Straus Park in New York

Bronze figure titled "Memory" gazing into the reflecting pool
in Straus Park was sculpted by Augustus Lukeman
and dedicated on April 15, 1915.

I had my tablet with me while sitting in Straus Park in the Upper West Side in New York, and searched for the biblical quotation inscribed behind the statue (in gold, it is visible in the above photo) to see it in the context of the biblical story it came from:

Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives
And in their death they were not divided
II Samuel 1:23

The quote is a strange and obscure one. It tells the relationship between a father and a son (Saul and Jonathan), whereas the memorial is dedicated to a married couple.

I suppose we can use biblical texts to transfer to, and describe, many kinds of loves. Still, it is a little strange to transfer a father/son love to that of a married couple.

Ida and Isador Straus were on the Titanic when it sank. Ida, rather than save her life by boarding a lifeboat which was rescuing women and children (first), decided to stay with her husband as the ship sank. Eye witnesses say that Ida chose to remain on board with her husband, saying,"I have lived all these years with you. Where you go, I go."

Straus Park with the sculpture and the small garden,
with 106th street in the background

I think a Biblical quote more appropriate to a married couple could have been found. I'm not sure who chose this quote, but it is probably a team of people from the various New York city offices, the sculptor and the the Straus family descendants. The plaque behind the memorial informs us that it was:


There is also an eternal fountain (see top image), which originally flowed into a reflecting pool. The pool was filled in to create a flower bed for easier maintenance.

Water lilies float serenely in the reflecting pool during
the dedication of the Straus Memorial in 1915
[Photo Source: Library of Congress]

The portrait below is of Isador and Ida Straus. Here is information on Isador Straus, who was an important citizen of New York:

Isidor Straus (February 6, 1845 – April 15, 1912), a German-American, was co-owner of Macy's department store with his brother Nathan. He also served briefly as a member of the United States House of Representatives. He died with his wife, Ida, in the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Titanic.

Isador and Ida Straus about 1910
[Photo source: Straus Historical Society]

A Road Less Taken

A view of the Cloisters with the Hudson River

I cannot upload photos from my camera to the computer I'm using while in New York. I will make a file (a post) of photos I took here when I return to Toronto.

But, there are plenty of online images to download.

I tried to get to the Cloisters today. They are a branch of the Metropolitan Museum, but they are somewhere in the Netherlands of New York City. They are located in an area called Fort Tyron Park. The closest street intersection is 190th Street. I'm not sure if this is the Bronx, or if it is still Harlem, but I decided to take the M4 bus which supposedly goes straight there. It didn't happen so easily.

There was some kind of parade (actually it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade, or more precisely the National Puerto Rican Day Parade - what is "national" about Puerto Ricans in New York?) which held up buses between 44th and 79th on Fifth Avenue. At one point I waited close to half an hour to get a bus. When one finally arrived and we climbed on, we had to get off on 135th Street because...well the driver couldn't give a reason. He parked the bus and waited inside. Then this parked bus suddenly took life, and the patient group that was waiting for another (some people just left - to catch a cab?!) was allowed back on this one.

But it really was worth the wait. The ride on the M4 from about 135th street down to 79th was incredible. The bus went down Riverside Drive, along the Hudson and past the beautiful Riverside Church (which I think is even more beautiful than St. Patrick's, or St. John the Divine's just above 110th Street) until the driver turned on 79th Street and took Broadway. I went all the way to 59th Street and Columbus Circle and took the M10 down Central Park West, to get more views of another of New York's beautiful park. I got off just before 110th Street, where Central Park ends, to get to where I was staying on the Upper West Side. The ride took shorter than I thought, although it is a good 45 minutes. I highly recommend this "tour" for a mere bus token ($2.25). There were plenty of tourist buses taking a similar route, and I'm sure their's was an expensive affair.

A view of the Riverside Church with the Hudson River

One of the reasons I wanted (want) to go to the Cloisters is to see the beautiful unicorn tapestries.

The Unicorn in Captivity
At The Cloisters

(I've linked to backgrounds on The Cloisters and the tapestries, but I will write some more tomorrow on how they got to New York and to such a location. It is a fascinating bit of New York history.)

