View from Queensboro Bridge During Snowstorm on St. Patrick's Day
1910
Sebastian Cruset (1859 -1943)
Oil on canvas, 14 1/8 X 18 1/8
Inscribed and signed lower left: Painted from Queensboro bridge during snowstorm of St. Patrick's day 1910. S. Cruset
Gift of Fong Chow in memory of his grandfather, Sir Shouson Chow, 73.228

 

Sebastian Cruset's penchant for representing the New York skyline from unusual vantage points epitomizes the urban taste for views from high places and exemplifies the new "offshore" viewpoints of the expanding skyline provided by the high bridges built in the late nineteenth century. The novel perspective of this painting, which looks down at the Queens shoreline and at Brooklyn in the distance, with a sliver of the Queensboro Bridge visible at the extreme left, is explained by the location of the artist's studio in the upper "balcony" of the Bridge's Tower 3, located on the east shore of Roosevelt (earlier named Blackwell's, then Welfare) Island.¹ According to an article in the New York Times of June 27, 1914, Sebastian Cruset had a permit from the Bridge Commissioner to use the space for an annual rent of five dollars. From there he painted city views, including a mural of the New York skyline, which, the Times reported, was stolen by "an agile burglar [who] had climbed up the 200-foot ladder leading to this tower balcony." In this view, executed barely a year after the bridge opened to traffic on March 30, 1909, Long Island City remains largely rural, with only traces of industrialization.

In 1830, when the burial grounds in downtown Manhattan reached capacity, with no land available for new ones, parish and commercial cemeteries were established in the open spaces of Queens. The area's flat land also proved suitable for racetracks. By 1874 there were fifteen such tracks on Long Island, where fine resorts had developed along the shoreline. Access to Long Island, however, required a ferry crossing of the East River and a subsequent connection to either a train or a horse-drawn vehicle.

Consolidation of Queens with Manhattan in 1898 had been promoted by the promise of easier transportation to Manhattan, and construction of the Queensboro Bridge fulfilled that pledge. After the bridge opened, the bucolic atmosphere of Long Island City quickly vanished. Auto makers (among them Ford, Packard, and Pierce Arrow), food processors (American Chicle and Loose Wiles' Biscuits), Ever-Ready Batteries, and other industries built factories on inexpensive land. The New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Company can be seen here immediately to the right of the bridge. Jobs in these factories attracted European immigrants, who found in Queens more space, cheaper rents, and easier proximity to work than crowded Manhattan afforded them.² Today, ethnic communities remain a distinguishing feature of Queens.

The building of the Queensboro Bridge took eight years; for a short time after its completion, it was the longest cantilever span in the Western hemisphere. Like the Hell Gate Bridge (see plate 64) and the Manhattan Bridge, its final design was the work of engineer Gustave Lindenthal (1890 -1935) and architect Henry Hornbostel (1867 -1961). Their innovations for the Queensboro included an elevator at each end of the bridge and one at Blackwell's Island to accommodate farm wagons, testimony to the still-rural nature of Queens.

The new span was built for foot traffic, vehicles, elevated and subway cars, and trolleys. In 1912, in an inaugural trip demonstrating the easy, inexpensive access from Queens to midtown Manhattan and celebrating the bridge's role in promoting travel between the municipally joined boroughs, a Third Avenue Railway Company trolley car traveled from Queensboro Plaza, Long Island City, over the bridge to Third Avenue, along 42nd Street, to the North River, and then back to Queensboro Plaza.³ Statistics for the period bear out the importance of this role. Roughly 3.5 million passengers used the bridge in 1909; by 1911 this number had increased to just under 19 million.⁴

In an ancient technique brought from Spain to New York by an immigrant named Rafael Guastavino and his son, the vaulted arches under the Manhattan shore span of the bridge are lined with thin, flexible tiles strong enough to support the weight of such a load.⁵ The space at the bridge's footing had developed into a thriving farmer's market by 1914. In 1916 the space was glazed to provide year-round access. The Depression, however, closed the enterprise. Renovations are now under way, and the Bridge Market is expected to reopen in late 2000 or early 2001.

Sebastian Cruset taught at the University of Barcelona in his native Spain before immigrating to the United States, where he taught perspective drawing, produced magazine illustrations, and worked as a designer of textiles.⁶ Cruset's enthusiasm for depicting the city from high vantage points continued throughout his life. The Museum of the City of New York also owns two other paintings by Cruset, executed toward the end of his life, probably from a high floor of the Flatiron Building. One scans Manhattan to the south, the other looks north.⁷

Notes:

  1  Peter Sluszka, senior vice president of the consulting engineering firm Steinman, helped to determine the location of the studio and also provided the information that the "balconies" are accessible by a series of platforms and ladders not open to the public.

  2  Bernard Rabin, "Queensboro Bridge Is 75; A Birthday Party Will Be Held Tomorrow," Daily News, Sunday, March 25, 1984.

  3  Department of Bridges, City of New York, Annual Report (New York: M. B. Brown Printing and Binding, 1913), p. 256.

  4  Ibid., p. 301.

  5  George R. Collins, "The Transfer of Thin Masonry Vaulting from Spain to America," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 27, no. 3 (October 1968). This article gives a full account of the European history of Guastavino tiles and their later use in the United States.

  6  David Findlay, Jr., Fine Arts, "Sebastian Cruset (1859 -1943)," flyer accompanying exhibition.

  7  These paintings are View of New York (Looking South), 1940 (acc. no. 46.230.1), and View of New York (Looking North), 1941 (acc. no. 46.230.2)