Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis




You may have wondered why there have been no further activities in the redevelopment of the North side of Union Square since the May 15th hearing before the Art Commission of New York, the city’s watchdog of esthetics of its architectural properties. Well, they had some objections that sent the Union Square designers back to the drawing board. The project, chiefly sponsored by the Union Square Partnership, will have to undergo yet another transformation.



To start, the proposed border of trees along the north side of the plaza (site of the Greenmarket) needs review. There was once such a line of trees, planted in individual pits in the 1980s, and the trees died. Art Commission requests that a continuous trench be used to plant the trees (distances and pruning height unspecified). The other line of trees, north of the Pavilion, was denied approval. It would impede the use of the pavilion in its historical role as a podium for speakers during public celebrations and protests, the events that the plaza has been famous for, ever since the first 1882 Labor Day parade. The new paving design of the North plaza also came in for criticism, questioning the appropriateness of the confetti-like pattern of stones, intended to be a reminder of the footprints of the multitudes that once assembled there.



The southern exposure of the Pavilion presented two debatable situations. To start with, the current format of the projected balcony design was rejected by the AC. Another important criticism came in conjunction with the expanded children’s playground, which includes the present pit, more genteelly referred to as the “sunken dell,” location of the Luna Café. Under the redevelopment plan it is to become part of the enlarged playground. The dilemma hinges on the fact that having two grade level areas linked by a sunken one is not suitable, and the current proposal of equalizing the surfaces by sinking the side areas is costly and presents other problems, as would filling in or bridging the pit. The AC challenges present problems that can undermine the basic concepts of the entire project.



The sunken dell came with the original design of the Pavilion, constructed in 1930s. The ground floor of the structure probably was tructured to provide bathroom facilities, built to be accessible from both sides, the street and the elevated park. The original pit had picnic tables and benches, a nice facility expanding what was originally referred to as a “bandstand and comfort station” structure. Filling it in would be a major expense, and would destroy the ground level access to the building, which was constructed for that purpose, with windows and doors. Lowering the existing playgrounds to meet the dell’s level is an expensive alternative, and bridging, with a hanging center playground, is impractical.



The struggle over the redesign of Union Square North, is complicated by the fact that the park has been designated a NYC landmark, has taken its toll also in the Union Square Community Coalition, an association of local activists formed in 1980 to fight the deterioration and takeover by drug dealers and their clients, with sit-ins and political action. In collaboration with the 14th Street/Union Square Local Development Council, formed in 1979, and its younger cousin, the Business Improvement District, the neighborhood efforts eventually succeeded in salvaging the old public treasure, designed in 1811 and opened for public use as a park in 1839. It was restored in the 1980-90s, and with the arrival of the Greenmarket, Zeckendorf Towers and the enthusiasm of the restaurant community, Union Square resumed its mid-19th century role as New York’s gastronomical and theatrical center; meanwhile the USCC has suffered of internal conflicts. The preservationists on the USCC board object to the current redesign, sponsored by the LDC/BID (now renamed as The Union Square Partnership), the NYC Department of Parks and the NYC Department of Transportation, and the co-chairs of the organization, Susan Kramer and Gail Fox, have resigned. The board has appointed a vice chairman, Ernest Raab, to fill the vacancy until the next election. Marjorie Berk, another original member, is expected to rejoin the group.



As of the moment, the AC does not have another hearing of U union Square redesign on its published agenda, meaning that the architects and sponsors are working on another recast of the plan. It will be nearly a miracle if a satisfactory redesign is achieved.



Meanwhile, the Department of Parks is being depleted of city funds, a sin against the citizens of our city, and is busily scrounging for income. The food kiosk in the Madison Square Park is a success, much to the pains of tits neighbors, who are suffering the noise and thrash pollution. The proposed kiosk in the East Stuyvesant Square Park, part of a Historic District, has been out for bids, against the neighborhood’s wishes, and the prospective operators have found it inadequate as an income-producing property, unless beer and wine licenses are granted. The neighborhood, until a decade ago plagued by a methadone/drug crowd using it as its summer resort, has successfully resisted the kiosk, and this new information will certainly strengthen its case.

This column thanks Jack Taylor.

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From Looking Ahead, 1/12/1006

Who was Pliny Freeman and what does he have to do with T&V Country? And how about Simeon Draper and Hugo Wesendonk?

Well, Pliny (rhymes with piney, a dry goods merchant who studied to be an actuary in his spare time) and 56 local businessmen founded Nautilus Insurance Co in 1841, the 3rd mutual (or policyholder-owned) insurer in the US. In 1845 it became New York Life, proprietor and inhabitant of the gold-domed xx story building at 51 Madison Avenue. Simeon Draper put together National Union Life and Limb Insurance Company, to protect Union soldiers against the risk of loss of livelihood during the Civil War. There were not enough brave investors, and he had to reorganize, and in 1868 came up with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, then a stock company, now at One Madison Avenue. Hugo Wesendonck, a former liberal deputy in the German xx parliament and a refugee from 1848 Revolution, in 1860 founded the Germania Life, rechristened Guardian Life Insurance Company in 1918, now at 201 Park Avenue South (cor. 17th Street).

The NYL site between 26th and 27th Streets, Madison to Park, is famous as the New York and Harlem RR terminal (the railroad ran up Park Avenue); in 1871 it became P.T.Barnum's Hippodrome, eventually converted into the original Madison Square Garden, in whose roof restaurant Harry Thaw murdered the building's architect, Stanford White. Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbitt, had been, before her marriage, White's mistress. The limestone Renaissance style building with a pyramidal top, designed by Cass Gilbert (also the architect of the 1913 Woolworth Building and the 1936 U.S. Court House) was opened in 1928.
The company, among whose clients were General Custer and Presidents Harding, Coolidge and T. Roosevelt, was a pioneer in data processing and variable life product development. It has acquired Sanus Corp Health Systems, a national HMO company, and owns utilization review and physician practice management companies, mutual funds and insurers abroad (England and the Pacific Rim).

NYL576-7000 Jim Tolve
met578-2211 Vicki

The Met Life building on 23 Street, designed by Napoleon LeBrun (author of the French Renaissance chateau he built for Engine Co. 31 at 87 Lafayette Street) was constructed in stages, from 1893 to 1961, with the 45-story Tower dating back to 1909. The long lobby is decorated with murals by N.C. Wyatt, father of Andrew Wyatt. The board room is reputed to have a gold-painted ceiling. The North building (24th to 25th Streets), designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett and D. Everett Waid and built in 1932, has a huge, overwhelming lobby, and has been rented to First boston xxx. The Met also has a huge presence the Grand Central area -it owns the former PanAm building.

Met started in life by selling small policies in working class neighborhoods, with agents collecting the premiums weekly. It grew into a giant, became a mutual company (i.e. bought out the stockholders) in 1915, and started selling group insurance in 1917, automobile and homeowners' coverages in 1974. It now includes mutual funds, Century 21 real estate business (sold in 1995), group life and health business purchased from Allstate, casualty business purchased from J.C.Penney, and has bailed out the failing United Baldwin annuity and United Mutual life portfolios. It has companies in England, Canada, Spain and Mexico, and its joint venture MentraHealth (with The Travelers) has been sold in 1995 for $2.4 billion to United HealthCare of Minnetonka, MN, the same year that Met announced its merger with the Boston-based New England Mutual. Met Life is the largest life insurer in the Americas, with $1.2 trillion in force.

Both NYLIC and Met Life have had to contend with fines, court verdicts and restitution payments due to improper sales practices of some agents, and both companies have instituted stringent corrective measures.

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America building , on the NE corner of 17th Street and Park Avenue South, was designed byand erected. It has the xx copper mansard roof, four stories high, currently being replaced with historically correct parts, as required by Landmarks rules. The original roof lasted 80-plus years, and the new one follows the same specifications.

Guardian became a mutual insurance company in 19xx, and added health and disability insurance to its portfolio in 1952, group health and life in 1956, mutual funds and variable annuity products in 197x. Smallest of the three neighbors, it follows conservative sales and investment practices and has been assigned the top ratings by all of the credit and claims rating agencies, a status that it shares with only one other insurer in the U.S., Northwestern Mutual, according to Money Magazine. Once upon a time a presence in Mexico City and Berlin (before 1914 its income from Germany exceeded that from the US), it is now a domestic player, except for a partnership with an equally tight-fisted Scottish international mutual funds company.

In 1960 it expanded, adding a block-wide annex building between 17th and 18th streets, designed by Skidmore ,Owings and Merrill of the Lever Building fame, designed by Gordon Bunshaft. It has been rumored that this building too may become protected, by inclusion in a proposed Historic District.