A Hierarchy of Bouquets

Left: Marc Chagall, Bouquet sur Fond Orange, ca. 1975
Middle: Raoul Dufy, Le Bouquet d'Arums, 193)
Right: Jean-Pierre Cassigneul, Bouquet de Fleurs, 1968

Larger images:
- Marc Chagall's Bouquet sur Fond Orange
- Raoul Dufy's Le Bouquet d'Arums
- Jean-Pierre Cassigneul's Bouquet de Fleurs

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I've found similarities between Chagall, Dufy and Cassigneul (see my posts on their paintings here, here and here). But, like everything in art, there is a hierarchy. It goes:

First: Chagall
Second: Dufy
Last: Cassigneul

1. Chagall's Bouquet sur Fond Orange is an explosion of colors. But his painting is much more organized and structured than it seems. For example, he has divided his color blocks into three: floral sections of violet/blue and red/pink, and green/yellow leaves. The orange, which is reflected in the brownish pot, is the glow of light which illuminates the forms. Being Chagall, he cannot help but add in his village/town life, a glance at civilization. This painting is about an arranged, designed vase of flowers, not flower growing in the wild. Homes line the painting's background, and a fruit tree, another form of civilization, stands next to the table with the flowers. His bouquet dwarfs other items on the table, and rightly so since it is the most important item in the painting. It dwarfs a bowl of fruit and what look like a bottle of wine and a glass filled with wine, and a salt or pepper shaker. A miniature women dressed in red stands by the table. Clearly, the subject of the painting is the bouquet, and not her.

2. Next in hierarchy are Dufy's whimsical flowers in Le Bouquet d'Arums. Dark red and black ink trace the forms of calla lilies, leaves and small floral shapes, which are covered with strokes of colors. These colors are suggested rather than filling the forms with exactitude. The red flower could be a carnation: the lilac and purple of small flowers, the yellow and white of the lilies, and dark green for leaves. Rather than result with an unfinished effect, this evokes whimsy and delicacy, where shapes float in colors, and colors never completely define, or constrain shapes.

3. Finally Cassigneul's Bouquet de Fleurs. I tried looking for flowers without the perennial silent woman that fills his works, but could find only a few. I couldn't find any of the joyful, colorful renditions of bouquets that Chagall and Dufy paint. Instead, this was the best I could find. As always with Cassigneul, there is a lack of form. The tulips and roses are a blurred and shapeless, and the leaves blend into the background wall. Dufy's quasi-unfinished forms give us whimsy; Cassigneul's just look unfinished. This is because Cassigneul doesn't draw, but rather paints spots of color to form his shapes. His pot is the most elaborate of the three paintings, but it distracts from the flowers. Chagall left his pot without patterns. Dufy's callas could be in a garden, or in a vase that is below the paintings frame. Cassingeul pot is covered with an unidentifiable pattern his pot, which add a further layer of confusion. As always with Cassigneul, I feel that he is a clever painter, but not a very talented one.

And when we put him alongside the other two, we can see his limitations even more.

Art these days lacks a critical approach, partly because of the attitude that "everyone is an artist, don't you know," and a disrespect for art history and all our predecessors. We seem intent on working with a clean memory slate.

And modern art is all about deconstructing, then reconstructing. This is great if you were born about seventy-five years ago, where there were great works to deconstruct (and reconstruct, in your fashion). What we have now is an already diluted, deconstructed art, several generations down the masterpiece line. What can we deconstruct? The deconstructed pieces? This, of course, resulted with the famous empty canvasses that hang on museum walls, to the amusement of the unsuspecting public. Now, we just works that are dredged from an empty imagination, since there is nothing left that is worthy enough to guide us.

Anti-Semitism Is Evil Intentions Towards Jews

A group of Jews, including a small boy, is escorted from
the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers in this April 19, 1943 photo.
The picture formed part of a report from SS Gen. Stroop
to his Commanding Officer, and was introduced as evidence
to the War Crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1945. (AP Photo)
[Source: The Atlantic, Oct 16, 2011]

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GalliaWatch writes:

Here's a must-read article posted in English at Front Page Magazine, and in French at Riposte Laïque. The author, Giulio Meotti describes the end of European Jewry, as Islam slowly but surely takes over. Whatever happens to the Jews, you can be sure, will happen to all of us.

I agree with the overall warning in her article, but I think we should look at anti-Semitism and its evil intentions towards Jews as something that happens to Jews. Of course, all evil eventually destroys what is before it. But, the intention of anti-Semitism is the destruction of Jews. I think we should be able to understand that without transferring it to us.

I do agree, though, that Islam has a more thorough system of elimination, and a wider span. Its strongest hatred is directed at Jews, but all other infidels follow. In terms of combating Islam, it is important to understand this method of elimination, because, yes, as Giulio Meotti writes, next are all the other infidels.

Balenciaga! The Old Master is Still Ahead

1950s Balenciaga coat inspired by
Goya's Cardinal Luis
Maria de Borbón y Vallabriga

Left: Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
Right: Francisco de Goya's Cardinal Luis Maria de Borbón y Vallabriga, 1800

Left: Balenciaga "Infanta" evening dress, 1939, inspired by
Diego Velázquez' 1653 painting of the Infanta Margarita
Right: Balenciaga's illustration of the dress

Left: Diego Velázquez, The Infanta Margarita, 1653
whose dress Balenciaga used as an inspiration
Right: Picasso's Version
Shameless art destroyer and fellow Spaniard (who
went to art school) did his own version of the Infanta

Charlotte Gainsbourg modeling modern Balenciaga,
whose designer, Nicolas Ghesquiere, calls her his muse.
Ghesquiere is another one of those contemporary
designers who cannot see beauty if he was given the moon.
Ugliness is his curse.

