etc. Summer 2023

etc.

Summer 2023

The Magazine of The Redwood Library & Athenæum

Art of Collecting Roderick Terry: The Clergyman Collector Drawings of Touro Synagogue Fred Wilson: Black Light and Enlightenment In Focus: Redwood Collects Vintage Newport

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W e lc o m e

Contents

Dear Friends and Members,

It is in collaboration with you, and the entire community of our forebears, that we have been the anchor institution in Newport and the region for 276 years. Thank you.

Certainly, our role as the city’s intellectual center is as vital as ever. But it bears reiterating that in addition to the lectures, concerts and exhibitions we host as a civic commons, we forever remain an active collecting institution as a municipal archive. In short, we enrich lives not only through our programs, but also as much through what we hold, collect and display in the public trust. Last year’s exhibition Treasures of the Redwood: Celebrating 275 Years was proof—if proof were needed—that history is most accessibly apprehended through the material culture of the past; and that even the most abstract of the historian’s theoretical ruminations inevitably must refer back to objects, text to tea cup.

It is for these reasons—and with particular appreciation of the power of object-based learning for our younger patrons—that with the help of generous benefactors we continue to enrich our core collections. Hence the theme of this issue—collecting.

Accordingly, you will find in these pages a lead article on collecting—that “gentle madness”—and four pieces that remind that collections are actually rather more people than objects: the first treats Roderick Terry, perhaps the single greatest collector/ benefactor to the Redwood, followed by, successively, one on the set of important architectural drawings of Touro Synagogue bought with the thoughtful largesse of Mrs. Elaine Rosenberg; another on the monumental black Murano glass chandelier by superstar contemporary artist Fred Wilson, acquired through the generosity of a major foundation and seven forward-thinking benefactors listed on p. 13; and a last one on a singular set of photo albums containing historic images of Newport found nowhere else in the city purchased with funds drawn from the 2012 bequest of Lillian and Rudolf Dwyer.

In closing, if collecting is a “disease” or a “gentle madness,” we might view its fruits in the still gentler terms of storytelling and autobiography. In keeping with our mission of operating “with nothing in view but the good of mankind,” what we continue to gather allows us to not only strengthen our community through our shared history, but also to look out onto the world with the satisfaction that we honor history while shaping the present with the collections we hold.

Thank you again, and see you soon at the Redwood,

2

Art of Collecting

Nick Basbanes

4

Roderick Terry: The Clergyman Collector Michael Simpson

6 Drawings of Touro Synagogue Daniel Snydacker, Ph.D.

10 Fred Wilson: Black Light and Enlightenment Leora Maltz-Leca, Ph.D.

14 In Focus: Redwood Collects Vintage Newport Paul Miller

18 At the Athenæum Celebrating 275 Years 20 Exhibitions at the Redwood

etc.

Summer 2023 | Vol. IV, 1 redwoodlibrary.org Editorial Director Benedict Leca, Ph.D. Editor Patricia Barry Pettit Design Pam Rogers Design

Benedict Leca, Ph.D. Executive Director

Reprint of any content herein must bear following credit line: Originally Published in etc., The Magazine of the Redwood Library & Athenæum Summer 2023

Mission Statement Founded in 1747 on the Enlightenment ideals of intellectual pursuit and civic engagement, and committed to lifelong, interdisciplinary learning, the Redwood Library & Athenæum generates knowledge in the humanities for the benefit of the widest possible audience with “nothing in view but the good of mankind.”

Redwood Library & Athenæum Board of Directors 2022-2023 Janet Alexander Pell, President Daniel Benson, Vice President Michelle Drum, Secretary M. Holt Massey, Treasurer Edwin G. Fischer, M.D., Honorary Board Member R. Daniel Prentiss, Honorary Board Member Aida Neary Marvin Abney Waring Partridge Josiah Bunting III Earl A. Powell III Maura Smith Cullen Andy Ridall Jacalyn Egan Jeffrey Siegal Michael Gewirz Susan Sipprelle John Rovensky Grace Robin Warren John D. Harris II

chartered 1747 Redwood Library & Athenæum 50 Bellevue Avenue Newport, Rhode Island 02840 401.847.0292 redwood@redwoodlibrary.org @redwoodlibrary

Cover: (Grolier) Club Bindery binding, 1900 for: Songs from the Dramatists

By Robert Bell New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1882 Gift of the Estate of Roderick Terry Jr., September 1951. Formerly owned by Roderick Terry (Sr.)

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The Redwood Library & Athenæum’s commitment to environmental responsibility includes utilizing paper products manufactured through sustainable forest practices and using low VOC inks and solvents.

rr e ed dw wo oo od d ll ii b b rr aa rr y y .. o o rr g g 11

Art of Collecting

by Nicholas A. Basbanes

once my memory banks A friend of mine were nudged, I recalled recently acquired from the occasion clearly. The an antiquarian bookseller handsome broadside a beautifully produced had been printed by broadside that features an letterpress on fine paper excerpt from a book I wrote

by Bonnie Thompson in 2002 that expresses, Norman, proprietor of in a few sentences, my the Windowpane Press, considered conviction that every collector is at heart a in Seattle, Washington, in storyteller, and that every a run of about 250 copies as a keepsake for the Book collection is a narrative that reveals as much about the Club of Washington to commemorate a talk I individuals who gather the gave to the membership in material as it does about 2006. I pencil-signed and the the material itself. numbered all of them in What was especially one sitting before setting fun about this piece of out for a memorable ephemera is that I had meal at Elliot’s Oyster completely forgotten about House on the waterfront. it until reminded by Kurt I believe I signed a few Zimmerman, a Houstonextras for the booksellers based, books-about-books who had invited me collector to the extreme to meet with the local who has made a determined project of acquiring bibliophilic community. examples of everything I I enjoyed myself, as I have committed to print, always do when mixing with kindred spirits, but an exercise he pursues tempus fugit, and this with dogged enthusiasm little interlude, and the to the point that he broadside it engendered, contacts me whenever he had faded entirely from turns up curiosities such as this, especially when my consciousness.

