On the Alert at Bryant Park, N. Y.C.
1941
Meyers Rohowsky (1900 -1974)
Oil on canvas over board,20 X 15 1/2
Signed lower left: Rohowsky 41
The Robert R. Preato Collection, 91.76.19

 

New Yorkers first heard the eerie blare of an air-raid siren around noon on December 9, 1941. Although this and two subsequent alarms sounded that week proved to be warning tests, they signaled the accelerating national efforts to mobilize a complex civil defense network -in this case, for the New York metropolis, a prime invasion target -as the implications of Japan's recent attack on Pearl Harbor and the formal entry of the United States into World War II took root. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia cast an ominous mood over the approaching holiday season by calling for twenty-seven thousand volunteers to develop and staff local preparedness systems. As the draft depleted the ranks of the city's police department, municipal security demanded recruitment of nonmilitary personnel to serve as air-raid wardens, to patrol locations vulnerable to attack or sabotage, and to help enforce blackout routines. "The war," La Guardia surmised gravely, "will come right to our streets and residential districts."¹

  An anti-air-raid observation post was quickly installed in Bryant Park, reflecting the sobering possibility of enemy penetration along America's eastern seaboard. The atmosphere of a military bunker created by the official troop-carrying truck, searchlight apparatus, and gun-toting guards recorded by Meyers Rohowsky may have seemed incongruous with this green preserve that doubled as a backyard for the adjoining New York Public Library. As one of the clear spaces in the heart of midtown Manhattan, however, the park offered a convenient storage place for defense equipment and vehicles as well as a strategic location for sky watching and surveying a vital communications and commercial section of the city.²

The raised terrace at the park's eastern end, situated at the rear of the library, provides the stage for the scene depicted. As searchlights scan the evening sky, two vigilant guards wearing khaki uniforms patrol the watch station's perimeter.³ Countering the strange, vapor-like rays reaching skyward are the reassuring glow of illuminated offices and street-level stores, and the light burning from a solitary window in the library's otherwise darkened facade. The canvas-covered truck parked on the terrace obscures a view of the monument to poet-publisher William Cullen Bryant, for whom the park -once known as Reservoir Square -was renamed in 1896.

The artist took certain architectural liberties. Missing, for instance, is the ninth arched aperture from the tier of great windows that admit western light into the library's main reading room. The lower row of windows is incorrectly detailed, and the proportions of the actual Carrere and Hastings building have been compressed. The impact of Rohowsky's vignette is nonetheless strong. With his forthright style, realistic colors, and clarity of composition, he presents a convincing portrait of a watchful city adjusting to wartime precautions that might have seemed unimaginable only a year before.

Notes:

  1  Quoted in Elliot Rosenberg, "Fiorello's Army," Seaport Magazine (Summer 1995): 14 -19. La Guardia was appointed to head the national Office of Civilian Defense in May 1941. In June the federal government wrote to all local defense councils urging them to organize air-observation posts. Although denied usage of any title implying federal military authority, La Guardia established the city Patrol Corps in early 1942, offering its recruits khaki-colored uniforms, training in infantry drills, marksmanship, and first aid, and a published manual that outlined its discipline regulations.

  2  History confirms the use of this same site as a tent ground and drilling common for Union soldiers during the Civil War. Throughout World War I, Bryant Park served as a book-drive center for American troops overseas, a role it repeated during World War II.

  3  It is hard to determine whether Rohowsky intended the uniformed figures to represent official military presence or civilian corpsmen newly enlisted into the city Patrol Corps. The Patrol Corps was not functioning until 1942, however, and khaki uniforms on loan from the U.S. Army Quartermaster were not widely available to these recruits until that summer. Civilian corpsmen also were initially refused the right to carry weaponry. La Guardia succeeded in altering state law pertaining to gun issue during wartime, recognizing the boost to morale and authority that would be achieved by equipping his civilian defense recruits with smart attire, guns, and clubs.