Fashion Archives & Digital History

The creative process for large fashion corporations, from design houses to fast-fashion behemoths, is breakneck, furious and often wasteful. Fashion companies on average deliver up to eight collections a year and mass companies can churn out up to 52 “micro-seasons” a year, with new trends hitting stores weekly.[1] Season after season, week after week, ideas are generated, textiles are developed, prints and patterns are drawn, stitches, patterns and techniques are developed and samples are created. All parts of the product development life cycle are carefully detailed and documented to share with manufacturing facilities around the world. This process utilizes thousands of people and continues non-stop, every day, all year long. In order to keep deliveries on time, and ultimately, customers coming back for more, this process requires working twelve months or more in advance. And once the process of garment creation is underway there is an immediate need to market these collections.

Industry giants dedicate tens of millions of dollars a year to launch massive advertising and public relation campaigns in order to keep fashion feeling new and exciting. Like the creation of apparel, marketing also follows a relentless life cycle creating new visuals and ideas of engagement season after season. Ideas are generated, photo shoots are executed, media is bought, pictures are printed, websites designed, stores are updated, packaging created, direct mailers are delivered and the excitement continues.

How many of these ideas are actually new? How many times are garments recreated? Is fashion ever original? How many unique and innovative images and campaigns can be created year after year? Or is repetition reinvention? Are familiar designs and a recognizable aesthetic the keys to a successful brand identity and, ultimately, longevity? Does recognizing a brand’s past help build a solid future? Or does it matter at all?

My thesis is rapidly approaching and the process of research has begun. These are the questions my I will attempt to answer by exploring the value and meaning of corporate archives in today’s fashion industry. It will also take a look at principles and practices—how to build them, what the benefits are and the cultural effects they may or may not.

Creating archives for non-fashion related corporations has been well documented, dissected and debated. There are countless journals and associations related to the research and development of business archives. Many of these journals, paper and articles are going to help serve as research for my thesis. Yet despite the growing interest in creating fashion-related archives, evidenced by the number of diverse brands that have existing archives, there remains a dearth of information on the development, utilization, management of these private libraries. In addition, business and historical archiving, as well as library science are void of fashion specific information technology.

Creating Digital History has served as a wellspring of information, rich in resources and platforms that will benefit my thesis and possibly the end use of creating a real archive for my current employer. The use of Omeka as an archival tool, while not the most fluid or advanced interface, is basic and solid in its straightforward and uncomplicated user experience. I can clearly see how this could translate into a similar system for a fashion company and the development of a corporate repository. All of the information combined in this course has given me hope and confidence that a universal, yet customizable, archiving system for fashion companies can easily be developed. Now bring on my thesis!

Sources:

[1] Whitehead, Shannon. “5 Truths the Fast Fashion Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know.” Huffington Post. October 19, 2014. 

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“Live Fast and Dye”: Charting the Mainstream Success of Manic Panic

It’s difficult to talk about punk and alternative visual style without talking about the hair, and it’s impossible to talk about the hair without talking about hair dye.

Manic Panic, beloved by celebrities and small-town youths alike, is known now for providing a wide array of dyes in unnatural shades like pink, turquoise, and atomic red, but it originally got its start as a small East Village boutique selling punk-style clothing and cosmetics. Founded in 1977 by Tish and Snooky Bellomo, two backup singers of punk/New Wave outfit Blondie, Manic Panic was, if not the first, at least one of the earliest stores dedicated to punk fashion. For the first two decades of its history it was a located at 33 St. Marks Place, and photos of that original boutique show a storefront that strongly embodies the punk DIY aesthetic, with a sign that looks hand-lettered and band shirts in the windows.

A temporary tattoo proclaiming the brand’s slogan: “Life fast & dye your hair.”

By the early 2000s the store had moved from its small space on St. Marks to a warehouse in Long Island.  The initial change in location had more to do with rising rent prices in the East Village than with changes in demand, but by the 1990s Manic Panic had gone beyond its punk roots and entered the mainstream.  An Associated Press article from mid-1996, in attempting to examine a hair-coloring “fad” seen in both celebrity fashion and street style, sources the trend back to Manic Panic, citing the cheapness of the product ($8 a bottle at the time; these days it’s closer to $10) and the huge array of colors as the reasons for the brand’s popular appeal.