I was genuinely they involves books I have Albrecht Dürer The Book Foole (1494), woodcut for Sebastian Brandt’s surprised, too, to learn inscribed to various people, Das Narrenschiff that the item had not only to learn what I can tell him anything interesting about the relationship, if any, (since he enjoyed a life of its own apart from the book it references, but that it also collectors what is known as “association” copies.) This is all has become a collectible item in its own right. As for the text itself, very flattering, I readily admit, and I comply whenever I can; I even I was equally pleased to re-acquaint myself with a sentiment that wrote about what it’s like to be an author who is collected with I had expressed several decades earlier in Among the Gently Mad: this degree of enthusiasm for Fine Books & Collections (No. 19:4, Strategies and Perspectives for the Book-Hunter of the 21st Century (Henry Holt, New York, 2002), and to conclude that I still stand by Autumn 2021).

It took a few seconds to get my bearings on this item, but every word. Here is the quote, in full: 2 etc. S u m m er 202 3

Numerous libraries in the United States, I found, owe their very existence to collectors who have had the foresight to place their prize possessions in places where they will be preserved and enjoyed by future generations, and in many instances they established and shaped the focus of the very institutions themselves.

“What some bibliophiles regard as a specialty, I like to think of as a theme. What some call focus, I call context. Such fine distinctions may well be little more than matters of taste, since both argue strongly for the development of a central plan, yet they support my considered view that every collector is a storyteller, and that every collection a form of narrative, a perspective that raises the process of forming a personal library above the pointless exercise of accumulation without direction. If you are inclined to accept this proposition, it follows that the plot line that emerges is as much a reflection of personality and purpose as it is of life experience.”

I had written Among the Gently Mad as a follow-up to my first book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (Henry Holt, New York, 1995), which shocked everyone, myself included, when it sold out its modest first printing of 6,000 copies on the first day of publication in August 1995, and once some very strong reviews started to come in, did the same in even greater numbers with two succeeding printings. Over the next two years the title went back to press five more times before finally going into paperback in 1998; an updated edition, and an e-book version, were released in 2013, and as the book approaches its thirtieth birthday in 2025, remains very much in print. It goes without saying that robust sales are always welcome, but even more satisfying, for me, is the knowledge that the book has retained its appeal all this time, and that 1,450 libraries throughout the globe still report having copies in their collections, according to the WorldCat database, and that dozens of colleges and universities that teach history-of-the-book courses include it in their syllabi of suggested and required readings.

How A Gentle Madness struck such a responsive chord so quickly, and how it has maintained such a resonance, is anyone’s guess, and remains a mystery to me, especially since my original proposal for the work had been rejected by more than a dozen trade publishes as being too arcane a subject for the general readership before being taken on by a far-sighted young editor at Henry Holt & Co., who was charmed by the stories of passion and obsession I had assembled, and liked the approach I had taken to go beyond the writing of a conventional history to investigate what was then the here and now of the late 1980s, and early ‘90s with fresh, previously untold examples of what I like to think of as “productive bibliomania,” with a few examples of “unchecked,” and, in one telling instance , “criminal bibliomania,” worked in for balance.

Aside from the magnificent dust-jacket with embossed black and gold decorations and a reproduction of Albrecht Dürer’s wonderful 1494 woodcut of “The Book Foole” for Sebastian Brandt’s

Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools), AGM, also had what everyone agreed was an irresistible title, a coinage that came to me in what I shamelessly claim to have been a moment of pure inspiration, suggested by the patriot-printer and obsessive packrat of all things interesting Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831), who had been eulogized at his death by a grandson as having been “touched early by the gentlest of infirmities, bibliomania.” As “gently mad” as Thomas may have been, his unparalleled collection of early American newspapers and imprints had provided the core collection of the American Antiquarian Society that he founded in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1812. He served as a kind of template for the kind of individual I was looking to profile.

Numerous libraries in the United States, I found, owe their very existence to collectors who have had the foresight to place their prize possessions in places where they will be preserved and enjoyed by future generations, and in many instances they established and shaped the focus of the very institutions themselves. Stand-alone libraries I can cite along those lines include the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island; the Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum in New York City; the Henry Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Garden in San Marino, California; the Henry Clay Folger and Emily Jordan Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC; the William Andrews Clark Library in Los Angeles; the William L. Clements Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Another favorite example of mine is the polymath James Logan (1674-1751), a brilliant man who immigrated to North America in 1699 to manage the colony of Pennsylvania for William Penn, and was relentless in his zeal for books that had to be shipped to him from Europe, assembling in the process what was, at the time, the strongest private library on the continent, which in due course became the core collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia.

This was the same man who had once implored a bookseller in Europe to spare no effort or expense in fulfilling his unending requests for titles, confiding, in a moment of unguarded candor, that “books are my disease.” A gentle madness, indeed.

Nicholas A. Basbanes a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar, is the author of ten works of cultural history whose most recent book, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, shared top honors in nonfiction for the Massachusetts Book Award. He is now working on a book for Yale University Press to be titled Before Paper:The Hunt for the World’s Earliest Writings, a prequel to his 2013 book, On Paper: The Everything of its 2,000-Year History, a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

r e d w o o d l i b r a r y. o r g 3

Roderick Terry: The Clergyman Collector Who Helped Shape Newport’s Literary Legacy

by Michael J. Simpson

Anonymous, Portrait of Roderick Terry (1929), oil on canvas: 51.2.1, Collection of the Newport Historical Society

4 etc. S u m m er 202 3

Roderick Terry was a clergyman who retired to Newport from Manhattan in 1909 and lived there until his death in 1933, becoming in that time among the most significant bibliophile collectors of Gilded Age Newport. A graduate of Yale College in 1870, Terry went on to complete a secondary degree in 1875 from Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. Around the same time, Terry married Linda Marquand, the daughter of Henry Marquand, a renowned New York philanthropist, art connoisseur, and frequent summer resident of Newport who was President of the Redwood from 1895 to 1902.