Balenciaga's Spain: Bullfighters, Boleros and Flamenco Dancers

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While looking for a Gardenia perfume, a salesman at the Bay's general perfume counter suggested I try Balenciaga's eponymous scent. It is really very good, with a delicate, yet enduring floral/powdery scent. He gave me two samples. The usual salesman I go to had been promoted to the Givenchy counter. I usually show him my latest finds from various magazines. He is often impressed that I know more than him about perfume, at least for that day.

A pleasant saleswoman at Eaton's also gave me a sample bottle. And at Sephora's, my favorite perfume store, the salesgirl "prepared" a sample tube for me. I told her that I was really glad that perfume makers are creating stronger scents with distinct floral overtones, unlike the insipid fruity concoctions that are so popular these days. I said that this means that women want to be like women, rather than like adolescent girls. I said that I wished that would transfer into fashion, which is now a disaster with all the shorts and flip-flops that women are wearing.

"Think of the beautiful, well-constructed, clothes of the fifties. How daring were they, with those amazing color combination! Now all we have is grey, beige or black, with slivers of color mostly in the ugly prints on t-shirts," I said.

"I wouldn't want to go back to the fifties. They were really restrictive on women," replied this nice woman.

Feminism rears its ugly head in unexpected places. I thought this woman, who works in a perfume store, would have some appreciation for beauty and beautiful clothes. Yet all she sees is that feminine clothes are "restrictive." In her eyes, women should dress like androgynous blobs since feminine clothing makes them suffer.

Actually, she has it all wrong. The cellulite-baring skirts and shorts that are a couple of sizes too small which women wear these days surely leave them unable to walk or sit comfortably. And on the other extreme, I'm noticing a reaction to all this lost femininity, where women are wearing such high heels that I'm afraid to look at them in case of the inevitable fall. Fifties heels were much lower, and much more feminine.

I think this nice lady felt bad disagreeing with me (she was a little emphatic), and gave me ah handful of samples, including Tom Ford's and Marc Jacobs' Gardenia scents.

Of course, true to our postmodern world, Balenciaga's perfume is being advertized by the androgynous (and ugly) French celebrity Charlotte Gainsbourg. She is the daughter of the French Jewish singer Serge Gainsbourg (the Leonard Cohen of France), and the awful English actress Jane Birkin, whose breathy songs in heavily accented French somehow made it into the French song charts.

Still, the perfume is lovely. The perfume designer is Olivier Polge.

I have to add, though, that Balenciaga is of the "gay fashion designers" group. Valentino, who does equally lovely feminine clothes, was another homosexual prominent in women's fashion design. Both, at least to give them some credit, were of the old school, and didn't flaunt their homosexuality, unlike a stream of contemporary "gay" designers that thrust their egos at us. And not surprisingly, Valentino and Balenciaga spent their energy designing beautiful clothes, while the Gallianos and McQueens (what an apt name) of our time give us their distorted egos instead. But, as many high level designers show us, gayness is not a prerequisite for a male to have have a career in fashion design.

Here are the main notes for Balenciaga:
bergamot, spices, violet,
carnation, oakmoss,
cedar, vetiver, patchouli

And as this perfume blogger writes: "it's quietly elegant...[and] modern and grown-up."

That best describes the classic Balenciaga fashion design as well.

Several books have come out on Balenciaga since 2011. And there was the 2010 exhibition Balenciaga: Spanish Master at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York which

examines the influence of Spanish culture on the late, great couturier. Conceived by designer Oscar de la Renta and curated by Vogue’s European Editor at Large and vintage couture authority, Hamish Bowles, the spectacular show examines how Cristóbal Balenciaga was influenced by Spanish royal court––and regional––dress, religious ceremony, dance, art, and bullfighting.

Below are some of Balenciaga's (the original) designs, mostly from the 1950s.

Happy Fourth of July!

Fourth of July Cake, from Make My Cake in New York
[Image source: New York Post]

July 1 (dubbed Canada Day) doesn't come close to the holiday celebrated across the border."Happy Fourth of July!" really does evoke a holiday, in the middle of summer, with fireworks, barbecues, street festivals, and generally happy people, and of course independence.

But Lawrence Auster, at the View From the Right, presents a different perspective:

How can I—how can anyone—read the Declaration aloud this year in honor of American existence and American liberty? The colonies that were acting in unison as "one people," and in the act named themselves the United States of America, the free country that brought itself into existence with that Declaration on the basis of God-ordained limits on government power, has, as of June 28, 2012, officially come to an end. As a commenter at Lucianne.com has put it, "Think of Obamacare as the Declaration of Dependence."