There’s more to the turn-of-the-millennium hair-dyeing trend than the popularity of Manic Panic, though.  Tish Bellomo, speaking in 2001 on celebrities’ widespread adoption of unnatural hair colors, noted that the style started with “a few punks who were dyeing their hair” and that “now [2001] you turn on MTV and every other band has color.”  By the end of the decade, it wasn’t even just bands.  There is probably something to be said about a link between the mainstream popularity of alternative rock and pop-punk in the early/mid-2000s and the increased use of hair dye, but in recent years even pop stars with no relation to the alternative music scenes whatsoever have sported bright blues and greens.

The growth of Manic Panic from a small Greenwich Village boutique to a multi-branch company is a (not entirely unwelcome, from a consumer’s point of view) symptom of this trend. Snooky Bellomo recalled in 1996 that in the “olden days of punk rock” hair dye was a form of shock value, but that it was since become “more just a cosmetic thing.”  In many ways this is true.  Some colors will continue to have “edgy,” unprofessional, even rebellious associations, but it is increasingly common even outside of fashionable cities like New York to see “obviously” dyed hair (as opposed to “natural”-looking color additions, like touch-ups for grey hair and highlights).  What does this say about the legacy of ’70s and ’80s punk style, and what does it mean for punk/alternative fashion today?  The answer to that question will hopefully make it into my exhibit.

Sources:

“Our History.” Manic Panic Official Website. Accessed October 5, 2015. https://www.manicpanic.com/ourhistory

Bibby, Patricia. “Rainbow-colored dye is at the root of fad.” Lawrence Journal-World (Lawrence, KS). August 1, 1996.

Moore, Booth. “Hair apparent? Daring ‘dos now the norm.” Eugene Register-Guard (Eugene, OR). July 9, 2001.

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The Catholic Village: St. Joseph’s and its daughter churches

Throughout my research about the Irish in Greenwich Village, authors and researchers have emphasized the importance of religion to the Irish immigrants and Irish-American community who lived in the neighborhood during the mid-19^th and early 20^th centuries. St. Joseph’s Church served the Roman Catholic Irish community, standing at the center of both the religion and culture of these Village residents. What I was surprised to learn was the influence St. Joseph’s had not only over its congregation but over the Archdiocese of New York. And more interestingly, how the side of St. Joseph’s growing congregation led to the creation of five other Roman Catholic churches in the Village to serve the neighborhoods Catholic residents. St. Alphonsus, St. Ann’s, St. Francis Xavier’s, St. Bernard’s, and St. Veronica’s were all founded within the original boundaries of St. Joseph’s to accommodate the growing Catholic population of the Village.

St. Joseph’s Church

St. Joseph’s was founded in 1829 and was referred to as the “Mother Church of the Catholics in Greenwich Village.” When the church was dedicated in 1834 the parish boundaries included the West Side of Manhattan from Canal Street to 34^th Street. St. Alphonsus was the first of the new parishes, located on Thompson Street, about a mile south of St. Joseph’s. It was founded in 1847 to serve a growing German Catholic community in the neighborhood but soon attracted Irish Catholic parishioners who lived nearby creating tensions between the two immigrant groups. But by the beginning of the 20^th century the parish was predominantly Irish and tensions had dwindled.

St. Francis Xavier’s and St. Ann’s were both founded in the 1850s, St. Ann’s in 1852 on the eastern boundary of St. Joseph’s, and St. Francis Xavier’s in 1850 in the northern part of St. Joseph’s parish. St. Ann’s, located on E. 12^th Street between 3^rd and 4^th Avenues, served the wealthy Catholics of the Village and surrounding areas. But in the 1890s the parish was nearly $93,000 in debt and much of its attraction ebbed. St. Francis Xavier’s, however, became the first real threat for the pastors of St. Joseph’s. It was the first permanent Jesuit parish in the Archdiocese of New York. From St. Francis Xavier’s inception, Archbishop John Hughes received complaints from St. Joseph’s and other churches that the Jesuits were stealing their parishioners. St. Joseph’s pastors continued to complain to the Archdiocese for over 40 years about the number of their parishioners who were regularly attending mass at St. Francis Xavier’s.