In 1912, Terry was elected a Director of the Redwood Library and appointed to the Committee on Books, the beginning of what was to be decades of support and donations to the Library. In 1914, he donated his first sum of books totaling 257 volumes, in addition to giving $500 (equivalent to about $15,000 today) for new book stacks and the salary of the Redwood’s cataloger. Following in his father-in-law’s footsteps, Terry was elected President of the Redwood Library in 1916 “for his services and the thought, time and money he has continuously contributed.” Throughout his tenure, he was financially responsible for restoring the Delivery Room, the Harrison Room, and the Reading Room (now known as the Roderick Terry Reading Room). The original gates from the Redwood estate were installed under his supervision on Redwood Street in 1914. And it was at Terry’s behest that in 1917 Bradford Norman, then the owner of Abraham Redwood’s historic house and property in Portsmouth, agreed to transfer the Summer house designed by Peter Harrison to the Library grounds, where it remains today. Finally, it was Terry who funded the Library’s acquisition of one of the handful of bronze replicas of French eighteenthcentury sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon’s famed full-length portrait sculpture of George Washington, now outdoors on the South side of the Library.

In 1916, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, Terry loaned to the Redwood a sizable amount of Shakespeare works from his private collection for an exhibition that was at the time called “the most remarkable Shakespeare exhibit ever held in this country.”

It is nonetheless Terry’s role as a bibliophile supporter of the copies of the book. As a retired clergyman, Terry’s collection Redwood upon which his legacy should logically rest. In 1916, to contained other religious ephemera, including a copy of Eliot’s commemorate the 300th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, Indian Bible. The latter was the first Bible printed in what would Terry loaned to the Redwood a sizable amount of Shakespeare become the United States, and comprised text in both English works from his private collection for an exhibition that was at the and Wôpanâak, the language of the Wampanoag people. Both time called “the most remarkable Shakespeare exhibit ever held the Morgan and Brown collections included this same edition. in this country.” The American Art Association catalogues of the Terry’s holdings of Shakespeare exceeded those of both Brown and posthumous sale of his book collection attest to the superlative Morgan: while Terry owned a 1622 first edition of The Tragedy of quality of the Terry materials displayed at the Library: first editions Othello, Morgan’s collection has no early editions of the tragedy, of Shakespeare’s Poems (1640) and The Tragedy of Othello (1622), and Brown only has a copy published in 1630.

The first volume of the American Art Association’s catalogs of second editions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600), King the Terry sale provides a telling measure of his collection: “Over Lear (1608), and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1619).

The Shakespeare exhibition was the Redwood’s first devoted half a century ago he began to lay the foundations for a private to rare books, and the first of many subsequent shows drawn library which, during ensuing decades, grew to be one of the most from Terry’s collection. In 1927, the library held an event to remarkable collections in this country.” Among Terry’s collecting passions was also historic autographs, some commemorate the 200th anniversary of still remaining in the Redwood’s Special James Franklin’s—the older brother of In the context of the region and era, Collections. The auction included signatures Benjamin—establishment of a printing Terry’s personal book collection of George Washington, Rhode Island industry in Newport. This exhibit held of Western literature from both General Nathanael Greene, and “a complete many “valuable specimens of early Newport Europe and the Americas was of set of the autographs of the Signers printing.” In 1929, Terry loaned items for particular significance. Indeed, his of the Declaration of Independence,” an “exhibition of pictures, broadsides, maps, collections are comparable to the which included rare signatures of Button and letters in commemoration of the 150th vast collections of far better-known Gwinnett of Georgia, and Thomas Lynch anniversary of the Battle of Rhode Island.” individuals such as John Carter Jr., of South Carolina. The collection also A second exhibition that year, also based on Brown (1797-1874) or J.P. Morgan included autographs from noteworthy loans from Terry, included “original letters, (1837-1913). figures like authors Charlotte Brontë, Lord manuscript poems, and autographs of some of the famous early American writers.”

Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, and astronomer In 1932, Terry loaned several valuable books from his collection Galileo Galilei. Final revenues from the sale certify Terry’s eye to show “an example of the growth and progress of the printer,” for quality and attest to his indelible mark on Newport’s literary an exhibition—Terry’s last—that was deemed at the time as “one legacy: according to the Newport Daily News, the sale of Terry’s of the most important and interesting exhibitions ever shown at “rare books, manuscripts, and autographs” generated $167,876, or the library.” Later, in 1931, in support of Terry’s special interest in about $3.8 million today. the library, his wife Linda Marquand Terry “very kindly loaned a Michael J. Simpson holds graduate degrees in History from New collection of handsome laces and fans.” These presentations make York University and Brown University, and is now an Adjunct clear not only Terry’s devotion to the Redwood, but also his and his Professor of History at Johnson & Wales University in Providence. family’s commitment to Newport’s history and public history.

He is also the founder of On This Day in Rhode Island History.

In the context of the region and era, Terry’s personal book collection of Western literature from both Europe and the Sources consulted: Americas was of particular significance. Indeed, his collections are American Art Association, The Library of the Late Rev. Dr. Roderick Terry of comparable to the vast collections of far better-known individuals Newport, Rhode Island, Vol. 1 (American Art Assoc., New York, 1934). such as John Carter Brown (1797-1874) or J.P. Morgan (1837- “Folders of letters and documents relating to Dr. Roderick Terry” [1907-1932], 1913). For example, while Brown’s collection contained only one B.102F.2, Newport Historical Society. leaf of the Gutenberg Bible, Terry’s contained twenty-four leaves, Mayer, Lloyd M., “In Memory of Reverend Roderick Terry,” Bulletin of the encapsulating the entire Book of Genesis. On the other hand, Newport Historical Society, No. 91, (Apr 1934).

Morgan’s is the only collection in the world to have three complete Roderick Terry Collection, Redwood Library and Athenæum. r e d w o o d l i b r a r y. o r g 5

Historic American Building Survey Drawings of Touro Synagogue come to the Redwood Library

by Daniel Snydacker, Ph.D.