The Declaration of Independence no longer represents what our country actually is. It represents our past country, and, perhaps, a future country. If we are to read the Declaration together, it can only be in that spirit, as patriotism to a non-existent country. As I said on the morning of June 28, patriotism to the United States as it actually exists "is simply subscription to, loyalty to, patriotism to, obedience to, a leftist unlimited state."

Wikipedia on Canada Day explains that:

Canada Day (French: Fête du Canada) is the national day of Canada, a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the British North America Act, 1867 (today called the Constitution Act, 1867, in Canada), which united three colonies into a single country called Canada within the British Empire. Originally called Dominion Day (French: Le Jour de la Confédération), the name was changed in 1982, the year the Canada Act* was passed. Canada Day observances take place throughout Canada as well as by Canadians internationally.

The operative word is "within the British Empire."

The first sentence on the Wikipedia entry on Canada tells us that:

Canada is a federal state governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state.

This ambiguous notion of independence brought about the awful multiculturalism, where a burqad, Muslim woman, jarring and alien to Canadian culture and history, can happily stand at a Canada Day "celebration" and talk about being a "Canadian."

But no country is immune to destructive forces, so I will cautiously wish Americans a Happy Fourth of July, but also heed them to pay close attention to those forces rising in their country.

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*

The Canada Act 1982 (1982 c. 11) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was passed at the request of the Canadian federal government to "patriate" Canada's constitution, ending the necessity for the country to request certain types of amendment to the Constitution of Canada to be made by the British parliament. The Act also formally ended the "request and consent" provisions of the Statute of Westminster 1931 in relation to Canada, whereby the British parliament had a general power to pass laws extending to Canada at its own request. [Source: Canada Act 1982, from Wikipedia]

Ghost Trains at City Hall

[Photos by John-Paul Palescandolo & Eric Kazmirek]. The link is to the website of the photographers, who write more technical information on how John-Paul Palescandolo took the photos.

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Above are photographs of New York City's City Hall "ghost station" which was shut down in 1945. More photographs, plus some photographs of the opening day of the station, are at the Daily Mail.

From Wikipedia:

City Hall, also known as City Hall Loop, was the original southern terminal station of the first line of the New York City Subway, built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), named the "Manhattan Main Line", and now part of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line. Opened on October 27, 1904, this station underneath the public area in front of City Hall [which] was designed to be the showpiece of the new subway...employing Romanesque Revival architecture. The platform and mezzanine feature Guastavino tile, skylights, colored glass tilework and brass chandeliers. Passenger service was discontinued on December 31, 1945, making it a ghost station, although the station is still used as a turning loop for 6 and [6] trains. [More at Wikipedia]

Etching of the East Room at the White House

I had blogged earlier on Michelle Obama and Jill Biden in the White House's East Room, and its "lovely canary yellow drapes." While looking for more information on the East Room, I found this etching from the website The White House Museum, dated "around" 1858. There are more archival photos of the White House rooms at the website, through various renovations and presidents.

Spring Flowers and a Bit of Toronto History

The Toronto Coach Terminal
[Photo by KPA]

The Toronto Coach Terminal, built in 1931 by architect Charles Dolphin, still stands as part of Toronto's history. It was once considered a grand building, but is now dwarfed by the downtown skyscrapers, and the inside has lost the grandeur of its heyday. Still, the building stands out in its own way on the boring strip of Dundas and Bay, and the interior is light and airy enough to make traveling by bus an exciting adventure.

Toronto Coach Terminal
[Source: Urban Toronto]

Toronto Coach Terminal in 1931, then known as the
Gray Coach Terminal, built in the Art Deco style by Charles Dolphin
[Source: Wikipedia]

Coach Terminal Opening in 1931.
Ribbon ceremony with W.H. Price, acting premier of Ontario
[Source: The Toronto Star Photo Gallery]

A Grey Coach Lines bus waiting to departing 1932
[Source: The Toronto Star Photo Gallery]

A Grey Coach Terminal Interior, 1931
[Image Source: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 16, Series 71,
Item 9035, via Wikipedia]

A Grey Coach Terminal Interior, Now
[Image Source: Canadian Public Transit Board]

Moving Forward!

Mengistu Haile Mariam with raised fist

"Mitt Romney Makes Fun of Obama Campaign Slogan During High-Dollar Fundraiser" says this headline, but Romney is not wrong, although a little naive. The article says:

Mitt Romney this evening, speaking to a group of high-dollar donors at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, poked fun at President Obama's newly unveiled campaign slogan, "Forward," remarking, "Forward, what, over the cliff?"

"Forward" is actually a communist/socialist slogan which this Washington Times article correctly identifies:

The Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

African Marxist countries also used "forward" as a slogan. "Etiopia Tikdem," which loosely translated is "Ethiopia First" but actually means "Let Ethiopia Come First" or "Let Ethiopia Go Forward," was a well-known slogan during Marxist Ethiopia.