St. Bernard’s, the fourth of the parishes carved from St. Joseph’s original boundaries, was the least threatening. Located on W. 14^th Street near 9^th Ave., this new parish founded in 1868 was far enough away that it didn’t steal enough of St. Joseph’s parishioner’s to raise alarm. However, that wasn’t the case with St. Veronica’s.

Church of St. Veronica

The last of the parishes carved from St. Joseph’s boundaries, St. Veronica’s was officially dedicated in 1903 after thirteen years of construction. When Father John Salter of St. Joseph’s first heard the Archdiocese planned to create a new parish in its western boundary, encompassing nearly 30 blocks, he launched a complaint with the Archbishop claiming there weren’t enough Catholics along the waterfront to support another church. The Archdiocese, however, knew that the proposed parish was more than capable of supporting a large congregation. They answered Salter’s complaint by proposing the boundaries of St. Veronica’s be broaden, which promptly stopped the pastor’s objections. St. Veronica’s served a poor waterfront neighborhood in the West Village, worshipping from a warehouse and stable until the basement of the present church on Christopher Street was completed in 1890. The church wouldn’t be dedicated until June 1903 was St. Veronica’s was completed.

While St. Joseph’s Church remained the “Mother Church of the Catholics in Greenwich Village” and continued to serve a predominantly Irish congregation, the five daughter parishes that were born within St. Joseph’s boundaries helped shape the culture and history of not only the Irish but all Catholics in the Village.

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Nurses and Wartime St. Vincent’s Hospital

St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village was not just a place of employment for nurses, but it was also a place for education. In 1892, forty-three years after the hospital’s opening, the St. Vincent’s School of Nursing opened its doors to women. The school was first directed by Katherine A. Sanborn.  Many graduates from this school continued their work at St. Vincent’s hospital. Other graduates  went to work elsewhere in New York City, including the New York Foundling Hospital, another institution directed by the Sisters of Charity. Eventually, in the 1930s, St. Vincent’s School of Nursing began to accept men. This produced even more graduates and more St. Vincent’s educated nurses working in the field.

Soon after, the United States found itself on the brink of war, resulting in a high demand for nurses.  St. Vincent’s Hospital was one of the first New York institutions to react to a wartime United States. St. Vincent’s lost many nurses who desired to fulfill their patriotic duty and went overseas to care for the wounded.  Those who remained in New York City  took part in rationing, and practiced air strike drills.  St. Vincent’s nurses also collected blood and plasma during the war, as it became one of the centers for the New York City Blood and Plasma exchange. The hospital became a site for draftee examinations. Over five hundred men were sent to Greenwich Village to be examined by the doctors and nurses at St. Vincent’s.

In 1941, St. Vincent’s and the School of Nursing became a center for the U.S. Nursing Cadet Corps.  The U.S. Nursing Cadet Corps was “the nation’s first integrated Uniformed U.S. Service Corps.”  The nurses in the Corps were a vital entity on the home front, taking the jobs of their counterparts that were sent to Europe.  According to the U.S. Nursing Cadet Corps website, their nurses made up 80% of nursing care in the United States by the end of World War II.

While the U.S. Nursing Cadet Corps was making St. Vincent’s their newest home base, the hospital established their own Volunteer Corps.  Mrs. Edmund Borgia Butler, an influential woman involved with the Catholic Board of Charities, brought life to this Volunteer Corps.  Mrs. Butler selected the thirty initials members, but by the end 1943, the Corps had over seven hundred members who were working within the hospital, filling any vacant jobs. The Volunteer Corps played an integral part in the continued success of the hospital. The hardships of war did not prevent St. Vincent’s hospital from existing as a functioning institution.

The end of the war marked a great transformation for St. Vincent’s Hospital. The hospital was growing physically with new building projects. It was also expanding its influence with the growing number of nurses that were being educated at its school and working in its wards. St. Vincent’s was no longer considered just a hospital, but rather St. Vincent’s Medical Center. The events of World War II are testament to the great reliance that was placed on not just the men who were fighting the battles, but also the people who were there behind the lines taking care of them.   The nurses of St. Vincent’s, as well as other nurses across America, had a significant impact on society and the places that they worked in.