6 etc. S u m m er 202 3

r e d w o o d l i b r a r y. o r g 7

Touro Synagogue was designed by America’s so-called first work laid the groundwork for most of the other early Rhode Island architect Peter Harrison (1716-1775), and completed in 1763 for HABS submissions, as the latter’s photographs became part of the the small Jewish community that found a safe haven in Newport first HABS entries for at least sixty-nine of Rhode Island’s most owing to the city’s commitment to the policy of religious liberty. important historic structures, including the Redwood Library. The The Synagogue is considered by many to be one of Harrison’s finest Early Homes of Rhode Island was thus an extremely valuable statedesigns, and it is certainly one of America’s most important colonial wide inventory that was part of the preservation impulse behind buildings. Between 1957 and 1963, an extensive restoration of Touro the formation of HABS, being an early phase of the on-going, Synagogue was undertaken and led by Gerald Watland, a nationally long-haul effort to document and preserve the American cultural known preservation architect and specialist in 18th-century landscape and make historic preservation a high federal priority. architecture brought in by the National Park Service to supervise At the beginning, however, there was another agenda. the work. In that role, Watland directed the two young architects Initiated as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s effort to rebuild the working for him on the project—J. Nagle and J. Meideros—to Depression-ravaged U.S. economy, HABS was established in prepare what turned out to be the first and only complete set of 1933 as part of the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and the measured drawings of the Synagogue ever produced.

Works Progress Administration (WPA).3 From the beginning, Following the completion of the restoration, Watland submitted HABS was a collaborative effort involving a wide variety of people the drawings in 1969 to the Historic American Building Survey and organizations, including the Library of Congress and the (HABS), the pre-eminent national repository of material that American Institute of Architects. The program was also designed documents the country’s historic buildings and designed landscapes. to provide employment for over 1,000 out-of-work architects and The forty drawings in the set provide us with a comprehensive view photographers. Throughout its history, HABS documentation has of the way Touro Synagogue was built, dovetailed with the major national, state, the exceptional skill of Newport’s colonial and local preservation organizations— HABS has since grown to become one craftsmen, and of the technical and stylistic both professional and volunteer—and of the largest collections of architectural affinities linking Touro to Harrison’s other the decision to document a building documentation in the country, if major works in Newport: the Redwood has always come from both the top not the world, and one of the most Library (built 1748-1750) and the Brick down and the bottom up. While the heavily used special collections in the Market (1772). The drawings show how first phase of the HABS surveys ended Library of Congress. The standards for period craftsmen implemented Harrison’s with America’s entry into World War II, documentation developed by HABS have neo-Palladian designs, an architectural the enactment of the National Historic generated a uniform, comparable, and style then popular in England, but Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 usable resource that makes it an essential only recently adopted in the American marked the beginning of a new era in tool in telling the story of American history Colonies, and how books—such as James federal preservation programs, including and in guiding the restoration of countless Gibbs’s 1732 Rules for Drawing the Several the re-booting of the HABS survey at a historic buildings across the country.

Parts of Architecture and Batty Langley’s new level of professionalism.

1740 Treasury of Design—were integral to HABS has since grown to become the transmission of Palladian architecture to America. Closer to our one of the largest collections of architectural documentation in time, the drawings also offer up a window onto the history of the the country, if not the world, and one of the most heavily used historic preservation movement in America. special collections in the Library of Congress. The standards for By a remarkable turn of serendipity, a set of these drawings— documentation developed by HABS have generated a uniform, made before Watland submitted the final copy to HABS1—became comparable, and usable resource that makes it an essential tool in available for sale at Commonwealth Books on Washington Square telling the story of American history and in guiding the restoration in Newport. In consultation with the Touro Synagogue Foundation of countless historic buildings across the country. HABS and its they have been acquired by the Redwood for the Library’s Special affiliated engineering and landscape surveys record more than Collections. As coincidence would have it, the building occupied by 500,000 drawings, photographs, and histories for more than 41,000 Commonwealth Books is also part of the story. Known now as the historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to Buliod-Perry House, the building was home to both Moses Levy the 21st century.4 It is thoroughly inclusive, and its subjects are and the Moses Seixas family before the Revolution. Levy was one multi-cultural, urban and rural, secular and profane, vernacular and of the original contributors to the construction of the Synagogue, high style.5 and Seixas was a President of Touro Synagogue and a founding The HABS drawings of Touro Synagogue were produced just member of the King David Masonic Lodge in Newport. prior to this turning point in the history of the survey in the 1960s.

In fact, the drawings were not the first materials submitted to Watland had them done as part of the due diligence he understood HABS for the Synagogue. The earliest entry was made in 1937 at was needed to both preserve and document the building and its the very beginning of the HABS program and consisted of three history. Their submission to the Library of Congress by Watland photographs taken by the little-known Rhode Island photographer reflects his understanding of the historic preservation movement at Arthur W. Le Boeuf. His photographs of Touro originally appeared in both the local and national level, and they formed a bookend to the Antoinette Downing’s groundbreaking 1937 book The Early Homes submission of photographs by LeBoeuf twenty-three years earlier. of Rhode Island for which he was the photographer. In that same This pattern of HABS records being created over time applies year Downing was appointed to serve on the advisory committee to the Redwood Library’s records as well. The Library benefited to the Rhode Island section of HABS.2 Downing’s and LeBeouf ’s directly from the revival of HABS, for in 1970 the National Park 8 etc. S u m m er 202 3

The Redwood Library benefited directly from the revival of HABS, for in 1970 the National Park Service initiated the “Newport HABS Project,” which generated materials that were contributed to existing Newport HABS records as well as to the creation of several new ones.

Service initiated the “Newport HABS Project,” which generated materials that were contributed to existing Newport HABS records as well as to the creation of several new ones. The measured drawings of Redwood were done at this time by Thomas Sanford, a professional draftsman. An extensive series of photographs was also taken by the National Park Service photographer, Jack E. Boucher, and added to many earlier records, including Redwood’s and Touro’s.