Much of the above information about NYLIC and MetLife comes from Hoover's Handbook of American Companies 1996, edited by Patrick J.Spain and James R.Talbott and published by the Reference Press (Austin, TX, $29.95), which also gives us the American Almanac 1995-1996 ($17.95), a paperback reprint of the much more expensive Statistical Abstract of the United States 1995. Hoover's has 900 pages of profiles of 450 major companies, a page of popularly yet not sensationally written narrative plus a page of financials and names/addresses. It is an excellent tool for the reader of the financial pages and even for the stock-picker who wants to supplement his charts with history. There are over 10 pages of rating tables - largest, most profitable, etc, and over 100 pages of indexes.

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LOOKING BACK, by Wally Dobelis

There's good news for Union Square - House of Blues may not come to the former American Savings Bank building, NE corner of East 15th Street. And the vacant lot on SE corner of Broadway and 14th Street will be a Caldor's, a nine-screen movie theatre, a sporting goods (Sports Authority) and records (Virgin) store complex, plus apartments. Good quality businesses, to keep company with Bradlees (now in Chapter 11 but hopeful). On the other hand, the proposed designation of the Square as a National Historic Landmark, hoped to be awarded in time for the celebration of the 113th anniversary of the first Labor Day Parade (September 5, 1882) is on hold, because National Parks Service advisory and review staff has been severely reduced. More about this next week.
This gives us an opportunity to walk around the Park, look at the buildings and sculpture and reflect on the glories of the past. There's a lot of cast iron frontage in this area, if you want to be a detective. And terra cotta, brownish clay construction, basic to New York. This is fun history, not tricky, pay attention.
Let's start on Broadway and 11th Street, SW, with the humble rebuilt purplish 799 Broadway building. It was designed by the great architect James Renwick in 1851, after Grace Church and before St. Patrick's Cathedral. Formerly the St. Dennis Hotel, this is where Abraham Lincoln met with New York's gentry in the 2nd Floor parlor, the same room from which Alexander Graham Bell spoke the famous words: "Come here, Watson, I need you," in 1877. That's as close as I can remember them. Not much of a building, but what a history. Now look at its neighbor! On he NW corner is a massive what - Greek? Classical Revival? - construction, a palace! Okay, I'll tell you, it's the McCreery palazzo, once the home of the finest silks and damask, and it is cast iron. Tap the Composite style column with a key - it's metal. And now that you have a clue to cast iron facades, stand on the corner and look around - how much cast iron construction do you see? There'll be a test next Thursday.
New York is most truly the greatest wonder. The merchants of yore wanted beauty, and style, and "they should drop dead with envy" construction, no matter the cost. Cast iron was the most economical, and it made New York great. James Bogardus, the cast iron genius, lived on East 14th Street, in a modest building, which Margot Gayle should like to see landmarked. It's a nice thought...Anyway, architects such as James Kellum would give the merchants whatever, to the limits of their fantasies and pocketbooks. All Broadway is the evidence, as is the Ladies' Mile on 6th Avenue. Come along with me.
On 12th, SW, is an early skyscraper (1895) by George B.Post, architect of the New York Stock Exchange, Williamsburgh Savings Bank and the City College, North Campus. And on 13th, NW, a great terra cotta castle, the Roosevelt Building, named after Teddy's grandfather, Cornelius, the glass merchant, whose house was mid-block (Stephen Hatch, 1893). The posts on 2nd Floor are crumbling, and you can see what was underneath. I have no idea who was the genius of terra cotta, but he had to be Italian. Amici, per favore, informa me. Altogeter, a miracle of preservation. Now you know how to recognize terra cotta. Walking West on 14th, you see the Bradlees' Building as a balance, continuing the arches of the Roosevelt.
Margaret Moore, the historian of the Ladies' Mile, calls Union Square an unusual collection of first-generation skyscrapers (we will do skyscraper theory some other time). The Lincoln Building, 1-3 Union Union Square West, by H.R.Robertson, 1885, has Romanesque arches and terra cotta decorations, hidden behind white paint.Its motiv is continued by 5 USW, Spingler Building, Renaissance Revival. The next, older, Tiffany & Co Building (John Kellum,1869), now Amalgamated Bank (owned by labor unions), was totally resurfaced in 1950, losing the cast-iron facade. Looks new, doesn't it, for a 126-year old construction? They just don't etc etc...
The Bank of the Metropolis Building, 31 USW (Bruce Price, 1902-3) is an American Renaissance style skyscraper. All the Ladies' Mile businessmen - Tiffany, Sloane, Arnold, Steinway - were on the board of the bank. Price, an influence on Frank Lloyd Wright, was the father of Emily Post. The Union Building (originally Decker Piano, John Edelmann, 1893) at 33 USW is a wonderful Moorish fantasy, a dream. Stand across the street and look at it. I heard the top apartment is for sale, if you have the megabux. Edelman was an influence on Louis Sullivan.
At 35 USW, the Heartland Brewery Building (originally G. Schirmer Music publishers), in Neo-Grec style, has been much spruced up recently. Welcome to the neighborhood! Its Neo-Classical neighbor at 41 USW has much terra cotta detail.
As we cross Broadway, look North. The Romanesque Revival corner tower above the arches at NE 18th street corner is the McIntyre, gloriously picturesque but in neglected. Wampire housing? If anyone has details, please send me a letter. Not to be oushone, there are the Arnold Constable (SW 19th, now ABC), W&J Sloane (SE 19th, ABC), Gorham (NW 19th), Lord & Taylor's barely visible dreamy cream castiron (SW 20th) and Goelet (SE 20th, Bombay) creations, of which more another time. And tiny 870 Broadway was the birthplace of Bergdorf Goodman.
Next week we will go on with the tour, and talk about the May Day, and orators in the Park.
Wally Dobelis credits Margaret Moore, Rex Wassermann and Jack Taylor of the Ladies' Mile project, Prof Debra E. Bernhardt the NYU archivist, John W. Bond, Historical Consultant, and Mary Merha, a friend who got me started on all this. Thanks, gang!

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LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis
Union Square, a Walking Tour, Part II 9/14/1996
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On with the tour. We are crossing Broadway East, at 17th Street. On our right is the park, with the parking lot that hosts the best Farmers' Market In NYC on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays (thank you, Barry Benepe). This is also the area where the first Labor Day Parade was held, on September 5, 1882, going up Broadway. (Tompkins Park was an earlier location of labor demonstrations and clashes.) The primary contender for the title of originator of the parade, and of Labor Day, is Peter McGuire, of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, and co-founder (with Samuel Gompers) of the American Federation of Labor. Other contenders are Matthew McGuire of the Socialist Central Labor Union, and Terence C. Powderly, of the Knights of Labor. Oh, the Irish, God love you!
The parade was a grand event, of bricklayers marching with white aprons, jewelery workers with derby hats and boutonnieres, carrying canes over their shoulders, typographers and the exploited immigrant cigar makers with posters saying "Labor pays all taxes" and "Down with the tenement system." There were German structural workers with huge axes over their shoulders, bricklayers, and piano makers with a music float.
The Labor Day movement snowballed throughout the country, with President Grover Cleveland signing the bill making the first Monday in September Labor Day, in June 1894. The pen went to Sam Gompers. I don't know whether it ended in the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU, which includes the Tamiment Institute library, formerly in the Rand Building on West 15th Street. The Archivist, Prof. Debra E. Bernhardt, PhD, is one of the sponsors to make Union Square a National Historic Landmark, because of the labor connotation.
The labor part notwithstanding, I have vivid personal memories of the annual May Day assemblies, as well as everyday discussions in the park, the nearest thing we had to Hyde Park in the 1950s. There were always speakers and excited opponents, talking up Communism and disputing it. May Days brought on Earl Browder and Gus Hall of the Communist Party, very dull speakers. The Jefferson Book Store was on corner 15th and Park Avenue South, and one could get all the Karl Marx and International Publishers (Communist) lit there, in 15c pamphlets. It was rumored that the FBI had a window overlooking the corner, with a camera, to identify the shop visitors. The standard park joke: orator says: "Comes the revolution, we will all eat strawberries with whipped cream." Voice from the crowd:"But I don't like strawberries with whipped cream!" The orator: "Under Socialism, you will eat strawberries whether you like them or not."
I have been part of the park since the first day of 1950, seeing all the orators and the meetings. And the day in 1953 when silent masses stood in formation around the park and on the side streets, praying that the Soviet atomic spies Ethel nad Julius Rosenberg would be amnestied and not executed. Hundreds, thousands of eyes were boring into me, hoping for a message, as I was walking towards the subway, after putting in my overtime. I had no message, and it made me feel guilty.
But let's go on, along the North side of 17th Street. The Parish or Butler Bros, or Underground Disco Building at 860 Broadway in Neo-Grec style (Detlev Lienau, 1883) has lost much ornamental detail in a 1920 renovation. Note the sunflower frieze and cornice detail.
33-37 East 17th, The Century, or American Drapery Building (William Schickel, 1881) was the home of Century and St. Nicholas magazines, and will soon house Barnes and Noble. This Queen Anne Victorian, with dormers, oriel windows and terra cotta detail over red brick, is of a style rarely seen in New Nork.
At 200 Park Avenue South the Everett Building (1908, Starrett and Van Vleck, 1908) replaced the Everett Hotel. It is a Neo- Classical 16-story commercial structure with delicate incised terra cotta spandrels forming an abstract design.
Across Park Avenue South, at 201, is the tallest building on the Park, the Guardian Life Building (D'Oench and Yost, 1911), a Renaissance Revival structure of 22 stories. It has a copper Mansard roof, which covers four stories of height. There is also a 1961 Annex, on 17th Street, a worthy example of the work of Gordon Bunshaft, of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The company was founded in 1860 by a democratic left member of the revolutionary Frankfurt Assembly of 1848, Hugo Wesenonck, who fled Germany under the sentence of death.
The former S. Klein's on the Square Annex, at 24 (1900 Neo-Classical, extra floor of arched windows added), 26-28 (1872 Neo-Grec cast iron), and 30 USE (c.1880, arched cast-iron) is now a Toys R Us store, with the original character still discernible, despite alterations and added floors.
A small Classical temple with Corinthian columns on Union Square, at 20 USE, the American Savings Bank Building (formerly Union Square Savings Bank, Henry Bacon, 1907) was and still may be slated as the House of Blues. I have a personal aside to this building. Around 1950 or so they were doing an expansion, and ripping down a 15th Street building. I knew this building had a small side medallion by Augustus Saint Gaudens, and hoped to somehow rescue it, but I got there too late, it was bulldozed. More power to the urban archeology people who salvage artifacts. I'm all for it.
About the square: it was laid out as Union Place in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, an oval with a central fountain, at the "union" of Bloomingdale Road (Broadway) and Bowery Road (4th Avenue). The North pavillion, now the bandstand, came to be 1872. There are stories about the construction of the park and the Washington, Lincoln and Lafayette statues, the James Fountain, as well as the Tammany flagpole that I have to get together, for a later telling.