Today neither St. Vincent’s Medical Center or the St. Vincent’s School of Nursing remain open, but their influence and memory is still with the many New Yorkers who walked through their doors in Greenwich Village.

For more information on St. Vincent’s School of Nursing check out their alumnae website.

Other Sources:

St. Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center, An Illustrated History, 1999.

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A Long History of Community Service at the Church of All Nations

In the documentary The Tao of 9 Second Avenue, architect John Shuttleworth states that the Church of All Nations “was always a community-oriented building…[cutting] across ethnic boundaries.” He continues to recount that it inherited a “great history of community service,” beginning in 1874 when the Germania Assembly Rooms occupied the site at 9 Second Avenue, then alternatively known as 291 Bowery.

Excerpt from ‪The Manhattan Guide‬: ‪Greater New York Red Book‬.

The Germania Assembly Rooms, which are included in The Manhattan Guide’s list of the public halls of greater New York, functioned primarily as a settlement house for German immigrants. In his King’s How to See New York: A Complete Trustworthy Guide Book, Moses King calls the institution “a dance and meeting hall.” The Telegraph Herald adds that members of the Arion Singing Society used the Germania Assembly Rooms as a communal space.

Excerpt from King’s How to See New York: A Complete Trustworthy Guide Book.

By the early twentieth century Hadley Rescue Hall and Wesley Rescue Hall occupied the site, with 293 Bowery as their addresses. Members of the Church of All Nations ran the halls, providing food, shelter, and religious support to “destitute” and “outcast” locals in the Bowery. The Christian Advocate in particular details the Wesley Rescue Hall’s rehabilitation of over 15,000 men and solicits donations of clothing and shoes for its members. The New York Charities Directory lists Hadley Rescue Hall as a place where “drunkards and criminals of both sexes are welcome and assistance is given when necessary.”

After its official opening at 9 Second Avenue on February 15, 1923, the Church of All Nations continued to provide services to the local community. Many interviewees in The Tao of 9 Second Avenue echo Shuttleworth’s comments, noting that the Church accepted and embraced people of all races and religions. Members could attend religious services in its chapel, which were given in Polish, Chinese, Russian, and English. According to Judy Sutula, a local synagogue even used the chapel for its Passover celebrations.

Excerpt from The New York Charities Directory .

The New York Charities Directory chronicles other activities hosted by the  “settlement house,” including the Church’s English, Yiddish, Italian, Chinese, Russian, and German events. It also offered educational classes and kindergarten for young children in addition to gymnastics and sewing school. The Church’s “Fresh Air Fund vacations,” funded completely through donation, sent city children on free summer getaways in June, July, and August.

In 1951 the New York Times advertised free puppet shows and demonstrations hosted by the Church’s Pioneer Youth Camp Program. Older Church of All Nations members could take part in theatre performances, which were either presented as part of the works division of the Department of Public Welfare or held as fundraisers for the Church.

Church of All Nations members in their athletic uniforms. Photograph courtesy of Gloria Weilandis.

Local athletics clubs, like the Chinese Athletic Club and the Young People’s Christian Foundation, used the building’s sports facilities for friendly games. A rent-control station opened in the Church in 1947, allowing Lower East Side tenants to get information about their landlords and apply for rent reductions.

Excerpt from “‪RISE IN MILK PRICE TO BE FOUGHT HERE; Consumers’ Protective Group Calls Public Meeting for Oct. 11 to Plan Action‬” article in the New York Times.

The Church of All Nations also served as a forum where local residents could voice their opinions and exchange ideas about particular issues. In 1928 Russian members attended a speech on Christianity, communism, and materialism hosted by the Reverend Dr. Timothy Peshkoff, the Church’s Russian pastor. Union laborers on strike over low WPA wage scales gathered in the building in 1935 to send a telegram to Mayor LaGuardia refusing to return to work. When the price of milk increased by half a cent in 1939, the Consumers’ Protective Group called a public meeting and planned a protest in the Church’s auditorium.