Finally, additional photographs were taken of Redwood during the “Newport HABS Project” by the internationally recognized photographer Cervin Robinson, who worked during his long career for many of the country’s top architectural historians.6 There was one more important development that appeared after the revival of HABS in the 1960s, and that was the application of digital technology to the creation of material submitted to HABS starting in the 1980s. That decade witnessed the introduction of new drawing technologies such as Computer Aided Drafting (CAD). The gradual move from hand drawing to CAD enabled the recording of large-scale structures, and traditional hand-measuring has since been augmented by digitally rectified photogrammetry and three-dimensional laser scanning.7 As part of this transition to digital technology, scans were made by the Library of Congress of many of the HABS records, including these drawings, which are now available on-line. As convenient as they are, however, our casual acceptance of the permanence, accuracy, and reliability of on-line material is giving way to some concerns

about the stability of the internet, and these paper drawings have the added value of being a safe, backup copy, stored right up the street from Touro at the Redwood Library.

This digital technology has also largely replaced the traditional arts of hand-drawing and hand-inking. While this has made the production of measured drawings easier, many feel that something is lost in this transition. These drawings on paper were made by real people—Nagle and Medieros—and they retain the ineffable presence brought by the human hand that is so often lost to the onslaught of digital technology. Their very materiality adds to their affective power, far surpassing a digital reproduction. With now ready access to the drawings, students and scholars of historic preservation will have a direct view onto the work done to preserve Touro, the history of HABS, and the history of historic preservation in America over the last 90 years.

Acquisition made possible with funds from the Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg Charitable Foundation

4

Ibid, p. 85

5

Ibid, p. 50

We know they were made before the set submitted to HABS because of internal evidence in the drawings themselves, most specifically the fact that the official labelling of the drawings done by HABS at the time of submission was missing from this set. They were, in all probability, the property of either Watland or his young apprentice, James Lee Nagle.

1

Antoinette Downing is better known for her book with Vincent Scully The Architectural Heritage of Newport, Rhode Island, 1640-1915, (Cambridge MA. 1952.

Harvard University Press, with subsequent editions)

2

Daniel Snydacker, Ph.D. is is an architectural historian and formerly Director of the Newport Historical Society (1982-2004). He is currently working on a monograph devoted to the work of architect Robert H. Robertson

See “An Eye Toward the Past: Remembering Architectural Photographer Cervin Robinson (1928–2022), https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/16032an-eye-toward-the-past-remembering-architectural-photographer-cervinrobinson-19282022

6

7

American Place, op.cit., p. 73

Much of the information about the history and value of HABS is found in American Place: The Historic American Building Survey at Seventy-Five Years, the catalogue of the 75th anniversary exhibition sponsored by the US Department of the Interior Museum and the National Park Service HABS program. See p. 13.

3

r e d w o o d l i b r a r y. o r g 9

Black Light and Enlightenment: Fred Wilson’s No Way But This

by Leora Maltz-Leca, Ph.D.

Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello, set in Venice in the sixteenth to Blackness. At the same time Wilson, a consummate wordsmith, century, is one of the few major works of European literature to depict specifies the sculpture as a memorial by placing it in the art historical a Black man with nuance and ambiguity. In fact, accomplished and lineage of a memento mori, the trope of northern European painting worldly Black men like Othello, whom Shakespeare casts as general that reminded the viewer of the inevitability of death through in the Venetian army married to a European noblewoman, were a such symbols as a skull, dying flowers or an hourglass. Wilson significant presence in Venice and other European cities before and substitutes the morbid Latin expression (literally, remember that during the Renaissance. In the centuries that followed, however, you will die) with the gentler chandelier mori, his title drawing out the presence of Africans in Europe was often dropped from the the double meaning of mori as “death’ and “Black”. Additionally, historical record. the nomenclature of chandelier, which is a word coined in France in When American artist Fred Wilson was chosen to represent the eighteenth century, retrieves a long and specifically European the United States at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 he turned to association between light, knowledge and whiteness exemplified Othello, using Renaissance literature and painting to research what in the ideals and imagery of the Siècle des Lumières, that is, the turned out to be a robust—but largely erased—history of Africans in Enlightenment. 3 Venice, a storied juncture between east and west where for centuries In No Way But This, Wilson uses glass, a fragile yet incredibly a cosmopolitan and racially diverse culture thrived. As a memorial durable material long associated in the Western tradition with gesture to these Black communities, Wilson light and transparency, as the means to collaborated with glassmakers on the In No Way But This, Wilson uses interrogate the metaphor of light as truth, Venetian island of Murano to produce one of alongside the harmful obverse symbolism it glass, a fragile yet incredibly the island’s signature, baroque Ca’Rezzonico depends on: darkness as duplicity and death. chandeliers. The Redwood’s chandelier No durable material long associated These metaphors, the enduring legacy of Way But This (fig. 1) is titled after Othello’s in the Western tradition with light the Judeo-Christian tradition, continued to very last line in the play when, having and transparency, as the means to dominate eighteenth-century New England, stabbed himself, he declares: “No way but interrogate the metaphor of light which modeled itself on European culture. this/ Killing myself, To die upon a kiss.” The as truth, alongside the harmful Note how the two institutions of learning quote Wilson selected encapsulates Othello’s that preceded the Redwood in the triad of obverse symbolism it depends on: desperate sense of entrapment, both by Colonial learning both seized upon these the events which provoked his murder of darkness as duplicity and death. ideas. Harvard claimed as its motto the Desdemona and by a world circumscribed snappy “Lux (Light),” and Yale followed by rigid hierarchies in which being Black was as precarious as it with the clarificatory addition “Lux et Veritas” (Light and Truth). is today.1 Moreover, in the carceral state of the present Othello’s Wilson’s No Way But This challenges these powerful visual and words, and the condition of being ensnared or confined, resonate epistemological campaigns by creating an object of black light: a beyond Shakespeare’s text, portending histories of Black people in gorgeously ornate and luxurious artwork that celebrates opacity and the centuries that followed. tenebrous reflection. In this way, the artist retools the longstanding Wilson titled his first chandelier, the one exhibited as the equation of light with whiteness and truth, and along with it, the centerpiece of the U.S. Pavilion in Venice Chandelier Mori: Speak arbitrary and unwarranted linkage of Blackness with falsehood. of Me as I Am. As in the Redwood version, the latter part of this The Redwood, chartered in 1747, is America’s Enlightenment title is drawn from Othello’s final speech, where the dying man institution par excellence: it is the sole secular cultural institution in appeals for truth and fair representation.2 Through this signal quote, this country with an unsevered link between the eighteenth century the artist highlighted Othello’s terminal request to be portrayed and the present. As such, given this extraordinary but complicated as he was, neither heroically burnished nor maliciously falsified; history, the Redwood Contemporary Art Initiative (RCAI) seeks nor, presumably, simply deleted. In concert with this notion, the to explore the double history of the Enlightenment, that is, the monumental chandelier of black glass—an unprecedented color way in which the most laudable ideals of democracy and liberty cofor a Ca’Rezzonico light fixture—works to “bring to light” buried existed with—or, more cynically, were a rhetoric aimed at diverting histories of Blackness in Venice. The work’s subtitle, Chandelier attention from—the brutal material realities of the slave trade and Mori, referring to how in Renaissance Venice Africans were called abject unfreedom. Rhode Island occupied a central place in this “mori” meaning “dark” in Italian, emphasizes the work as a homage history, and the Redwood was founded with funds donated by a 10 etc. S u m m er 2 02 3