"Etiopia Tikdem" on a helmet

Even non-Marxists like us liked the sound of it for a while. Some still use it, a little nostalgically and ironically. Here is a blogger, whose name is Etiopia (it is common to give girls the name "Etiopia"), who uses it as her Facebook title. She's too young to have lived through the worst of the communist regime, but somehow the phrase has prevailed, and she associates with it positively.

Hitler's Death

Hitler committed suicide 67 years ago on April 30th, 1945.

Here is a post I wrote on April 30th which I titled "Hitler's Manhood." It was a review of his picture on various Time Magazine covers, as well as his Man of the Year title he received from Time for 1938.

Of course my blog title was ironic. Here is a "man" who opted to kill, while real men would sacrifice themselves to save lives.

Hitler died, as many weak (unmanly) men die, by suicide.

I wrote my blog post on the anniversary of Hitler's death. I didn't know this. In fact, I didn't know much about Hitler other than the circulating stories about him.

I also ominously write in this Hitler post about another Götterdämmerung, which might really be the last one, and I attribute it to Muslims.

Hitler's Manhood

Time Magazine's issue of Hitler as Man of the Year

[Large image here, Click on linked image to magnify further]

The caption reads:

Man of 1938
From the Unholy Organist, a hymn of Hate

The illustration shows:

Organist Adolf Hitler playing his hymn of hate in a desecrated cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the Nazi hierarchy looks on, was drawn by Baron Rudolph Charles von Ripper (see p. 20), a Catholic who found Germany intolerable.

The illustration is by Baron Rudolph Charles von Ripper [text of linked article is small, but the biography is the most complete I can find online]

Hitler on the cover of Time:
Top - Left: 1931, Right: 1933
Bottom - Left: 1936, Right: 1941

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A couple of days ago, the T.V. game show Jeopardy asked who was the Time Magazine Man of the Year for 1938 as its final question. Guess, if you don't know.

Unbelievably it was Hitler.

By 1938, there was enough information coming out of Germany to paint a viscous picture of Hitler's ambitions and rise to power, including his invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Below is a review of Hitler as he attains the leadership of the Nazi Party to his death by suicide in 1945.

On November 8th, 1923, Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi Party for short, marched with 2,000 Nazis to disrupt a meeting at the Munich Beer Hall (known as the Beer Hall Putsch) to spark a "revolution." This failed. The following morning, Hitler and about 3,000 Nazis marched in Munich to take over the entire city. This was averted by the police. Hitler was arrested two days later at his hiding place in the attic of friends. He served only one of his five-year term. He wrote most of his Mein Kampf treatise while in prison. The book was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926. There was no doubt what he thought about, and intended for, the "Jewish Question." In 1933, he was elected Chancellor of Germany by popular vote. In 1936, his government hosted the summer Olympic Games in Berlin, a prestigious recognition of his country by the world at large.

Hiter's aggressive leadership, his clear-cut anti-Semitism, his nationalistic politics to bring Germany to the forefront of Europe through Nazism, and his expansionary goals, were ignored or undermined by world leaders, despite enough (I could say ample) evidence.

The January 2 1939 edition of Time Magazine named him Man of the Year for 1938, as a world figure who "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year." This ambiguous honor gave some legitimacy to Hitler's leadership by the world at large.

Here is more from the 1939 article in the magazine, describing Hitler:

[T]he figure of Adolf Hitler strode over a cringing Europe with all the swagger of a conqueror. Not the mere fact that the Führer brought 10,500,000 more people (7,000,000 Austrians, 3,500,000 Sudetens) under his absolute rule made him the Man of 1938...More significant was the fact Hitler became in 1938 the greatest threatening force that the democratic, freedom-loving world faces today.

In March 1938, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany, but with no military action against Germany. Hitler then invaded Norway and Denmark, and launched his blitzkrieg on Holland, Belgium and France by 1940. Churchill, who became Prime Minister of Britain in 1940, led the British to war against Germany with his June 1940 "Finest Hour" speech, and his famous line:

"I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin."

The Americans joined soon after, in December 1941

Hitler stayed in power from 1933 until the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. He had managed to convince the German people to elect him as their leader despite his aggressive and destructive coup on the German government more than ten years earlier. His stint in prison was forgotten. His book, Mein Kampf, failed to alert the public of his true intentions. His invasions were initially downplayed by foreign nations. News, reports, and perhaps more importantly anecdotes by Jewish dissidents to America on this treatment of Jews in Germany, including stories of Jews being rounded up for labor/concentration camps, were ignored or downplayed.

