art deco elegance in spite of its age. Tesla spent his last years here, alone and with little money.
I am sure he would be surprised by the change to Penn Station.
It is usually so busy here. I wonder if that frenetic energy is what drew him here.
Or maybe it was the view.
Perhaps it was from the celebration of the Henry Hudson's arrival in Manhattan 400 years ago that inspired me to imagine the original inhabitants. In the spirit of the celebration, there has been a lot attention to the Mannahatta project which explores what the island looked like before it was developed and built up. The Lene Lenape who lived there were sort of rambling groups rather than tribes living in villages. They wandered from one campsite to another depending on the time of year, living in accord with nature, never taking more than was needed. The women tended the crops and the men hunted. Everything was in balance. The Europeans did not approve, of course, thinking everyone was lacking in the proper entrepreneurial zeal. I remember learning about the Lene Lenape and how they were lazy drunks. I think the woman who taught this had never seen a Native American of any tribe so how would she know anyway. But I am guessing that the original impression of the colonists had filtered down. They did not understand why the men did nothing but hunt, which they considered to be a leisure activity, hence the laziness.
The Lene Lenape were chased west and finally ended up in Kansas and points west, mingling with other tribes. There are really no images of the original inhabitants of Mannahatta. I found this image at the Library of Congress. She was from the area that might have welcomed the Lene Lenape.
It made me feel sad to go through the pictures on the Library of Congress site. The people in the portraits are staring directly into the camera like most pictures from those times. But there is something else in the eyes of the Native Americans. I feel deeply ashamed by our history with the people who were here first. It is hard to meet their gaze.
The night was cloudy and the air was heavy when I went out. I didn't really want to go, but things had dragged out too long. Daylight crept in slowly it was more a lessening of the gloom than an actual dawn.
The wonderful book Gotham by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace was helpful in giving me and idea of where to go. There was even a map of Indian encampments. One was in Dumbo, so I thought that would make a good starting point.
I went to the end of Jay Street near the Con Edison power plant and placed the woman in front of a trendy home furnishing shop. The picture I chose is odd in that the woman sometimes looks as if she is smiling and sometimes as if she is frowning. It was probably my imagination because the light was pretty there, but she seemed to be smiling.
It was as if she liked all the clean lines and the grey tones.
The sun broke through the clouds briefly over the Con Ed plant.
There was a habitation near Battery Park, but I felt it was just too weird for the woman. What would she make of the tourists? According to Gotham, Pearl Street got its name from the piles of oyster shells left behind by the Lene Lenape. I thought it might make an easier transition.
It took me a while to find a place. There were a surprising number a people milling around. There must be some kind of club down by the seaport. It was hard to find a quiet spot without either party goers or security guards or police.
The spot was typical of Wall Street, dark canyons with the muffled hum of air conditioners. In the morning gloom it was even more depressing. I worried she wouldn't like it there. It started to rain.
But when I came back on a sunny day, there was a lot of activity, a small crane was lifting something nearby and she seemed amused by it.
I was planning on placing her near Foley Square where the Lene Lenape would camp by a deep pond. But I was so depressed by Pearl Street that I had to find somewhere else.
So I took her to the Time Landscape on Laguardia Place. It was planted by eco-artist Alan Sonfist and is composed of native plants. It is supposed to look like a scrap of land before human intervention.
It was a little awkward hanging her up as there was an all night cafe across the street. A few people were at the tables outside, the waiters were bored. There was really nothing happening except for me with my ladder hanging art off a street sign. I tried to find a more discreet spot but the only place that worked was right across from the tables.
I liked the way she looked with the poster for the Yinka Shonibare exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and the ghost bike. It was all a little eerie.
Things were quiet here and she seemed serene.
Minetta Street traces the path of Minetta Brook which was buried in the 19th century. I though she would like it here because there is a pretty garden and the street is twisty.
She did not seem to be happy here at all.
She clung to the street sign. It was hard to find a good angle. It looks as if her picture has picked up some grunge.
She appeared to scowl at the American Apparel store.
The last place I chose was Gansevoort Street near the High Line where the Lene Lenape fished and planted. I thought her spirit would enjoy the wild flowers of the park.
I took only one picture in the muted pink dawn light. The High Line was too dark. When I came back, she was gone. I should have put her across the street. Clearly some territorial park employees saw her and took her down. They keep things really tidy on that side of the street and her spirit had flown.
I discovered Lady Deborah Moody while I was searching for something else. She is the only woman to found a colony what is now the United States. As a widow in her forties, she left England America because of her religious beliefs. Arriving in the Massachusetts Bay colony, she hoped to find refuge. Although the townspeople were pleased to have a noblewoman living in their midst, there was soon tension between her and the town elders because of her independent ideas. Deborah Moody believed that baptism should be reserved for adults. She felt that it was an assault on an infant's free will and should be reserved for believing adults. Anabaptists were severely persecuted in Europe where it was considered heresy. It seems that Lady Moody was chagrined to find the narrow minded spirit of the people of Salem. The elders were somewhat shocked to meet a woman who had not only read the scriptures but could debate them about their meaning.