Fig. 1 Fred Wilson No Way But This, 2013, Murano glass and light bulbs, 70 1/16 x 68 1/2 x 68 1/2”.

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man who owned nearly three hundred enslaved Africans whom he forced to labor on his sugar plantations in Antigua. In this way, the Redwood Library exemplifies this double legacy of the Enlightenment in that its noble ideas of knowledge and education (for some) were made possible by an ignoble reality of slavery and violence.

Given the U.S.’s history, Wilson’s memorial to the centuriesold Black communities in Venice is not interesting simply as an isolated instance of one cosmopolitan, multiracial Renaissance city.

It points to a larger phenomenon of wholescale obliteration: an entire Eurocentric history of deleting the contributions of African history, mathematics, astronomy, science, art and culture. One starting point was in eighteenth-century Germany, when Johann Joachim Winckelmann and other early founders of modern art history and archaeology denied the profound influence of Egypt and north Africa on Greek language, science and culture, instead projecting a narcissistic image of Aryan blondness onto the ancient Greeks.4 And one place this Enlightenment history of erasure culminated is right here in Newport, RI, with the denial of the very humanity of Black persons through the institution of slavery. It was this denial that allowed Mr. Redwood to make the fortune that funded this library through the means that he did (a library built, ironically, as a Neoclassical temple whose structure is indebted to Egyptian geometry.) The systematic erasure of Black history and Black subjectivity thus forms part of a targeted Enlightenmentera effort of dehumanizing, the rhetorical process bound up with the invention of racial categories of difference, which in turn were necessary to justify the colonial project, mass enslavement, and indigenous genocide.5 A defining element of Wilson’s practice is his investment in the specific context where his work is shown, and the brilliance of his art has often hinged on simple, deft shifts of an object from one location to another.6 Precisely because of Wilson’s emphasis on context, location and the institutional frame as crucial to art’s

meaning, the Redwood was committed to permanently displaying Wilson’s chandelier here, in the US’s first public Palladian building.

Whereas other iterations of these chandeliers in the US are hung in white box galleries and museums, Wilson’s original Chandelier Mori was made to cast shadows on a Palladian building: the rotunda of the US Pavilion in Venice’s Giardini (fig. 2). Not only does its installation in the Redwood retrieve some of the initial formal sensibilities of the Speak of Me as I Am installation, where shiny black glass was juxtaposed against matte white marble, baroque excess against the austerity of Palladian classicism, but Wilson as an individual was asked to represent “the nation,” at a biennale where the US represents itself to the world beyond. Othello’s (and Wilson’s) demand for “fair representation” reverberated through an exceptionally loaded context of international diplomacy, housed in an institutional architecture loyal to a centuries-old, almost sacred association between Classicism and democracy.

Given that the US pavilion was constructed in the 1930s (as a somewhat anachronistic tribute to eighteenth-century Palladian architecture, and nearly 200 years after the Redwood founders sought to do the same), Wilson’s work serves to highlight the enduring allure of Neoclassicism. But in 2023, is such continuity laudable or does the insistence on an unchanging ideal of classicism represent an utter failure of imagination? This is an image of the US that still asserts itself as a European outpost from which the contributions of African and Indigenous people, then as now, are largely whitewashed. The 2020 Presidential executive order that all Federal buildings in Washington DC must be Neoclassical in style hasn’t helped the association with Palladianism as a static architecture of white male power.7 Twenty-first century US culture, like many before it, might wish to believe it enjoys a “progression” from earlier periods of violence and savagery. Yet Fred Wilson’s nuanced practice opens up an important dialog regarding the uneven back and forth of histories of tolerance. No Way But This points to a long, eclipsed

Fig. 2 Fred Wilson, facade of American pavilion with Frari figures, 2003 Venice Biennale / Peter Harrison, Redwood Library (1747), Newport, Rhode Island.

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Wilson’s sculpture combines a celebration of light with a memorial to death and to the repressed histories of violence and genocide that enabled the wealth and prosperity of the United States.

history of trade and intellectual exchange between Europe and Africa which existed continuously for centuries, only to be erased, post-Enlightenment, by the invention of capitalist modernity and its key mechanism of accumulation: enslavement. Far from progress, what we see is regress, with the pre-Enlightenment world offering certain models of tolerance and cosmopolitanism that ended with the rule of Enlightenment values of reason, progress and order. Likewise, the resurrection of Neoclassical architectures of power in the 1930s, as in 2020, might be construed as regressive recursions to previous, idealized moments of total white power.

Wilson’s sculpture combines a celebration of light with a memorial to death and to the repressed histories of violence and genocide that enabled the wealth and prosperity of the United States. Hung in the Redwood, beneath the streaming light of the oculus (fig.

3), our hope is that this sculpture will open conversations on a more complex concept of light as a spectrum of possibilities, and on history as rife with contradictions, blind spots and opacities.