On November 9, 1938, his SA stormtroopers conducted two days of destruction and pogrom on Jewish neighborhoods using as a pretext the shooting of a German Embassy staff in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jewish student. Grynszpan was retaliating against the deportation of his parents from Germany to Poland. Although the international community condemned this Germany-wide pogrom, or Kristallnacht as it is known, some by cutting off diplomatic relation with Germany, Hitler suffered no serious consequences. The world didn't take his clearly displayed Jewish animosity as a precursor to his impending aggressions.

Hitler himself said in a public speech in January 1939:

"If international-finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging the nations into yet another world war, the consequences will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation (vernichtung) of the Jewish race in Europe."

His speech was included in

the 1940 Nazi propaganda movie The Eternal Jew (Der ewige Jude), whose purpose was to provide a rationale and blueprint for eliminating the Jews from Europe. [Source: Wikipedia]

It would take Britain and France another eight months after Time's honor of Hitler before they would declare war on Germany, and another nine months before Winston Churchill would lead the fight.

I don't think there is a Hitler analogy in our era, and I sincerely hope there never will be. Yet, I keep coming back to the Muslim presence in the West. We may never have a Muslim leader in a Western country like Canada or the US since Muslim culture is just too different from Western culture. But we have enough multicultural propagandists and liberal equality mongers who work around the clock to convince the public that Muslims in our countries are part of that wonderful, peaceable smorgasbord of peoples, and that letting more of them into our liberated, free and equal lands should be part of our mission. Soon, Muslim will have built up a mass that will work in tandem to wreak real havoc on our societies, and not with just the occasional bombs that blow apart buildings and people.

Sam Solomon, a former Sharia expert and converted Christian, seems to have similar ideas to mine. I discuss here his book Modern Day Trojan Horse: Al-Hijra, The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration, Accepting Freedom or Imposing Islam? on Islamization and the Umma. Below is an excerpt from his book:

The beginning phase of Islamization usually includes activities pivotal to building a physical presence. It consists of public calls to prayer; founding of schools, libraries and research centers; and the teaching of Arabic -- actions that appear to be reasonable and respectable infrastructure requirements necessary to support the presence of a faith. At this point in the Hijra ["immigration designed to subvert and subdue non-Muslim societies and pave the way for eventual, total Islamization"], it is permissible for Muslims to engage in haram, or forbidden actions, out of necessity to establish and empower the umma or Muslim community. Koranic rules such as the prohibition against friendships with infidels are suspended while the objectives of future Islamization are systematically put into place. In its initial phase, the Hijra passes scrutiny by the West whose citizens erroneously view the migration as mainly economic -- a pilgrimage for a better life.

Just as the Nazis prepared the German people over the years about the evilness of the Jews, and concurrently built up their war machine, Muslims are building their societies in our Western shores by giving us a false image of their peaceful and integrationist intentions, while strengthening their powers. And Jews are also their great nemesis. Jews are like the canary in the coal mine, showing the approaching dangers. It is up to us to pay attention to this virulent anti-Semitism that is in the fabric of Islam, and which is surfacing in other, non-Islamic bodies and groups. Sam Solomon understands this link between anti-Semitism and Islam, and discusses it in his second book Eternal Islamic Enmity and the Jews, which I briefly review here.


Photo above:

A group of Jews, including a small boy, is escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers in this April 19, 1943 photo. The picture formed part of a report from SS Gen. Stroop to his Commanding Officer, and was introduced as evidence to the War Crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1945. (AP Photo) [Source: The Atlantic. Oct 16, 2011]

The Grandness of Train Stations

[A series of photographs are posted at the end of the blog post]

I regularly view the photographs that are posted on the photography blog NYC: Daily Photos (photos are often posted daily, sometimes with a bit of a hiatus), and I saw the recent photo of the interior of New York's Grand Central Terminal.

I've posted below photos that I had filed away of Union Station, Toronto's train station. I find similarities between Union Station and Grand Central Terminal, which I discuss pictorially and descriptively below.

I often find that Toronto architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mimic New York buildings of the same era, trying to instill some of the American grandeur into the Canadian cityscape. Union Station is a grand example of this, resembling the imposing architecture of Grand Central Terminal (although I cannot yet verify if Canadian architects were specifically copying Grand Central Terminal, or just using a generalized architecture styles of the period. Impressive train stations were a common feature in large cities of this era).

Here's information on the Beaux Art design and history of Union Station, which opened in 1927.

And here's information on Grand Central Terminal's architecture. Grand Central Terminal, as it is called now, opened in 1913. The 1871 original, smaller, building called Grand Central Depot (photo below) was demolished:

After a steam locomotive accident in 1902, the station was redesigned with a two-level terminal to accommodate electric trains.

Here's more on Grand Central Depot:

There have been three structures at East 42nd Street and Park Avenue, bearing the name Grand Central...[The first one, Grand Central Depot], which opened in 1871, brought the lines of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, the New York and Harlem River Railroad, and the New York and New Haven Railroad together under one roof.