Image of the Church of All Nations taken in February 1967. Photograph courtesy of Gloria Weilandis.

The Church of All Nations was not the only institution committed to community service in Manhattan in the early part of the twentieth century. Much like other organizations listed in The Manhattan Guide and The New York Charities Directory, it supplied essential social, health, and religious services to local residents. The Church of All Nations also provided its members with a space to form and strengthen communal bonds, which permanently ceased with the building’s demolition in 2005.

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The East Village: Birth of a Neighborhood

The East Village is often viewed as a younger, edgier sibling of Greenwich Village. A depiction that is accurate considering that the neighborhood is quite new as far as New York City neighborhoods are concerned. Throughout much of New York City’s history the area located east of 3rd Avenue between Houston and 14th Street was simply known as the Lower East Side. By the mid-20^th century, however, the neighborhoods of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village began to merge, and as boundaries changed the area’s population transformed as well.

The term East Village first appeared in the early 1960s when artists from Greenwich Village started moving east to escape the rising cost of rent. This move to the Lower East Side was partly tied to the destruction of the Third Avenue El in 1956 that had served as a physical and social divide between the two neighborhoods. As the artist community spread east, real estate brokers followed closely behind hoping to cash in on the areas’ growing connection to the bohemian scene. Relators began referring to the neighborhood as “East of the Village” or the “Village East” and hippies began flocking to the area. Indeed, the first mention of the East Village in The New York Times came on Feb 7, 1960, and even at this early stage the article remarked upon real estate interests in the neighborhood.

At the same time East Village had begun experiencing other serious demographic changes. The older immigrant community largely of Eastern European descent was being replaced by the city’s rapidly growing Puerto Rican population. Between 1940 and 1970 the city’s Puerto Rican population exploded, growing from a minority of about 100,000 to over a million. Many of the new immigrants settled in the Lower East Side, and by the time the hippies arrived there was a large Puerto Rican presence in the neighborhood.

Through the influence of hippies, artists, and real estate agents the name East Village had become common among New Yorkers by the late 1960s. In a June 5, 1967 article titled “The 2 Worlds of the East Village” the Times pointed to the general acceptance of the term noting that the area had already “come to be known” as the East Village, but it also hinted that some New Yorkers were uneasy with the changes in the neighborhood. Referencing clash between city police and about 200 hippies, the article claimed that there was a large divide between the officers and residents of the “seething streets”. The author, which tellingly only interviewed police officers, declared that cops in their “trim, blue uniforms and highly polished shoes find it difficult to understand the world of the unkempt, long haired hippies, the Puerto Ricans with their strange language and customs, and the Negroes.” Indeed, for this author and the officers he interviewed, the residents of the East Village did not conform to what he called “middle-class society and values”. One of the officers described hippies saying, “You feel like vomiting,” while another complained of Puerto Ricans that they “like to congregate on the streets,” and “play their guitars at all hours of the night”. These descriptions did not represent everyone’s view of the East Village, but for the author and his clean-cut cops, the neighborhood seemed like an unfriendly place.

Despite the critics, the East Village continued to grow in popularity and became a large draw for tourists in the 60s and 70s. One young hippie described the appeal of the neighborhood the best simply stating, “You go where the action is.”

Sources

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/01/nyregion/fyi-649895.html

 

Edmond J. Bartnett, “‘Village’ Spills Across 3D Ave.” New York Times, February 7, 1960: R1.

 

Sylvan Fox, “The 2 Worlds of the East Village,” New York Times, June 5, 1967: 63.

http://search.proquest.com/docview/118054771?accountid=12768

 

Paul Hoffman, “Hippies’ Hangout Draws Tourists,” New York Times, June 5, 1967: 63.

http://search.proquest.com/docview/118054771?accountid=12768

 

Ira Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972), 174.

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The Origins of Banking in Greenwich Village: Yellow Fever and the Establishment of Bank Street

There are many surprising ways in which issues with the water supply have altered the path of New York City’s history. As the population exploded during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the water supply and its quality shaped the growth of urban development. Poor water supply systems created a constant threat of water-born diseases for early Manhattanites — in particular, yellow fever.  While Lower Manhattan (specifically Wall Street) has been America’s center of finance for over two centuries, for brief periods in the nineteenth century Greenwich Village housed bankers and businessmen (as well as many other New Yorkers) seeking to escape periodically vicious outbreaks of yellow fever.