Leora Maltz-Leca, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Global Contemporary Art Dept. Head, Theory & History of Art & Design, RISD Curator of Contemporary Projects, Redwood Library & Athenæum

Photo: Alyssa Gaudreau

Fig. 3 Fred Wilson No Way But This, 2013, Murano glass and light bulbs, 70 1/16 x 68 1/2 x 68 1/2”.

Acquisition made possible by the generosity of: The Ford Foundation, Mr. Cornelius C. Bond and Ms. Ann E. Blackwell, Ms. Belinda Kielland, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen A. Schwarzman, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick J. Warren.

“Certainly, Africans in Italy of the 12th and 13th century had no more stability than they do now, so the point in the Biennale was sort of about that.” Fred Wilson in Fred Wilson: A Conversation with K. Anthony Appiah (New York, NY: PaceWildenstein, 2006): 23.

1

Wilson titled his entire exhibition in the U.S. Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2003 Speak of Me as I Am, and the chandelier itself Chandelier Mori. But when the chandelier was exhibited subsequently, it was referred to as Speak of Me as I Am: Chandelier Mori.

2

The Latin word candere means: to give light, to shine, or to be white.

3

Dehumanizing, defined as the act of depriving a group of people of positive characteristics, forms the basis of genocide, and other murderous acts. See David Livingstone Smith, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

5

For instance, in his iconic 1991 Mining the Museum he relocated objects from the storage space of the Maryland Historical Society to the galleries, displaying two types of local woodwork under the rubric “Cabinetmaking, 1820-1960:” a whipping post surrounded by Chippendale chairs.

6

For the 2022 Venice Biennale, Simone Leigh covered the US Pavilion’s Palladian façade with thatch; while German artist Maria Eichhorn’s 2022 installation in the German pavilion called “Relocating A Structure” excavated part of the current pavilion to reveal the additions made by the Nazis in 1938.

7

For this history, se Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Volume I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985 New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987).

4

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Photogenic to Photodocumentary: The Redwood Collects Vintage Newport Images

by Paul Miller

Fig. 1 The Breakers I breakfast room, ca. 1890. Dining table and high chair that escaped the 1892 fire.

At or about 4pm on the afternoon of November 25, 1892, two events occurred almost simultaneously at Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s Peabody & Stearns-designed summer residence “The Breakers” in Newport. While Mr. and Mrs. Edward R. Wharton (“Teddy” and Edith) payed a social call to Mr. Vanderbilt a fire started beneath the villa’s three-story center hall in a defective heating apparatus. With a strong northeast wind, the winter weather was pronounced that week, and for that reason the fires within the house had been kept going. It is surmised that the flues were too small and the basement furnace could not withstand the strain. By 4:15pm servants in the vicinity of the billiard and dining rooms detected smoke and ran from the northeast corner of the house, across the center hall, to the music room to alert Mr. Vanderbilt. Leaving the Whartons, he stepped into the hall to investigate and saw a tongue of flame through a crack in the walnut paneling. The alarm was sounded and male servants armed themselves with fire extinguishers. Flames came from all directions and forced them back. The Whartons, Mrs. Vanderbilt and the four children then at home withdrew to the gardener’s lodge. Aided by the staff, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt made 14 etc. S u m m er 2 02 3

an effort to save a few personal effects but were quickly fortunate to just escape alive. Later that evening, Cornelius Vanderbilt regretted to the press that “not a thing was saved”.

These details are dramatically retold on the front page of The New York Times and other leading American newspapers the following day. They allow for a relatively accurate reconstruction of events. But to form a visual reconstruction in the absence of newsreels, the modern researcher has but to consult the visual record preserved in the cache of period photographs recently purchased by the Redwood that formerly belonged to Leonard and Monique Panaggio, the Preservation Society, and the Newport Redevelopment Authority. Here one finds a series of rare circa 1890 interior views of The Breakers I as it was just before the fire and the visual evidence is revealing. Looking closely at the furnishings of the ground floor rooms, it becomes apparent that the flames must have shot through the great center hall travelling north to south on the east or ocean-side of the house. For indeed no furnishings, accessories or textiles in the dining room, the billiard room, the morning room or the music room are recognizable as having been

Fig. 2 The Breakers I library, ca. 1890. Armchairs, button-tufted low chair, Renaissance style side chair and a rattan corner chair that escaped the 1892 fire.

saved from the flames and reutilized by the family. On the other hand, a surprising number of items from the front (west side) of the house appear to have escaped the fire and been reused in the masonry for The Breakers II built from 1893 to 1895 by Richard Morris Hunt.

It appears from the record provided by these images that Mr. Vanderbilt and his staff worked with very limited time on a salvage operation, entering and exiting from the west side front door while the east-facing side of the house was aflame. This becomes apparent from the number of pieces extricated from the west-facing library and breakfast room. Interestingly, the original ground floor plan was reprised in the new Breakers. From the breakfast room (Fig. 1) came an Empire style circular dining table and a child’s highchair; from the library (Fig. 2) came two large velvet-upholstered high-back French armchairs, a rattan corner chair, a button-tufted velvet side chair and a Renaissance metallic strapwork-backed side chair. All of these salvaged pieces are recorded as reappearing in the inventory of The Breakers II as it opened in August 1895 and where they remain today. Thanks to the visual evidence of these archival views, the narrative of The Breakers fire can be re-interpreted anew.

This example of visual decoding underscores the historical importance of preserving photographic collections, the density of which enable scholars to reconstruct the past in exceptional detail.

Hence the import of the Redwood’s recent acquisition, a collection comprising 355 archival photographs of Newport spanning the 1870s to the 1970s. Ranging from stereoscopes views of early Newport cottages, to city streetscapes, parades, festivals, aerial views and urban renewal projects, these additional images will round out the comprehensive nature of the Library’s photography collection.