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LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis
Union Square Walking Tour, Part III 9/21/1996
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Of the nine squares and public spaces planned for the 450 acres of parks set aside for Manhattan in the Commisioners' Map of 1811, only one survives in its entirety - Union Square. The map was the result of a comprehensive city plan plan that laid out Manhattan above 14th Street in the present grid pattern.
Union Place (it was renamed in 1832) was at the "union" of the Southbound Bloomingdale Road (Broadway) and Northbound Bowery Road (4th Avenue). It was mapped as a park in 1831, and opened in 1839 as New York's first public park, modeled on the small, formal, lushly planted residential squares of London. Ten years later it had a heavy iron picket fence around it, a fountain with mature trees surrounding it, and a gate that was closed at night. We were, then, an exclusive suburb.
By the time of the first Labor parade in 1882 this whole area had become a popular recreation center, with theatres, hotels, restaurants and fine shops. The fence came down in 1872, and a pavillion was erected at the North end, which was squared off.Union Square Hotel (Renwick, 1872) was on the East edge, the Everett Hotel at NW 17th Street and Park Avenue South, Delmonico's Restaurant at 5th and 14th, Luchow's at 108-112 East 14th Street, the Academy of Music (opera, 1854-1925) was at the present Con Ed site. Tiffany's jewelry shop, with an elaborate cast-iron front, resurfaced in 1950, was in the present Amalgamated Bank building.
There were more redesigns of the park. In 1915, the ground level was raised, to accomodate the arrival of the BMT subway station and passageways. In 1935-36 the neglected park was elevated again, to fit in the underground concourse from 17th to 14th Streets, connectin g the various subway lines. And in the late 1980s, through the effort of the neighbourhood associations, LDC and BID, the park had a multi-million dollar redesign and revival. Even the statues have been shifted, over the years.
Union Square park contains "some of the finest commemorative sculpture in the country" (Rex Wassermann). The bronze equestrian statue of George Washington (Henry Kirke Brown with John Quincy Adams Ward, base by church architect Richard Upjohn) was dedicated on July 4, 1856, originally on the SE traffic island, now containing the WWI Memorial, and moved during the 1930s redesign of the park. The park was where New Yorkers gave George Washington a reception on November 25, 1783, on the occasion of the British evacuation from the city. The Lincoln statue (Henry Kirke Brown), completed in September 1870, was originally on the SW traffic island, now the location of the new statue of Mohandas Gandhi, father of India's independence. Lincoln, who wears a Roman toga and holds the proclamation of Emancipation, was moved during the same redesign. The Marquis de Lafayette, by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi (remember him?) was presented to the City of New York by the French government in 1876, in recognition of French assistance to the Colonies during the Revolutionary War, and in gratitude for American help for the French during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 (the Statue of Liberty came later, in 1886). The Marquis was also relocated.
The "Mother and Children" fountain (Karl Adolph Donndorf, 1881) was given to the city by Daniel Willis James, a local philantropist. The 80-ft Liberty Pole (Anthony de Francisci, 1924-26) has a 36-ft diameter base with beautiful bas-relief bronze figures, and 48 star inserts, each named for a state. In the base is also a plaque, with the entire Declaration of Independence, and an awkwardly phrased line from Thomas Jefferson:" How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of and which no other people on earth enjoy." It was erected to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and to honor Charles Francis Murphy, leader of the Tammany Hall. (Tammany Hall moved to 143 East 14th Street, next to the original Academy of Music, in 1869. Both buildings were replaced by the Con Edison structure by 1928; the Academy moved across 14th Street, and the politicians moved their wigwam to a new Hall at the SE corner of Park and 17th Street. Tammany as a Democratic stronghold fell apart in 1932, after the Seabury investigation of corruption and the resignation of Mayor Jimmy Walker. The LaGuardia era was on, for 12 years. In 1943, when Tammany was unable to pay the mortgage debt, the property was taken over by the ILGWU, who rented the hall out for union elections. The news deliverers were the most raucuous, 17th Street would be filled with house trailers, and the candidates would invite the voters for booze and payoffs. The street would reek for days, afterwards. The building became the Roundabout Theatre in the 1980s and is now the Union Square Theatre. As to Tammany, its sachem Carmine DeSapio tried to recapture its former influence in 1945, but the reform movement, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman and Robert Wagner, defeated his candidates in 1958, and Ed Koch beat him out for district leadership on his Greenwich Village home turf. Some day soon we will do more local political history. Sachem, from Algonquian, is an Indian chief, and Tammany is an Indian name adapted by the New York Democrats in 1789, and wigwam... and I feel very old, explaining these things.)
Union Square and the Ladies' Mile were very important in our history. There were about 20 department stores, 6 piano shops, 15 theatres, 10 hotels, and 30 "temples of love," as advertised in the 1890s, for an example. More about what was on each site around Union Square on a later date.
Wally Dobelis thanks Margaret Moore, Rex Wassermann and Jack Taylor of the Ladies' Mile project, the preservationists Margot Gayle, Prof. M. Christine Boyer and Lou Kremer, A.I.A, Prof. Debra E. Bernhardt the NYU archivist, John W. Bond, Historical Consultant, and Mary Merha, a friend.
He also needs stronger reading glasses - in the review of the fine new Encyclopedia of New York City he mixed up his Buckleys. The book does contain an article about William F. and therefore he does not appear in the index. The index entry is for his brother, ex-Senator James L.
Wally also proposes that we celebrate Thursday, September 28, 1995, as the most successful day of the last 365. On this day 100 Israelis and 100 Palestinians, forced to negotiate for two months, in seclusion, declared that they were able to deal with mutual hatreds and suspicions, to the point of hammering out an understanding leading to a treaty, and to get to appreciate each other as individuals. Each one teach one, please. Business people reach understandings; for political ideologues to do it is a miracle. Perhaps there is a hope for a rational world, even in the former Yugoslavia. And China declared that it would not sell nuclear reactors to the threatening, out-of-control Iranians; and no children were killed. This was indeed a day of miracles.

The way things were at The Guardian, 9/30/1996.
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There are some of us who may remember the midcentury Guardian as a company of 400-odd people, tightly packed in the 18 floors of 50 Union Square, on Fourth Avenue, with the Executive Flooor on the Mezzanine - that was Mr. McLain's office - and Johnny Breeze the old Marine guarding the sanctity of the environment. We office boys learned everybody's name in a week. We cashed our paychecks in the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank, and the lunches on the Mezzanine Floor were free.