Aaron Burr, courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog

After a particularly deadly outbreak of yellow fever in 1798, Aaron Burr along with his associates petitioned to create a private company that would supply the city with water from fresher and “safer” sources. The Manhattan Company was thereby created. However, it was actually Burr’s intention to use the company as a front in order to establish a bank — an immensely complicated undertaking in that era. A brief annotation to the Manhattan Company’s charter allowed for excess stock to be used “in the purchase of public stock or in any other monied transactions or operations not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Unfortunately, since the company’s main goal was to establish a bank, The Manhattan Company was slow and inept at creating a systematic and safe water supply for the city, and the outbreaks of yellow fever persisted.

The Bank of New York — the oldest bank in the United States and founded by Alexander Hamilton — started a trend of banks moving temporarily northward to escape yellow fever, galvanized by a clerk at the bank’s Wall Street headquarters contracting the disease during the 1798 outbreak. Subsequent epidemics in 1803, 1805, and 1822 pushed other banks, such as Bank of the Manhattan Company and Phenix Bank, to the same block of land inhabited by the temporary sanctuary of the Bank of New York. This cluster of businesses resulted in the naming of the strip “Bank Street,” which is still present today in the West Village.

The Bank of New York, watercolor by John William Hill, The Phelps Stokes Collection, New York Public Library

1822 marked the last great yellow fever outbreak in lower Manhattan. One 1823 report of the epidemic by Dr. Peter S. Townsend recalled “the timely and almost total abandonment of all that part of the city south of Fulton-street…”  One citizen described how “[f]rom daybreak till night, one line of carts, containing boxes, merchandize and effects, were seen moving towards Greenwich Village and the upper parts of the city.” However, business was soon as bustling as before in their temporary Greenwich Village retreat:

Within a few days thereafter, the Custom House, the Post Office, the Banks, the Insurance Offices, and the printers of Newspapers located themselves in the village… where they were free from the impending danger, and these places almost instantaneously became the seat of the immense business usually carried on, in this great metropolis.

Excerpt from James Hardie’s “An account of the yellow fever, which occurred in the city of New-York, in the year 1822”

The rustic appeal of Greenwich Village would not last much longer. By 1837, construction of the Croton Aqueduct would begin: soon the city would have an abundant and clean water supply and the yellow fever outbreaks would subside. Greenwich Village would thereafter become home to factories and tenements — a far cry from its bucolic beginnings. However, before this development, the village provided sanctuary to the citizens of lower Manhattan, and allowed New York bankers to continue business as usual.

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Aldo Tambellini: The Life of an Avant-Garde Artist in the Village

The title of my Digital Archive project is Anarchy in the Village during the Vietnam Era.  As I have conducted research, I have come across some very interesting groups and figures.  One of the most fascinating people is a man named Aldo Tambellini.

Tambellini was a young artist in 1960s Greenwich Village, who encountered early criticism before achieving success.  He was a liminal figure with regard to my larger focus of radical groups.  Tambellini was, however, loosely connected to such groups through an art collective that he helped found in 1959 called the “Group Center.”[i]  The biography section of Tambellini’s personal website says that the Group “organized alternative ways and non-traditional presentation of the artists’ work to the public.”[ii]  Through the Group, Tambellini met Ben Morea, who was an ardent leading member of two anarchy groups with strong presences in Greenwich Village.  These two groups were called Black Mask and Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers.  What Tambellini shared with Morea was more antiwar sentiment, location in the Village, and the artistic avant-garde rather than ideology.