She left Salem before she was banished. She led a group of dissenters to the colony of New Netherland and was granted land in Long Island. Although the Dutch were not fond of Anabaptists, they allowed Lady Moody and her group religious freedom. She named her colony Gravesend after the place in England where she lived with her family.
The town was divided into four quadrants which were subdivided into ten plots and was protected by a 20-foot high palisade. Outside of town were triangular farms known as boweries that radiated out from the wall looking like the spokes from a wheel. In the center of town was the Town Hall. Attendance at monthly meetings was required. The town leaders were elected democratically. Because Lady Moody held substantial real estate (including Coney Island, Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay), she had the right to vote, the first woman in the colonies with this right. She had a profound commitment to religious tolerance. Many groups shunned by other colonies took refuge in Gravesend. The first Quaker meeting in the colonies was held in her house.
She had a little trouble calming down the local Indians. There was a nasty fight where she had to call in help from the Dutch. She finally bought them off with some pelts and trinkets. She pretty much lived happily ever after. She was buried in the Gravesend cemetery under an unmarked grave. There is an old house in Gravesend which is supposed to be where she lived, but there is no real proof. The deepest trace of her passage is the outline of her village which is still present in Brooklyn, skewing the street grid.
The impression I got from everything I read was that Deborah Moody was a very intelligent woman who was honest and clear in her beliefs and unafraid to speak her mind. She suffered a great deal because of her outspokenness. The deputy governer of Salem wrote in warning to the governor of New Amsterdam, "She is a dangerous woman." She also gathered a group of devout followers and many people respected her and sought her counsel including Peter Stuyvesant. The men of her family were educated at Oxford, it seems clear that the women were at least taught to read, write and reason. She lived during a time of great turmoil. The reform movement brought about many new ideas, I think Deborah Moody lived in a privileged and enlightened world. She had a strong influence on her fellows which has filtered down to us.
I went out with Gilles, the painter who took part my the Wish You Were Here project. It was fun to go with another person. Gravesend was so quiet. Things are not usually hopping at 4.30 in the morning but there were no cars, no stragglers. There were a couple of people speaking Russian by the school. When we finished hanging the tags, we went to Coney Island to watch the sunrise. On the beach was a group of women dressed in white, standing in a circle. Gilles said that there was a religious group in West Africa that prays on the beach wearing white to greet the dawn. There was a fit older man jogging wearing a Speedo. The sky slowly lightened and I worried that even on the beach, New York City sunrises are not as good as the sunsets. Then the sun burst out over the Rockaway inlet.
The women in white sang and clapped. The jogger turned his back (you can almost make him out on the left). Someone in the water waved their arms in welcome (black spot to the right of the sun). I am pretty sure someone was skinny dipping behind us. I glimpsed him putting his trunks back on near the jetty. Overall it was a pretty decent sunrise.
The northwest corner of Gravesend is called Lady Moody Square. The village angles away from Avenue U where there are small shops, everything looked family owned. Gilles found some coffee and awesome biscotti at an Italian bakery. The air was totally calm which kept my tags rather stationary. Occasionally they would flutter in a delicate breeze.
The neighborhood is fairly working class, nothing fancy.
This is the school where the Russians were.
The southwest corner is the cemetery where Deborah Moody is supposed to be buried. Her resting place is not marked.
It was still incredibly quiet considering the elevated subway a block away. No cars drove by, those in the picture are parked. It felt like a road in the country.
I do not remember the last time I saw telephone lines like this which run to wooden telephone poles. The silence was broken by two young men conversing in Spanish. I think Deborah Moody would have approved of the diversity in the neighborhood and its modest simplicity.
Things were a little jazzier on the east side. The houses were newer, or more recently renovated. The cars were more expensive.
The wires make it look as if she were fishing. I wonder if Deborah Moody ever went down to Coney Island and cast a line like the fishermen we saw at dawn. Fishing was men's work, but colonial women often did men's work. Maybe she went fishing with Peter Stuyvesant.
The northeast corner had a distinct outer borough style; the flat squat architecture, the lack of trees in favor of shrubs.
I am not sure what Deborah Moody would make of the artificial evergreen garland wrapped around the terrace. Maybe she would find it amusing.
The center of the village, where the town hall used to be, is the exit to subway. The elevated line shadows the street and an automated voice occasionally warns from above to 'stand clear of the closing doors'.
Around the intersection are low slung buildings, warehouses, plumbing supply, iron workers. It is nice to know that there are still iron workers in the city.
I did not visit the house that is supposed to be Lady Moody's, mostly because I forgot to go there. I was so taken with finding the original outline of the settlement and its center. There is an old house on Gravesend Neck road just over from the subway station, which is where Deborah Moody may or may not have lived. It is very old. The rest of Gravesend has certainly changed, but I think it kept some of original energy.