Vinnie the elevator man took bets on horses, and trusted you once, maybe twice. (That was in direct disregard of the September 25th, 1907 memo from the office of the President of the Germania Life Insurance Company written in capital letters, to wit: ANY ONE IN THE EMPLOY OF THIS COMPANY FOUND PLAYING THE RACES WILL BE DISMISSED INSTANTER. AND ANY ONE SUSPECTED OF DOING SO WILL BE LIABLE TO RIGOROUS MEASURES. Signed by Cornelius Doremus, President.What a righteous name!

Every department had Christmas parties, but the Supply Dept on 18th floor had the one to close the day with. Dr. Bender's parties served pink ladies, which were concocted by Dr. Lambkin, who also did the urinanalyses. The "specimens" arrived from the Medical Examiners' offices by mail in little ampules, wrapped with the identification slip. We once got a hold of a properly addressed slip, with the P.O. cancellation but no name, filled the tube with beer and wrote the insured's name as I. P. Standing. The slip came back from Dr Lambkin's lab with the contents identified as a trace of barley and hops. He was a good sport and his drinks were great. By the way, no one was allowed to use Dr. Bender's bathroom, unless invited; if you did not know the rules and he saw you, your manager got a call and would tell you, sort of shamefacedly and making light of it.

The big event was to be invited to the SWS Ageny Christmas party downtown, with plenty to drink and eat. Tiny Arthur C. Warshaw with the deep cutting voice would take some of us youngsters to a side room and would tell this story of the Creation. That was about the way he, Jerry Schnur and the tall deceptively slow-talking Dick Spaulder took over the sleepy Leyendecker-Schnur agency and built it up to a broker-oriented powerhouse. They attributed some of the success to taking taxis rather than the subway during the great Depression, and thus seeing several more brokers a day. I always thought that the real secret was the their cashier, the motherly Miss Donovan who knew how to get underwriting action, by getting all of her cases reviewed once a day on the telephone by the suspense section. You had to be sharp to handle SWS.

Then came the 1960s, Fourth Ave acquired a center median and plantings and we became 201 Park Avenue South. Jerry Parker and Health came in in 1954, and Bob Wilcox brought in Group in 1957, all under the guidance of James A (no period) McClain, whose benevolent eyes look at all visitors from the entrance of the Annex Building, designed by the great Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (but why did he put a row of clotheshangers in the basement as well as on populated floors? Ah well...) In the old building, the beautiful balcony overlooking the 4th Avenue lobby diappeared, and mosaic walls took the place of the marble, much to the disgust of the architectural preservationists who created the Landmarks Commission after the magnificent Penn Station of McKim Mead and White was permitted to be torn down.

Our 1911 D'Oensch and Yost building was landmarked, both interior (the lunchroom, originally the Collection Department, where policyholders came to pay premiums, is a great example of a beautiful public space) and exterior (we have the largest copper mansard roof in the city). The free sandwich lunches became subsidized hot meals. The floors freed up by the exodus to the Annex acquired publishing tenants. E.P.Dutton had their exhibit of the original A.A.Milne's Winnie the Poo and Tigger dolls in the showcase, and we had occasional elevator sightings of trench-coated Mickey Spillane, their author of such hardboiled detective fiction as "I, The Jury." Mickey played the part, a wide brim hat down on his eyes.Another tenant, T.Y.Crowell, had such authors as John Kenneth Galbraith, whose head nearly touched the elevator roof when I saw him on the elevator with his editor. A "Good morning, Ambassador," got us into a three-floor conversation. Another author, the poet Peter Orlovsky, Allen Ginsberg's significant other, only stared dourly at his open-toed sandals as he rode on the elevator.

In 1965 Max's Kansas City opened up next door, in the location of the old Southern Restaurant, and that brought scads of artists into the area, of which another time. Also, Andy Warhol's Factories (there were two locations) across the Union Square made this a prime pop and op art environment. Guardianites were tolerated in Max's because it was our turf, and we laid claim to it at 4:30 P.M., when any self-respecting Max's denizen would have barely rolled out of bed. We were gone long before the real night-time revelries began.
The Guardian kept growing, and we picked up rental space at 105 Madison Ave.
In 1982 the company had enough of New York's high taxes, low educational levels of startup employees, and decided to direct the expansion outwards. We were getting to be a group major medical insurance power, needing many claim approvers and underwriters, and had to look for a low-cost, trainable employee environment. Three areas of the country seemed right, and we started with Bethlehem, PA, or more properly Allentown, where the demise of heavy steel industry had left a lot of white collar avalability, and the good schools offered more for the future expansion. From a rented space in 1982 we moved into a industrial development area, building a 3-story escalator office in 1984, designed by King xxx of and adding a mirror-image wing in 1988. The computer center moved there, out of New York, along with certain life and health (now disability) operations, and Group kept growimg. In 1992 we added a warehouse building, some 800 feet away, to house supplies (I remember getting out of the way of a warehouse fork-lift bearing down at what seemed 35 M.P.H.), and the offsite storage of computer files.
In 1985??? we decided to expand th the Midwest, and rented space in Appleton, Wi, a beautiful lake community, with many paper mills and some insurance companies, notably Lutheran Brotherhood. Eventually we built a 3-story (same designer), for 1,000 employees. It is heavily group major medical oriented operation, as is the next expansion, 1988???, in Spokane, WA.

Spokane was a mining town. I remember the parts of the town set in the middle of a mining pit, the modern buildings in the Civic Center, and also the young gal who jumped out of her spanking new pickup truck in a shopping center, to announce to a friend "How'd you like that! My husband gave it to me on my 16th birthday!" It's the West, you New York slickers, get with it. The Spokane building is 3 stories, with xx employees. This is the first one that ruled no-smoking, and I would see lots of people on the back porch.

As of 10/95, in the Guardian interoffice telephone book there are 4500 numbers. Also about 100 officers, country wide. Long gone are the days when you could pick up the phone in NY and dial three digits and get anyone. When you dialed GOD, you got Dan Lyons. I told this secret to my then manager, who looked at me, picked up the phone and dialed up, then hung up and stared, sort of white faced. I think he was worried. Today he might be more worried, because the phones - at least those of the secretaries - show the dialer's name and extension, so when someone says "yes, Wally," you know where you are. The kid in DP who used to make dirty interoffice calls in the 1960s until found out and fired would have a hard time today.

As to offices, we have two floors in the building past former Max's (now a Korean grocery), 215 PAS, the former Burroughs Adding Machine headquarters. This building, our size, was offered to us for about $7 million way back, as was the needle-domed Chrysler Building in the '40s ("the parachutist's nightmare").Who's to say whether we should have bought them? We also lease two floors at 233 PAS, above Canastel's, a trendy restaurant. And a huge floor housing all of group's administrative offices, at 225 PAS, one block over. On a rainy day Guardianites have to carry umbrellas as they scurry between offices, particularly because yet another group office on corner 18th and 5th Ave, above Daffy's department store, handles compliance.

The most senior male long-term employees still coming in every day are Hugh Howell, age 70, who started in 1940. I'm next, age 66, started in 1950, then Ed Kane, our legal beagle, of the same age group. Thereafter, another break. I will not speak of the ladies, who have their own privacy concerns. I bring this up because of the changes in the world. Unfortunately the next generations will not be able to experience the same continuity. My son's college placement people caution the grads to expect three career changes - that's profession, folks - and eight job changes. The opportunity to build up pensions dwindles. It's almost like back to the 1950s when my uncle got fired by Con Edison after 19 1/2 years of service, to avoid giving him a pension. ERISA cured that, at least for our generation. I can also look back to the kids who jumped jobs - particularly one auditor who left after 8 1/2 years, with no pension credits. We have to make sure our kids understand this. The world has changed, but the Guardian ship sails on. Fair weather, gang!

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Shut down your e-mails, turn off your cells, throw out your I-pods, remove your Dells, don’t eat the hors d’oeuvres, put back the cork, our Judi Golden is leaving New York.



She greets all the members, each name she remembers, all birthdays she knows, and what everyone owes. Diets on cream cheese and lox, matches undies and socks. There is no stat she forgets of the shul or the Mets, her heart so big, her touch so sure, gets a blue and orange manicure.



Now the Tar Heels in Raleigh will soon munch on challie, the natives of Durham will all observe Purim. In Charlotte and Ashville they’ll read the Megill(a) and feel hipper and hipper to fast on Yom Kippur. Although it sounds foolish she’ll make North Carolina Jewish, and you can bet any wager

the N.C. Bulls will make major. So it’s Shalom to Judi, but never goodby, our wonderful Judi – with an I.