A particular and unduplicated strength of the collection is the series of photographs that traces the 1965-1969 urban renewal campaign from Long Wharf to Market Square. As generations pass, the memory of Newport’s waterfront prior to 1970 is fast receding. Such once evocative names as Government Landing and Market Square, the Torpedo Station or the Blue Moon—formerly Newport’s legendary hubs of transit, employment and nightlife— mean little to generations born after 1970. Indeed, the 1960s witnessed the most extensive transformation of Newport’s physical environment in the city’s 384-year history. Vintage views of the city allow us to consider the gradual evolution of the built landscape in architectural, sociological and economic terms. They also hint at the complex layering and overlapping of historical periods in now vanished neighborhoods. Even if this layering survives only in photos, evidence abounds regarding what might lie beneath the surface for future archaeologists. r e d w o o d l i b r a r y . o r g 15

Fig. 3 February 1965 demolition of the Goat Island Torpedo Station

Fig. 4 December 1966 demolition of the Boston Store, Thames Street at Market Square

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Future researchers attempting to locate Market Square, the ferry or government landings, or any of a variety of commercial wharves, streets, homes and businesses will find ample visual evidence in this unique facet of the collection—just one chapter of many in the Redwood’s newly enhanced and growing photography archive.

Fig. 5 November 1966 demolition of the Blue Moon, Thames Street at Washington Square

Take, for instance a February, 1965 view of the demolition of the Torpedo Station on Goat Island (Fig. 3); what was once a densely built concentration of buildings from the eighteenth through midtwentieth centuries—for long a highly industrialized site that functioned as the biggest employer in the State of Rhode Island— is for us today a contemporary resort serving both residential and yachting communities. Unbeknownst to most Newporters and visitors, beneath the surface lies layers of Colonial, Victorian and twentieth-century history, the knowledge of which is available largely through the evidence of these old images.

In a December 1966 image of the demolition of the old Boston Store on Thames Street (Fig. 4), we look east through the first hole made in the urban fabric along the west side of the street at its juncture with Market Square. North of Bowen’s Wharf, this block formerly was the transit center for naval personnel and civilian workers commuting via Government landing ferries to Fort Adams, the Training Station and the Torpedo Station. Likewise, to the immediate south, most visitors to Newport arriving via the Jamestown ferry landed at Market Square, also home to the Newport Police Department. Further north, at the foot of Washington Square, stood a series of dilapidated Colonial houses

converted via multiple additions into shops and bars. The most notorious of the latter was the now legendary Blue Moon that we see reduced to rubble in a November, 1966 photo (Fig. 5). In the immediate north-facing background, the mid-nineteenth-century brick mill that housed the Newport Water Works would also soon make way for a parking lot fronting Marlborough Street.

Future researchers attempting to locate Market Square, the ferry or government landings, or any of a variety of commercial wharves, streets, homes and businesses will find ample visual evidence in this unique facet of the collection—just one chapter of many in the Redwood’s newly enhanced and growing photography archive.

Paul Miller is active for over three decades in multiple Newport restoration and preservation projects, Paul F. Miller is Curator Emeritus of the Preservation Society of Newport County and currently serves as Director of the Clouds Hill House Museum in Warwick, RI.

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Voices of Unity Choir

275th Anniversary Gala

MLK Day Celebration

Benedict Leca, ED and Daniel Prentiss, Board President

RI Gov. Dan McKee, Daniel Prentiss, Benedict Leca

Angus Davis, Daniel Benson, Nick Schorsch, Jr, Mark Egan, Bill Egan

Peter Walsh, Norey Cullen, Anne & Matt Hamilton

Dwight & Susan Sipprelle

Harry Benson audience

Harry Benson, Leora Maltz-Leca

Sold out Bill Murray Redwood Benefit

Benedict Leca, Peter Duchin, Janet Pell at Duchin’s Lecture

Robb Dimmick, Ray Rickman, Benedict Leca, David Blight Stages of Freedom Frederick Douglass Lecture

Patricia & Philip Bilden, Frederick Warren

Linda Sawyer & John Harris, Betsy & Frank Ray

18 etc. etc. SSu um mm mer er 2202 0233 Credit: All photos by David Hansen unless otherwise noted.

Credit: Alexander Gim-Fain

275th Proclamation by RI Gov. Dan McKee

Belinda Kielland, Sherri Grace, Elizabeth Leatherman

Bob Woodward at the Redwood

Bill Murray, Jan Vogler, Mira Wang

Washington Birthday Salute

Redwood 275th Gala

Bob Woodward, 275th Slocum Speaker

Newport Classical 275th Anniversary Concert Photo by Lisette Rooney, courtesy of Newport Classical

Treasures of the Redwood: Celebrating 275 Years

Howard Eisenberg, Angela & Garry Fischer

Harry Benson: Persons of Interest

Garden Party 2022

Redwood Holiday Food Drive for MLK Center US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

Fall Book Sale

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Exhibitions at The Redwood Arrangements and Other Photographic Maneuvres: Daniel Lefcourt Arranges the Trevor Traina Collection Organized by the RCAI and drawn from the exceptional photography collection of Ambassador Trevor D. Traina, the exhibition departs from New York-based artist Daniel Lefcourt’s series of so-called Arrangements (2004/05), works that examine the processes of collecting, arranging and systemizing that underpin institutions like the Redwood. While arranging masterpiece photographs from the Traina collection that establish affinities with his own work, Lefcourt has also produced a new series of Arrangements culled from the Redwood collection.

Curators: Daniel Lefcourt and Leora Maltz-Leca June 22 – October 1, 2023 Generously supported by the Hartfield Foundation

Expanding Horizons: Highlights from the Clouds Hill House Museum The exhibition introduces the remarkably well-preserved objects and custom furnishings of Clouds Hill, a Gothic Revival-Italianate mansion on the shore of Greenwich Bay, RI constructed in 187277 by Providence textile manufacturer William Smith Slater (18171882). Designed by Providence architect William R. Walker, the house’s interior decoration, done by William McPherson & Co., and it’s furnishings by Doe & Hunnewell, were never substantially altered, allowing the house to retain all of its original authenticity, not only physically, but also in the preservation of its residents’ personalities and spirit.

Paul Miller: Curator June 29, 2023 – January 7, 2024

Join us in

Honoring

the Past and

Celebrating the Future

Become a Redwood Member redwoodlibrary.org/membership Tel: 401.847.0292 x 115

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Back cover graphic: Fleming + Company

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From Redwood Library & Athenæum charter, 1747

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www.redwoodlibrary.org