According to this site, the terminal's reconstruction and renovation history spans over 130 years.

The first terminal of that name [Grand Central] was erected in 1871 at Fourth Avenue (now Park) and 42nd Street, then close to the edge of the built-up part of the city. It was conceived and built by Cornelius Vanderbilt,

The terminal replaced an earlier nondescript building further downtown at 26-27th Street and Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South).

Renovations in 1886 began to expand the building:

Long distance and commuter travel grew much faster than expected, so Grand Central had to be expanded in 1886, and comprehensively renovated in 1898. But as traffic continued to grow, it was clear that a new terminal was needed.

And finally, extensive work began in 1902:

[I]n January 1902 there was a disastrous accident. In the tunnel at 58th Street, with visibility greatly impaired by smoke and steam, an inbound express smashed into the rear of a local that had stopped, killing and injuring scores of people. The public was outraged, resulting a year later in both the city and state outlawing the operation of steam locomotives in Manhattan after 1908...

William J. Wilgus (1865-1949), chief engineer of the New York Central, proposed, proposed instead thorough, imaginative, and innovative solutions that function superbly to this day:

1) construct two levels of tracks below street level, the upper for long-distance trains, the lower for suburban trains;
2) eliminate the steam locomotives and move all trains by electric power instead;
3) construct a monumental terminal building; and
4) sell air rights above the new underground train yards, permitting developers to erect buildings there and pay rent to the railroad.

From the Grand Central Terminal site:

[A] comprehensive revitalization plan based on the Master Plan for Grand Central Terminal. Construction began in 1996 with the cleaning of the Main Concourse Sky Ceiling...

The revitalization project culminated with a gala Rededication Celebration of Grand Central Terminal on October 1, 1998. This event garnered both national and international media attention, and marked the beginning of a new chapter of this venerable New York City landmark.

Over the years since these major works, the terminal has gone through various projects, from Donald Trump's renovation of the exterior, to the restoration of the Main Concourse ceiling by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Ending in 2007, the exterior was again cleaned and restored, starting with the west facade on Vanderbilt Avenue and gradually working counterclockwise. The project involved cleaning the facade, rooftop light courts, and statues; filling in cracks, repointing stones on the facade, restoring the copper roof and the building's cornice, repairing the large windows of the Main Concourse, and removing the remaining blackout paint applied to the windows during World War II. The result is a cleaner, more attractive, and structurally sound exterior, and the windows allow much more light into the Main Concourse.
[Source: Wikipedia: Grand Central Terminal Restorations]

While doing Google image search, I found photographs of Grand Central Terminal in the 1940s by John Collier, including photographs of passengers. According to Wikipedia, Collier worked in photography and visual anthropology, and this education site further elaborates that:

John Collier Jr. applied still photography and film to cross-cultural understanding and analysis.

Many photographers have also documented the building, some artistically. I've posted some impressionable images below.

The full-on light streaming in the early photos of Grand Central (see the 1929 photo posted below - The main concourse at Grand Central Terminal) will never be reproduced according to this photographer because:

(1) skyscrapers now block that exact light from shining through the windows at that position

and

(2) [Grand Central Terminal] is now a ‘smoke free’ place and so the cigarette & cigar smoke that mainly created the haze in the original photo will be never more.

Still, the grandeur of the station remains, and the windows let in enough sun to bathe the interior with majestic light.
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Interior of Union Station, Toronto
KPA

Interior of Union Station, Toronto
KPA

Grand Central Depot, ca. 1885
H.A. Dunne Archive

Grand Central Terminal, 1941
John Collier
The Library Of Congress

The main-concourse information
desk at Grand Central Terminal
in New York, October 1941
John Collier
Shorpy.com

The main concourse at
Grand Central Terminal, 1929
New York Transit Museum

Four-faced clock at a kiosk
inside Grand Central Terminal
on the east side of Manhattan, with
a noticeable amount of sunlight
shining through some of the windows.
Wikipedia [Link to larger image]

Grand Central Station, 2009
Dan K. Allen Photos

Afternoon rush hour
Grand Central Terminal, Main Concourse
NYC Daily Pictures

Grand Central Terminal, exterior
Gothamist

A Strip of Whimsy in New York City

Pomander Walk, New York City

I meant to post this image a while ago, and I can't remember now where I found it, but there is a tiny section of New York City which looks like some village in England called the Pomander Walk.

Here's what Wikipedia says about this small strip:

The "[Pomander] Walk" itself, consisting of two rows of eight buildings facing each other across a narrow courtyard, runs through the middle of the block between 94th and 95th, with a gate at each end. Each building originally had one flat on each floor. In recent years, some buildings have been reconfigured to serve as duplexes and single-family homes.