Thus the Friday night service of the Brotherhood Synagogue on June 16 turned into a celebration, of laughter, applause and an occasional tear, as the congregation bid goodbye to its office manager of 13 years, Judi Golden, who is leaving her beloved New York and the Mets to join her children in North Carolina. The poem to Judi (with a bow to W. H. Auden), is by her office mate and our poet laureate, Peggy Keilus, whose occasional verse and stories appear both in the Synagogue bulletin and the New York Times Metropolitan Diary columns.



Everyone has a favorite Judi story, as did the Rabbi, Daniel Alder, Synagogue president Arthur Abbey and vice-president Rich Shapiro, and its executive director Phil Rothman overcame his Yankee feelings enough to decorate the Brotherhood’s community hall in the colors of the Mets, blue and orange, for the occasion. Cantor Shiya Ribowsky added to the celebratory tone by leading the congregation into the concluding anthem, Adon Olam – Master of the World – to the tune of Take Me Out To The Ballgame.



The celebrant herself, who received enough hugs and kisses and good words to last a lifetime of memories, will not have much of a chance of a rest in the sunny South. Her son, who has a sports radio program in the Triangle area, Charlotte-Raleigh-Durham, passed the word of his Mother’s coming to North Carolina, and she has already received job offers from three temples in the area. Best of luck, Judi, we will miss you so much!



To add my family’s personal thanks, in the past several years, as our personal activities in coordinating the synagogue’s winter Homeless Shelter Program diminished, Judi took over and was the manager of the day-to-day activities, attracting and motivating volunteers in droves.



Speaking of the sunny South, we can report to you from the Four Corners (New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona) that, while New York has been blessed with rain and cool weather, the southern parts have suffered a draught. We were there to visit the Anasazi pueblos, the stone and adobe dwellings of the early American Indians, that have survived a thousand years of exposure to winds, storms and humanity in the deserts to offer their mysteries for our interpretation. How did the Puebloans, not known to have an alphabet or a calendar or a sophisticated system of numbers, align their stone structures with solar and lunar solstices and equinoxes that require decades of observations, record-keeping and calculations? Were some of the pueblos, aligned in the shape of a giant serpent, built to be dedicated to religious observations? Was there cannibalism, native or imported variety? Were there as many as 100 million natives in the Americas, before the white men came and inadvertently exposed them to the diseases and plagues of Europe? There is a recent book, 1491 by Charles C. Mann, that deals with the latter.



For the Anasazi mysteries, check the website www.dobelis.net; three clicks on the underlined text and you will be in the Looking Ahead blog, with a long June 2006 article describing our trip to Albuquerque, the crossing of the desert with its arroyos, scrub vegetation, Indian reservations, pueblos and gambling casinos en route to Santa Fe, the cultural center of the Southwest, learning to breathe at 6,000’ height.



Our archeologist-led excursions from there took us to the giant Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, a miracle of survival, with its structures in the caverns of the mountain. How did the Publicans feed themselves before they decided to descend to the valley and better pastures? Next day, the Hovenweep Ruins in Utah, the strange turreted settlement with hints of the Quetzalcoatl cult in the surviving structures. The green Canyon de Chelly ((pronounced Chay) desert in the huge Arizona Navajo reservation was a gorgeous oasis, and a place to buy Navajo jewelry from the artists. Returning to New Mexico, the Salmon Ruins, a 150-room pueblo and a museum of recreated Indian nomadic gear, the Aztec Ruins with its giant kava (sanctuary), and Chaco Canyon, with its dozen pueblos from various periods ranging over 500 years of history, capped the trip. We rested up in Santa Fe, with its museums and Central Plaza and adobe structures dating back to 1610, chatting with the squatting Indian vendors of jewelry spread out on blankets around the Governors Palace. Go for it if you’re tempted, our host was Elderhostel.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Cab drivers want more money, despite the 26% increase the Taxi and Livery Commission granted them in March 2004. Taxis are an important means of transportation for the people of East Midtown, despite the fact that we live in the middle of the well-served Union Square public traffic hub. Our aging population and the remoteness of ST/PCV make taxis a necessity.



Now three taxi organizations are out in public with proposals, largely motivated by fuel price increases, that would push gas price–indexed fare surcharges up, particularly impacting short trips. The TLC will make a decision before the end of June 2006.



The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, 7,000 strong, wants the flag drop, the startup number that appears on the meter at the beginning of the ride, increased by 50 cents if gas is above $2 a gallon, by $1 if its costs rise to between $3 and $3.99 for 30 consecutive days. The League of Mutual Taxi Owners, 3,400 owner-operators, want an immediate increase in the drop of 95 cents, 50 cents more if gasoline prices move above $3.50 for 60 days. The NYS Federation of Taxi Drivers people, a new name on the horizon, are aiming for a $1.50 surcharge if gas costs more than $3. a gallon.



These are no mean numbers, $1.50 a drop is the average, and no cutback is discussed – not that we can expect a reduction of fuel charges, the world trend is up and up. Besides, New York is not a customer-friendly habitat; we are both wealthy and impatient. It should make us reexamine the market and ourselves.



New York is probably the most luxurious transportation environment, despite our habitual complaints. We have 24/7 subway and bus services, mostly. We have a surfeit of taxis, out there cruising, the most expensive form of such service. Most of the world depends on both single and shared taxi services, some on demand and some on scheduled routes, the latter a cost savings for the passenger, at the expense of some walking. In Sweden taxis are state subsidized, particularly in rural services, to avoid having high-cost bus services in low-density environments. Maybe that sounds like another form of Scandinavian welfare state, but the claim is that the savings are substantial. Phone services are implicit in this environment, another form of gas cost reduction.



Phone services are becoming more popular, particularly in high technology cities. They involve well-managed dispatcher organizations (incidentally, a good job environment for the physically handicapped), either run by large firms or mutual organizations of individual owners. Well-managed is key. We had a personal experience that placed us at Newark Airport, 1:30 AM, waiting for a pickup by a driver from one of the largest car firms with a biblical name, arranged weeks ago, at a Manhattan delivery price of $50 plus tolls and tips. Calling the firm on a cell phone (how did we ever survive without them?) I was asked to be patient, a car would come in 5-6 minutes, and it was on its way. Some 20 minutes later, watching our fellow passengers being picked up by yellow cabs, I called back, only to hear an apologetic request to be patient, something had happened to the original car. Phone in hand, I spoke to the airport dispatcher, who had a cab for me instantly, at $45 plus plus, and the car company dispatcher acquiesced to the cancellation, seemingly much relieved ((I had my doubts that he had an actual car on the way).



On the way to Manhattan, our Newark cabbie chided us for calling the car service, assuring us that at Newark Airport yellow cabs were on hand, 24/7. He was a former New York City taxi driver, who had grown tired of the routine and moved to the suburbs. The high daily cab rental costs for the independent driver that the medallion owner companies charged, then $100 for a 12-hour shift, forcing drivers to no-break work sessions, the gas costs for cruising and the tension of constantly moving, looking for fares and watching the traffic for careless drivers all the time, all of that had taken its toll on him. Using his own low-cost car on his own time schedule, responding to bids from a radio dispatcher service, taking outgoing passenger airport jobs and waiting in the parking lot for returning flyers was much less wearing, and the cost of living was better. He had also once worked for the big New York car service, whose Mideastern management had since changed, to his regret. Meanwhile, he earned enough to visit his native Egypt and his large family every four months (when queried about the political climate, the words flew. Egyptians love Americans – but, ooh, that Bush! – and Saddam Hussein only killed 150 people! I was sorry I asked.)



Will metered cab fares go up? You bet. Where does this price situation leave those among us who depend on taxis daily? Are there any alternatives? Yeah, call car services, get a predetermined price. In other parts of the world negotiating such prices is customary, and zone rates in New York are well in place,as evidenced in the airports. A savvy Midtowner should be able to motivate a supplier into a contract with an established firm price for repeat trips.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

The 40% cut in urban security anti-terrorism funds (ATF) awarded to NYC by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has once more proven two points – that the administration uses the threat of terror as a political weapon to gain votes, and that NYC in the eyes of the official Washington and the red states is an enemy. If you find it paradoxical that a similar cut was experienced by Washington, DC, think again.



The ATF topic is particularly significant for us Midtowners, living near such targets as East River tunnels and bridges, major hospitals and the UN, the latter both a potential objective and a deterrent to terrorist attacks (do not ascribe a sense of reason to terrorists when Sunnis kill their co-religionists and potential allies Shiites as our collaborationists). The approach used by DHS, peer review of NYC’s plans, has the patina of business-like veracity, although the results show ignorance, prejudice and petty reasoning, e.g. accusing NYC of sloppy paperwork and pointing to absence of national monuments and icons. Another business methodology that would reveal the damages to the nation and the world, risk analysis, appears to have been ignored, typical of an administration that has ignored the potential of such damages consistently, in its war and peacetime policies.