 

The Group Center hosted many shows in Washington Square Park.  This provided benefits and detractors to the collective of revolutionary artists.  Susan Sherman of “the village Voice” covered the performance “Outfall” at the Park.  This event took place on a September night in 1965.  Sherman described the initial buzz of excitement that enchanted the crowd.  This, however, was short-lived as cold weather, long breaks, overcrowding, and poor visibility “soon turned the enthusiasm into boredom.”[iii]  Tambellini, in conjunction with Judith Dunn, presented the first event, “Black-Round,” which consisted of “light projections and mechanized sound.”[iv]  The reviewer called it, “The most ambitious event artistically [of the night] and the one that suffered the most from its outdoor presentation.”[v]  Technical and mechanical issues were the cause of long, unexpected breaks and left the reviewer “with a feeling of disappointment.”[vi]

Another of Tambellini’s works was reviewed in “the village VOICE.”  It is not clear where this presentation was held, but it was likely indoors given that it took place in mid-December of 1965.  This piece was titled “Black Zero” and the critic commended it for its “sense stimulation” and its “contrasts between light and dark (white and black) and noise and silence.”[vii]  This appeal quickly wore off as the reviewer explained: “It also made me sleepy.”[viii]  The assessor closed: “When I left the theater I felt disoriented, which I offer as testimony to his effectiveness; but my mind was dulled, which is not so good. For audiences at any future performances of ‘Black Zero,’ I think the secret ingredient is LSD.”[ix]

Tambellini’s career improved from early criticism of his performances.  The artist founded his own theater for countercultural films, which he called the Gate Theater.  Tambellini described this venture in his own words: “On September 16, 1966… I opened the 200 seat Gate Theatre on 2nd Avenue and 10th Street… The Gate Theatre was the only theatre to show avant-garde, underground films in continuous showing, till midnight, seven days a week. The theatre charged $1.50 admission. The Gate was dubbed the ‘Radical Underground in Film.’”[x]  Tambellini grew to be an important figure to come out of the Village’s avant-garde art world.  His works were later shown at, among other places, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and England’s Tate Museum.

Tambellini’s early career parallels the lifespan of the extremist anarchy groups of which he was loosely associated.  Both were flashy and intense at first, but ultimately tired and short-lived.  These dizzying and drug-induced ventures were irrational, but politely described as countercultural or even radical.  The combination of all of the factors that led to the creation of such art and radical groups skewed reality and made something that is bright, loud, and chaotic to a sober person, inspiring to an influenced or inebriated one.  Unlike anarchy groups in the Village during the Vietnam War era, Tambellini was able to continue his work and make a long career out of it.

---

Sources

[i] http://www.aldotambellini.com/bio4.html

[ii] http://www.aldotambellini.com/bio4.html

[iii] Susan Sherman, the village VOICE, September 30, 1965, Page 16.

[iv] Susan Sherman, the village VOICE, September 30, 1965, Page 16.

[v] Susan Sherman, the village VOICE, September 30, 1965, Page 16.

[vi] Susan Sherman, the village VOICE, September 30, 1965, Page 30.

[vii] the village VOICE, December 23, 1965, Page 20.

[viii] the village VOICE, December 23, 1965, Page 20.

[ix] the village VOICE, December 23, 1965, Page 20.

[x] http://www.aldotambellini.com/rebel2.html

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Using the Google News Archive Search to Trace the History of the Church of All Nations

The Google News Archive Search is a great tool for conducting research on a historical topic. It was launched in 2006 as an extension of Google News, allowing Internet users to “search and explore information from historical archives dating back over 200 years.” Google partnered with The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and other newspapers as well as aggregators like LexisNexis and Thomson Gale to index both free and fee-based newsprint. In 2008, digitally scanned newspapers were added to the News Archive’s content.

 

The tool is incredibly easy to operate. Users can input search terms into any or all of four categories, choosing whether a search should include “all these words,” “this exact phrase,” “at least one of these words,” or “none of these words.” Any search can be restricted even further. Users can choose to limit the terms to occurring “anywhere in the article,” “in the headline of the article,” “in the body of the article,” or even “in the URL of the article.”

Because the search engine includes archived content, users can also limit a search for articles written “any time,” within the “last hour” or “last day,” in the “past week” or “past month.” Researchers interested in historical content can choose to specify dates or generally search “the archive” that Google has assembled. Users can also search for articles from a particular news source or from a specific geographic location.