Pomander Walk was built in 1921 by nightclub impresario Thomas J. Healy who planned to build a major hotel on the site. According to city historian Christopher Gray, when Healy was unable to get financing for a hotel, he built the houses that stand on the site today, apparently to provide a temporary cash-flow while he waited to raze them and build the hotel. It was designed by the New York architecture firm King and Campbell.

In 2009 the owners completed a four-year facade renovation, restoring architectural details that had been lost for decades. In 2008 Landmark West! bestowed their Building Rehabilitation Award on Pomander Walk.

The complex is named for Pomander Walk, a romantic comedy by Louis N. Parker that opened in New York in 1910. The play is set on an imaginary byway near London. The place as built bears scant resemblance to the setting described in the play as "a retired crescent of five very small, old-fashioned houses near Chiswick, on the river-bank. ... They are exactly alike: miniature copies of Queen Anne mansions". New York City's Pomander Walk is Tudoresque, a style that enjoyed a vogue in America in the years following World War I.

The article describes Pomander Walk as "Tudoresque." Here is another, surprising, section of New York called Tudor City, which is more Tudoresque than these rows of tiny cottages. Rather than cottage-like row houses, Tudor City is an impressive collection of highrises. Here's some information:

In 1925 Fred F French - also known for the Fred F. French Building and Knickerbocker village - started construction of what he called 'The largest project in Midtown'. The project was named Tudor City.

Completed in 1928, it consisted of 12 apartment buildings containing 3000 housing units and 600 hotel rooms. The design by the architect H. Douglas Ives and his team was based heavily on the Tudor Style, an architectural style prevalent during the Tudor Dynasty. Characteristic for this style is the brickwork and the application of fine intricate stonework.

I've been in Tudor City, both in the neighborhood and in one of the apartments. Residents (and owners) have tiny apartment complexes which I'm sure cost quite a bit. It seems that "old" things come to New York in tiny sizes. Perhaps old is not the New York (or the American) way. Instead, I think it is: the newer, the bigger, and the better.

20 Victoria Street

The former Imperial Life Assurance Building, on 20 Victoria Street. To the right, is the passageway that leads to Yonge Street, and the Tin and Copper Smith Building, which I wrote about here.

The former Imperial Life Assurance Building,
on 20 Victoria Street.

The Metropolitan Bar Resto, which has the ground floor of the building

[Photos by KPA]

I wrote here about Victoria Street, a quiet side street parallel to Yonge Street, which has some interesting early 20th century buildings. I tried to find more information about what I think is the Imperial Life Assurance building, on 20 Victoria Street, and asked the manager of the building about the architect of the building and when it was completed. She's emailed me some useful information from their files, which I posted below.

I also googled: 20 Victoria street Toronto 1910 imperial life assurance, and came up with this pdf file on Stevens Burgess Architects Ltd., who are the architects doing renovations on the building (html version here).

On page 18 of the html version is the information below:

20 Yonge Street [this is incorrect, although the below paragraph has the correct address, which is 20 Victoria street (there is no Imperial Life Insurance building with a limestone street facade on Yonge Street). This could be why it was hard to find information on the Internet)]:

Constructed in 1910, 20 Victoria Street is the original head office of the Imperial Life Insurance Co. SBA [Stevens Burgess Architects] undertook the conservation of the limestone street facade and buff brick courtyard and passageway. The project also included built-up roof replacement, snow avalanching abatement measures and lobby restoration. Mechanical, electrical and life safety systems and restrooms were also renovated.

And on page 19 of the file, under the heading: Conservation/Preservation/Restoration/Reuse Project, they have :

20 Victoria Street (Designated)
Alterations and adaptive reuse of 1910, 19 storey building

The image below is from the architects' files, and shows the 20 Victoria Street building from various angles. Right: The back of the building; Middle: The interior; and Left: The front.


And here is information from a file listing insurance companies:

The Imperial Life Insurance Company was a life insurance company that was founded in 1896. It officially ceased to do business under that name in 2001. The company was purchased by the Desjardins Group in 1994, but it was allowed to keep its name for the time being. At the time of its purchase, Imperial Life was the owner of Laurentian Life, a life insurance company it had purchased the year before. When the Desjardins Group bought Imperial Life, it also acquired Laurentian Life. The Desjardins Group merged with Laurentian Life to create Desjardins-Laurentian Life Assurance (DLLA) in 1994. In 2001, DLLA merged with Imperial Life to become the Desjardins Financial Security Life Assurance Company.

And finally, the email from the building's manager provided this useful information:

The original architect from 1910 was G. M. Miller and Co. The building was extended...in 1937, at which time the architect was Mathers and Haldenby Registered Architects.

Information on G. M. Miller and Co. is here, with a long list of buildings in Toronto they've built, but it doesn't list the 20 Victoria building. There might be more information elsewhere, which I haven't tracked down yet.

Brief Information on Mathers and Haldenby is here where their listed work includes:

Imperial Life Assurance Co., King Street East at Victoria Street, new facade, 1938