I’ll abstain from reciting the cultural monuments at threat, there are economic and environmental dangers that will have worldwide impact, should terrorists penetrate the NYC defenses.



To begin, NYC is the world’s capital of finance, with targets that cannot be replaced no matter what mirroring record and alternate processing sites have been installed. The DHS evaluators in their profound ignorance (they forgot about the Statue of Liberty, possibly on purpose in their prejudice to immigrants) did not think of such institutions as Depository Trust Company, the world’s clearing house, that records and transfers titles, counting transactions in the trillions of dollars. The sites, no matter how perfect in a test environment (they never are, really) depend on people, and knowledgeable New Yorkers are a perishable commodity.



This brings up the unique geographic risk – New York is an island, and we cannot escape, should terrorists attack any combination of our bridges, tunnels and subway lines. Evacuation is impossible, and the existing facilities for traveling north – Willis Avenue Bridge and such – are inadequate even when operational. Add Long Island to the mix. None of the other major city targets have such vulnerabilities.



Next, the harbors and airports. New York is the largest intake facility, both of goods and people. Think disease, chicken flu or another pestilence. Medical observance of arrivals is critical, and requires human presence. This topic does not appear on the DHS observations, as reported in the press.



The importing of a “dirty bomb,” both intact or piece by piece, is a real threat. The critics of New York’s Atlas project (putting trained observant policemen in critical locations and alternating them in on a schedule that appears random) do not want to acknowledge that immediate reaction capacity is a cost-effective deterrent. They want to have cameras at critical centers that scare off terrorists, whether attended or not. This mass collection of data technique, monitoring by both phone and pictures, has been reported as ineffective, with massive data left unexamined forever, and the enemy knows it – although, putting aside the privacy issue, the method of collecting and extracting all calls passing through a suspect telephone might be more efficient than most other terror countermeasures, and should be made operational, with all the proper safeguards for protecting our civil rights. Making a 24/7 rotating judiciary rapid response system for evaluating subpoenas should cure the present ills – listen up, Washington.



The cameras are less efficient than the policemen on the beat, and monitoring a battery of them simultaneously is tedious, sleep inducing and therefore unreliable, a major controls weakness. There are effective analog watch systems in nuclear plants, oil refineries and other critical industrial facilities, geared to ring alarm bells upon the occurrence of specific events, but street-corner cameras are useful for stores and ATMs, to find the perpetrator after the event. A terrorist driving a truck will not be stopped by such equipment, only a policeman on the spot will provide a deterrent. Such cameras reacting to motion detectors and ringing bells for immediate response may be more effective, and should be installed in selected locations, but traffic-light cameras? Think efficiency, DHS.



Efficiency is not a DHS virtue, rather the opposite. For the past years small-town America has been claiming DHS funds to buy new fire trucks, night vision goggles and up the pay of officials. Where are the peer-group evaluations of these abuses of taxpayer money? The NYTimes unhesitatingly calls it pork-barrel politics, and the FEMA fiascos are a proof. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, defending the cuts of funding for New York and Washington and reportedly throwing money at Omaha and Louisville, is just another Administration spin-doctor, and has no credibility.



New York Congressional delegation must send facts to the DHS, not just pictures of our endangered landmarks. Good legislators, you must expose the ignorant and prejudiced practices, and claim the appropriate funds, to protect the city, the nation and the world.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

To visit Santa Fe, the Southwest’s cultural citadel, the wise tourist flies to Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city of 970K inhabitants, nearly half of the state’s population. The airport jitney takes about 75 minutes to deliver you to your hotel’s door ($25), traveling along Rte 25, with sagebrush badlands on both sides, livened by pinion and cedar (aka Utah juniper) trees, interspersed by Indian casinos and access roads to their pueblos and trading stations, eager for business. Many pinions, source of the amino-acid-rich pinion nuts, are dried up, victims of the Chinese bark beetle. This is Indian Reservation land, where mountain ranges surround the road, the empty flatland broken by arroyos, the dry river gulches, some wide as roads. The Sandia Mountains rise to the right, part of the Sandia Reservation, at the foot of which thrives the new $80M ten-story Sandia casino (best breakfast buffets, per our driver) is surrounded by fleets of cars, day and night.

Santa Fe, the capital, of 70K souls, is also rich, with neat hotels, mostly built in the sun-dried adobe brick style, soft-edged, with stucco surfaces, nearly all within the three-story height limit. Ours was a newly restored Holiday Inn, standard franchise design outside, internally pleasantly true to its environment, home to the Elderhostel tour that was to take us to the Four Corners (NM, CO, UT and AZ), to visit national and local parks built around the ruins of Anasazi Indian pueblos dating back to 800-1300 AD.

Jay Peck, an archeologist with a wide range of conservationist interests, raced us through the prehistory – early man, to 40,000 B(efore) P(resent), Pre-Clovis (to 15,000 BP), with relics in Chile, Mexico and Peru, as well as rock shelters in TX and PA that question the Bering Straits land bridge as the Amerindians’ chief arrival route, Clovis and Folsom flaked spear blade making paleo-Indians (to 9,000 BP), hunter-gatherers, and proto-agriculturians of Chiricahua and Oshara types, living in caves and rock shelter and using groundstone tools. Their tools survived in kitchen middens; the dwellings biodegraded.

That brought us up to the late prehistoric period, 2,500 to 500 BP in the Four Corners, covering people who actually built housing that survives to the present - the basketmaking Anasazis, to 1,000 BP, and pit-house users Mogollons and Hohokans (to appx. 2, 000 BP) – more agriculture, bow and arrow, ceremonialism, ceramics, Pueblo builders. Five styles of Pueblo construction – from stacked mortised rocks to flat stone surfaces and finely structured walls with courses of large and small stones alternating – were recognized, and will appear in the discussions of various sites. Puebloans were the predecessors of the current tribes, speakers of Tiwa, Towa and Tewa languages in the East and Zuni and Hopi in the West. Late nomadic migrators from the North, Comanches, Apaches and particularly Navajos (the latter two coming south to escape volcanic eruptions in Canada in the 6- and 800s) eventually merged in, and there is more than a suspicion of more materially advanced cultures –probably Northwest Mexican – being present, with their advanced skills.

That was straight archeology; more of a mystique has been added by the interesting discoveries of the last half-century, dealing with the solar and lunar orientations of Pueblo buildings. Such orientations were common in the magnificent city-states of Mesoamerica, where the Mayans had developed a 20-based numbers system recognizing zero, several calendars and an alphabet permitting complex solar and lunar recordkeeping for centuries, enabling them to develop solstice and equinox points, and to build structures that coincide with these orientations, thereby pleasing the many gods who govern men’s destinies. How the illiterate and numeric-system-lacking Amerindians managed to do the same, relying strictly on Homer-like oral memory, would be a miracle, unless other higher cultures helped. Puebloans also never discovered the wheel – in all fairness, neither did the Mayans, except to use in children’s toys.

Mexican influence appears to be present when evidence of cannibalism surfaced in some Four Corners ruins. All these topics are still unresolved, even among professionals, and they evoked intense discussions that continued as we, some 20 enthusiasts, visited the actual sites.

Our first bus ride, to Cortez, CO, brought us through the badlands and Espanola, the low-rider (rebuilt performance car) capital of the world, where Georgia O’Keefe had a nice hilltop house (admission is $22, if your application is accepted.) She originally had a cabin without any facilities in the desert, in Abiquiu, which we passed earlier, and her ashes were scattered over Pedernales Mountain. Ansel Adams shot the majestic Moonrise Over Hernandez nearby. NM is truly a state for artists.

The bare countryside sports surprisingly many blocks of garage size storage buildings.
One finds out that city vacationers rent them to house RVs, boats and trailers, overland vehicles and such, to avoid dragging from their homes for weekend activities, saving on gas and grief. In Chama, stopping for a bus problem, we got to see an ancient wooden cattle loading corral and train –height platform, to drive the animals into the Cumbres and Toltec railroad cars (now a museum and tourist line). Rural America is a messy place, with farm buildings and gear placed helter-skelter, unlike the Grandma Moses paintings of Vermont or New York. Maybe snow helps.

Colorado has lush green fields and deciduous forests, fed by Rio Grande and Chama river. This is rich country, with swimming pools, and busy Durango offers skiing and summer sports for tourist entertainment. Mesa Verde’s huge National Park, our first stop, had evidence of the earliest habitation, pit houses, deep rectangular holes with roofs built with a central rectangular square of beams (vegas) supported by strong uprights, and the sloping sides filled in with thinner poles (latias) and mud. Entry to the structure was by descending a ladder through a hole in the top. The central fireplace was protected by a wind deflector, there was a sipapu, a floor niche for the underground communication with the gods, and storage benches along the walls with low pilasters (attached columns). Manos and metates, the stones used in grinding corn, were part of the kitchen tools found in the dwellings.