Google’s News Archive Search is an especially useful tool for researchers interested in assembling a timeline for their topic. I’m currently using it to supplement my research of the Church of All Nations’ long and complex history. Secondary sources claimed, for example, that the Church officially opened in 1922. A Google News Archive Search for “The Church of All Nations” and “opened” in “1922,” however, returned with no results. When I expanded my search to all articles in “the archive” I discovered a New York Times article from a year later covering the institution’s opening ceremony on February 15, 1923.

 

I was also able to better determine a timeline leading up to the building’s demise in 2005 using the tool. The search terms “Church of All Nations” and “demolished” led to articles published in The Villager that document the gentrification of the Lower East Side and development pursued by AvalonBay Communities, Inc. beginning in 1999. A 2004 article, for example, profiled the community gardening advocates the Green Guerillas. In December of that year, the group petitioned Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe to protect the Liz Christy Bowery Houston Community Garden from the impending destruction of the adjacent Church building. According to an article from the New York Times, moreover, demolition of the Church of All Nations building began in April 2005.

Articles I found through Google’s News Archive Search were equally helpful in presenting other avenues for potential research. After reading through pieces from The Villager, I established that I needed to more fully explore the role of the Cooper Square Community Development Committee and Businessmen’s Association. The organization opposed the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Area project, which planned to redevelop the city from 9th Street to Delancey Street and from 2nd to 3rd Avenue inclusive of the former Church of All Nations building.

I also uncovered the names of adjacent locations, including Mars Bar and McGurk’s Suicide Hall, threatened by this redevelopment. The search similarly identified individuals influential in the early running of the Church, like Dr. Thelma Burdick and Joseph Giglia, as well as inhabitants who lived in the building in later years until it was demolished.

There are some disadvantages to using Google’s News Archive Search. While it provides a thorough search through archived newspapers, many articles cannot be accessed without paying fees. This is not an issue for students or scholars affiliated with institutions that pay for subscriptions, but independent researchers will find it difficult to access many materials for free. Researchers with undefined search terms will need to sort through pages of possible articles, moreover, before finding material appropriate to the search topic.

In 2011, Google announced that it would no longer add content to its News Archive Search or develop additional functionalities to employ while searching content that is already available on the site. Despite the end of what some have called “Google’s ambitious effort to digitize the world’s newspaper archives,” the News Archive Search remains an essential tool for historians interested in finding out how a research topic is covered in newspapers.

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GVH Exhibit: Humanizing the Hooker: The Judson Prostitution Project

One of the exhibits created by students in the Creating Digital History course:

Humanizing the Hooker: The Judson Prostitution Project

by Megan Leddy-Cecere

From 1956 to 1992 parishioners flocked to Judson Memorial Church on 55 Washington Square South to join the Reverend Howard Moody in his sometimes shocking, often provocative, and always stimulating call to social activism. A dynamic speaker with a penchant for the radical, Moody nonetheless sent shock-waves through Judson’s Greenwich congregation and the broader Christian community with his 1978 sermon “Humanizing the Hooker.” In his appeal for the decriminalization of prostitution, Moody publicized a new church-sponsored social initiative – an exceptional and highly controversial program called the Judson Prostitution Project.

Through a compilation of images, documents, and personal recollections, this exhibit explores the encounters, reflections, and growth of those involved in Judson’s Prostitution Project of the 1970s -1980s. In the fragmented stories that take shape, we can hear echoes of the voices of the disenfranchised, and gain a more nuanced conception of the manifold subjectivities of those who sell sex. Taken as a whole, a broader cultural narrative emerges about the precarious relationships between communities and sex workers, prosthelytizing and reform, and the regulation of sex and sexuality in late twentieth century urban centers.

This exhibit is a response to the Reverend Moody’s 1978 challenge for us to “humanize the hooker.” But it also moves beyond Moody’s original goal of legal reform to raise broader questions of historical visibility. Assembled from the materials of the Judson Memorial Church Archive, this exhibit functions as a lens through which to explore historical and documentary constructions of “the prostitute.” While you engage with the stories in this digital display, take the time to question the exhibition items themselves. What sources are available to us? Who is speaking through them? And, perhaps most importantly, who is not?

Go to exhibit.

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