The pithouses may have developed into kivas, similarly constructed larger round structures presumably used for devotions, healing rites and prayers for rain, also to gather for weaving and protection against weather and attackers. Kivas also had corbel roofs, of cross-stacked latias tapering upwards. Some kivas were towers inside enclosing walls. The pueblos over time evolved into two, three and four-story enclosed buildings, with T-shaped outside entrance doors leading into suites of connected rooms, with upstairs storage areas.

Some Puebloans retreated into buildings constructed on ledges and caves beneath overhanging cliffs inside a canyon. Raising food – corn, beans and squash was done above , on the mesa, and in the canyon. Food was scarce at certain times, which may have led to the abandonment of the Pueblos around 1300 AD and the move of the people into the valleys below. There were instances of re-occupation by other tribes, but by 1500 AD the pueblos in the Four Corners had emptied out. This may have been related to the emptying of the Mesoamerican Mayan cities somewhat earlier, with speculations leading to such causes as drought, politics, flight of the ordinary citizens, burdened in supporting the aristocracy with food and services, and northern aggressors. These are mysteries, and speculations abound, adding to the tourists’ interest.

The professionals are indebted to amateur archeologists, local settlers such as the Wetherill brothers and professional archeologist Gustaf Nordenskjold, who explored and protected the antiquities in the 1890s, preserving the Spruce Tree and Long House cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde (Wetherills also worked in Chelly and particularly in Chaco Canyon), Salmon family near the Aztec Ruins, and McElmo in Chaco Canyon.

Overnight in Cortez, we found great food at Nero’s and good shopping for turquoise jewelry at Notah-Dineh Trading Company, both old and antique, the latter a product of the ubiquitous pawnshops. Alcohol rather than gambling is the downfall of the Indian, and fried bread, the puffy pancakes full of lard, contribute to the incidence of overweight and diabetes. Good Navajo food is Mx Stew??? And green chile stew simply made, with fennel seeds and oregano. And squash??? At this time the visitor should be warned of choosing between green and red chile, a question that comes up in roadside stands and restaurants. To be safe, say Christmas.

Eventually we preceded to the little-known Howenweep National Monument in Utah, past an occasional Hereford cow, whiteface with short horns, staring at us, totally unlike Oklahoma and West Texas, chockfull with cattle. If cows were not so stupid, they would kill us (for what we do to them), I heard a local say. A free-range dobbin was also noted, apparently well fed and watered.

Howenweep is the home of the mysterious towers on both sides of a canyon, round, square and D-shaped, surrounded by Pueblo buildings, where you get, as a side benefit, a clear view of the Sleeping Ute mountain. Another part of the puzzle was a dwelling in an eroded boulder, sort of a rock cave, shaped like the head and the mouth of a giant serpent, with a row of dwellings above it resembling the winding body of a snake, giving rise to the speculations that Howenweep was a sacred site of the Puebloans, think of Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec/Aztec feathered serpent god. Nor unlikely, when seen in context with the solar and lunar lines.

Our next move led to Arizona and the Canyon of Chelly (pronounced Shay, although both names are corruptions of the Indian xxx), deep in the Navajo reservation that occupies a half of Northern AZ and fractions of CO and NM, home of the Dineh or Dene (the people). There are no casinos, the Navajos are wise to the corruptions that have destroyed their nation, now recovered to the strength of about 210,000 souls. The Thunderbird lodge’s cabins are decorated in native colors, and food is inexpensive , fried bread and bean soup for $3.85. The book stand near registration had a stock of several Tony Hillerman novels, and the giggly girl at the desk admitted to not having read them, although she knew hat he wrote about the Navajo reservation and Tribal police, and that the author, though a frequent visitor on the territory, lived in Albuquerque. The gift shop also had books, and expensive turquoise necklaces, oaf the squash pattern.

The Navajos have a distinct broad-faced Asian appearances, and are generally taller than most Puebloans. Pictures must not be taken without permission, and the re is a ranking in polite speech, putting the individual first. “Language creates reality,” and thus one says , “the man was bitten by the dog,” not “a dog bit the man!” The medicine man in a curing ceremony has to say the words just right, else the cure does not work. Do not interrupt. Looking directly at you is impolite, and the handshake is limp, not clutching.

Local families of the town, Chinle, come for dinner and to give their kids an outing in the park, the lodge’s picnic area. This is understandable in context, since the Indian dwellings in the surrounding farming area are dran, bare of trees and landscaping, due both to drought and the the sparse lifestyle. Many Farms, the township outside Chinle, has nostly single story houses, including single- and double –wides, with occasional hogans, the dual-purpose hexagonal structure that serves both as a devotional site and a dwelling. One speculates that it is a relic of the round Anasazi kiva, built with six, eight or more pilasters, and used for both religious and seculat purposes. In the Santa Fe Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, on Museum Hill, is a sample hogan (accent on the last syllable), a single room with a small dining area on one side and a propane- fired two burner stove on the other. An open larder shows cans of corn beef, fruit and vegetables, and a large bag of Indian Beans – there is no electricity and refrigeration, perhaps no flowing water.

To visit the Chelly Canyon, you r group hires an Indian guide with a pickup truck, the bed concerted to some 20 seats, locally known as Shake and Bake. You bring hats, jackets (it may be cold) and plenty of water. The trip leads through a suburb to a pure white sand road less desert, fine as the best beach, progressing to a beautiful woods with washboard dirt roads (the Shake component) and eventually reaching a high-sided canyon with both smooth and ribbed sandstone walls, wind and water erosion formed. Blue cobalt and black manganese deposits provided brush-stroke like discolorations, competing with the petroglyphs that the guide stops at and explains. Cliff dwellings high above are too far to examine, the truck stops to dismount only at Antelope and White House overlooks, for bathroom facilities and visits to the Indian turquoise sellers stands, simple card tables with fine goods at low prices, tourmaline and hematite, below those charged by the blanket-top sellers in Santa Fe, who squat in the choice spots aligned along the two sides of the Governors Palace sidewalk, across from the central Plaza.

Canyon de Chelly National Park, a United Nations Heritage Site, cannot be beaten for sheer beauty. Tamarisk and Russian olive trees, introduced during the 1930s to keep the soil down, unfortunately also sucking up scarce water, are now part of the landscape along with the native pinions. It is the home of a number of Indian families, and at strategic points of interest a beautiful child or a woman will emerge, with a stick hung with $5 necklaces, silently passing the truck and stopping when addressed. She will allow pictures, when asked by a buyer. Photography in Navajo country is by permission only, and may cost $5. these are poor people and store-bought food is expensive. The average income in NM is 25K/yr, compared to New Jersey’s $40K.

The famous Navajo blankets and rugs, high quality hand-women textiles at prices ranging from a few hundred dollars to thousands, are sold through responsible dealers (e.g. Packard’s in Santa Fe) or museum shops, with certificates of documentation. The Two Grey Hills type, known as the Cadillac of blankets, is the most liked, with its brown and tan shades surrounded by black and white margins. It blends everywhere, and should be hung or draped rather than used as area rug. Another is the sand-painting style, representing the stick-like fire dancer figures. (Sand paintings, drawn for healing ceremonies on the dirt floor of the Hogan with colored sands from various local regions, with the patient placed in the center, are destroyed after the curing event.) The red Ganado and ziggedy Storm patterns are also popular. Antique Chief’s blankets, striped (1st Phase), with rectangular inserts (2nd Phase) or pictures (3rd Phase) will cost a fortune.
There are gorgeous Chimayo (NM Indian), Mexican (Zapotecs from Oaxaca) and Belgian look-alikes, at low prices, and eBay sellers. Buyers beware.

Progressing from Chelly, with a well-rested driver (they are in demand in NM, and old timers whose families can spare them for week- long sojourns come out of retirement) we came to Farmington in north NM, the access town for Four Corners. Our first objective was Salmon Ruins, a farm whose owners took good care in preserving a 150-room pueblo. Here we saw doorstop lintels of pine wood sticks, surviving eight centuries without rotting, surprisingly firm and actually easy to hold onto. I should not have touched it, it was for 5’ people; I call passing through them the lintel limbo, and advise the elders to walk through backwards, if there is a descending step on the other side. Now managed by archeologist Larry Baker, who can spin tales for hours that will hold you enthralled, it is a popular site for school tours and serious students come to use its library. On the grounds you can study reconstructions of an Indian forked stick hogan, a wikiup, tipees and wigwam.

Not far away is Aztec Ruins National Monument, another huge Pueblo settlement of 450 rooms and a half-dozen kivas, including the Great Kava (diameter 41’), excavated in 1921 and rebuilt by Earl Morris in 1934, with a high roof , deemed to be taller than the original. It was Anasazi rather than Aztec, predating the latter, but the name stuck. Apache were not here; they were bringing trading goods to Pecos, 250 miles to the East – slaves (Pawnees), bison products and good stone – but were chased out by the Comanche’s in the 1700s.

Finally, after leaving Farmington, we came to the great Chaco Culture National Historical Park another UN World Heritage site. It contains about 10 sites, around the Chaco Canyon, of which Pueblo Bonito is the most impressive, constructed in stages , 850-1150 AD. Small pueblos probably housing foreign laborers, as evidenced by different wall patterns of rooms within the same complex and dating to the same period. It is here, in their kitchen middens that archeologist Christy Turner discovers some evidence of cannibalism, known to exist in Mexico(his main discoveries, collected over two decades and still hotly disputed, were in the San Juan River Valley.)

A petroglyph walking trail leads to Bonito, the pictures, scraped or chipped into the sandstone cliffs illustrate the Puebloan home lives, fruit, tools and pottery, further adorned by Boy Scouts and Morris the idiot. Cliff faces show beam holes where multi-story wooden buildings were once attached.

At Bonito you see all four styles of walls, multi-story relics with T-shape doors, round subterranean kivas, a huge plaza. Chacoans had an advanced civilization form in building multi-story dwellings; they used veneered walls, with stone veneers on the outside and support stones and mud inside. The stone patterns were beautiful, and ,as discovered by artist Anna Sofaer, are directionally matched to lunar standstill, or solar orientations. Beam sockets reveal the existence of 2nd and more floors. The museum at Chaco has a diorama that makes a Chacoan pueblo look much like a modern motel – each upper floor has beams, vegas extending outwards, covered with wood and making walkways between the individual suite entrance doors, with wooden ladders connecting the floors at the ends of the building. It is true that vegas extended somewhat outside the ecterior walls, as many buildings show, but none of the ruins have them extend quite fat enough for a walkway. Interesting thought .

It is estimated that Chacoans left around 1150, perhaps because of increasing flooding from St Juan River, more likely due to unknown reasons, possibly to climatic degradations, moving to Aztec.

Steven Lekson, the “Mr. Chaco” among archeologists, has important observations regarding the great kivas of Chaco and the actions of their caciques (priests). Whether worship of Quetzalcoatl, the exiled Mexican king/god, whose return should bring great tidings (Cortez, arriving in Mexico City, received a great welcome because of being mistaken for the god) was involved in the Chaco religious ceremonies is debatable (jay Peck suggests that this thought comes from the Quetzalcoatl-like figures of the Awanyu of the Rio Grande Pueblos, the Kolowisi of Zuni, and the baliligong of the Hopi). The Kachina cult, with dancers from the stars, was present, probably after 1000 AD, and the dancers had a special entrance to the kivas, dramatically emerging from the underground.

Chaco has also what appears to be a tri-wall structure, a kiva, similar to one in Peru, another mystery.

We are now leaving the route and entering Santa Fe, capital of NM, which is also part of the mystery. It dates back to 1610, when the original Governor’s palace was built, and it has the 3rd largest collection of art galleries in the US, after NYC and San Francisco. Sixteen miles???North is Los Alamos with its nuclear energy research facility, built on a fault, a frightening thought, and there is Almagordo where in 1945 the first test of an atomic explosion was performed. Finally Roswell, where two alien spaceships crashed in 194x, and the findings were promptly hidden away by the US Air Force Command, with an innocuous explanation. If you go up there, you can get a guided tour for $4x, with an explanation that will leave you scratching your head. Between Rainford and the Anasazi mysteries, one feels as though living out a Dan Brown novel.

More to come

At is pont I must talk of Maggie Dew, who made the tour a pleasure, keeping the stragglers alert and mobile. A graduate student of archeology, a major registered nurse who speaks Navajo and Arabic (she has worked at exotic sites), she held us together and had knowledge and opinions, sometimes confirming as well as questioning the volatile and incomparable scholar, Jay Peck. Between them they kept this note-taker busy; the wisdom is theirs, the errors are mine.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

The unrelenting attacks on the Presidency from Democratic politicians, ex-Generals and an ex-CIA analyst successfully calling Secretary Rumsfeld a liar are depressing. The world is losing respect for us.



The opinion polls speak for themselves, we all know the mantra, that the Bush government lied about WMD, botched the conduct of the war and has left us without a solution; that their tax policy has dug a deficit hole that makes even the Conservatives shudder; that the horrid balance of trade with Chinese and Japanese ownership of the US can cause a collapse of our economy; that a feeble oil company- friendly resources policy has driven gas prices sky-high; that Washington’s denial about greenhouse gases will eventually melt the ice caps and flood Florida and all low-lying world areas; that the undercutting of the Clean Air Act will eventually choke us all. The unsuccessful Chavez policy has created a South American leftist monster, and the Bush North Korea and Iran policy wrecks have put us in danger of nukes. There’s more, the Texas Senate redistricting and the Abramoff scandals, the mind boggles.



What is truly horrifying is that we do not know is whether anybody – the Republican post-Bushite followers, the Conservative reformers, and particularly the all-but triumphant Democratic putative successors in both 2006 and 2008 general elections – can produce the silver bullet, the policy that will save America and protect Planet Earth from self-destruction, both physically and politically. One is almost prompted to invest in white sheets and bicycles, and lurch towards Doomsday, proclaiming the end of the world as we know it. Why any sane person should want to be the President in this environment and pretend to have the answers to the world’s problems is puzzling, and the candidates’ self-assurance makes one wonder about their grasp on reality. A candidate’s enrolling in a Condi Rice-type Kaplan SAT refresher course on world politics and a quick trip to Israel is no guaranty of instant knowledge and a balanced mind.



Of course, the Democrats, trying to lure the middle-of-the road Republican voters back into the 180-degree party, are not going to make general announcements of middle-of-the road politics that might push their left-wing voters into a Naderite camp, with shades-of-2000 election results. The left-wing marginals are reckless, and any mention of soft-pedaling of gay marriage, late-trimester abortion and anything short of instant withdrawal from Iraq might just send the far-out Deaniacs into a splinter party. Bush has no such worries, the confirmed Conservatives have no place else to go, and John McCain has broken bread with the Bushists and the Religious Right, whose leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell offer reckless policy recommendations that make one shudder.



Looking at Dems one wishes for a young Clinton-like mind with an early acquired frame of reference that easily slots new facts into the populated matrix and offers non-cowboy reactions. Senator Clinton is not the same, and neither is the ex-President of today, and counting on him as being her shadow cabinet is wishful. As for her merits, she carries a lot of luggage, and there are Right-wing fringes that see her as the devil incarnate. But she continues, with 26 staffers in the HillPac, first for a reprise as Senator, then the big job.



There was a point when Bill Richardson, Governor of NM since 2002 (b. 1947, as is Hillary), seemed a choice, but he has faded. Ex- Tufts baseball pitcher (candidate for KC Athletics), State Department official, NM congressman 1978-92, Ambassador to the UN, peace negotiator, Secretary of Energy, he knows the territory. Contrast him to the current young hopes, ex- Governor Warner of VA, and John Edwards, ex- one-term Senator of NC (b. 1953), who made his fortune in liability litigation, until an epiphany produced a near calling, directing him into help-save-the-mankind political lifework.



The less well-known Mark Warner (b. 1954), a Harvard lawyer, former aide to Senator Christopher Dodd, who used his knowledge in cellular technology to build a $200M fortune in franchise licenses, co-founding Nextel and Columbia Cellular. He ran Democratic campaigns in Republican Virginia, making alliances with moderate Republicans, winning the Governorship in 2001 by a large margin, and lowered taxes, realigned budget and improved education and economics. Out in 2005 (VA constitution forbids successive terms), he was hugely liked as a person, activist and bridge-builder.



On the Republican side, the moderates who hope to gain from the shift away from Bushism are George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani. The lame-duck NY Governor hopes for red-state support, and has built up a strong FreedomFund. The ex-Mayor Giuliani is currently exploring his options. As advocates of abortion and gay rights, they have limited expectations for support from the Religious Right masses in the red states. As for the Republicans, Bill Frist (b. 1952) and his Volunteerpac, George Allen, Senator and ex-Gov. of VA (b.1952), and MA Gov. Mitt Romney (b. 1947) of Commonwealthpac are gearing up, more on another occasion.



Our local political activists, Democrats of the Samuel Tilden, Eleanor Roosevelt and Gramercy Stuyvesant Independent Democratic clubs, and the Republicans of the Vincent Albino Club have a lot of factors to evaluate in the next four years.