PHOTO BY DICK RATH
"All maritime museums start out the same, it seems. ... I have photographs of my wife Jean busy with the paint brush amongst our volunteers. I recall Norma Stan/ord busy with the brush at South Street Seaport in 1967." -Karl Kortum
Above left: The previous weekend, Peter Stanford far right) and Kent Barwick settle the final details fo.r the opening exhibit, while Nonna Stanford casts the deciding vote and two unidentified volunteers work on. Above right: Karl Kortum and Peter Stan ford announce plans for the museum to well-wishers and members of the press. At right: Karl Kortum (left), Archie Horka and Os Brett aboard Athena in the lower East River, with the schooner's memorable stainless steel "Charlie Noble" in the foreground. PHOTO BY GERTRUDE BRETT
Schooner, 30 Years Ago Barbara Johnson regaled us with a sp lendid feast of cold lobster served with puffing address by her manservant (no other word will do) Kurt Masson. The reception was to welcome the Municipal Art Society, which had done much to support our fantastic project of opening a maritime museum in the district we were by now calling South Street Seaport. The volunteers setting up for the reception, included Dick Rath and Terry Walton of Boating magazine. Bob Walton, Terry 's husband, had seen to the legal incorporation of our outfit as South Street Seaport Museum two months before the opening. The exhibit volunteers were led by the unflappable Kent Barwick, later to become a memorably innovative president of the MAS. At the time, a NY State Parks official sent down to our grubby neighborhood to spy out who was running this ramshackle outfit, and to what ends, described Kent simply as "an adverti sing crony" of mine. And this was not entirely untrue-Kent worked as a copywriter at the agency Dorothy Parker said sounded like a suitcase fa lling downstairs , BBD & 0 , and I had sometime before quit Compton Advertising to open up the museum in a fish stall , on the strength of the 1,000 members who had joined us from all over the city and beyond , led by our garbageman Joe Cantalupo (people who tried to butter up Joe by calling him a waste removal professional generally got one of Joe's sour looks), supplemented by a SEA HISTORY 81, SPRING/SUMMER 1997
$2,000 grant from the J. M. Kaplan Fund and $5 ,000 from Jakob Isbrandtsen who also agreed to become the museum 's chairman. Later that year, in October, we got a forest of masts in South Street for the first Schooner Race for the Mayor's Cup. The vessels filled New York Harbor with gaff topsails and fisherman staysail s and gave us courage to face the coming winter. Before the year ended we had also published a book of photographs, courtesy Ted Stan ley of Bowne & Co., stationers and printers in New York since 1775. The book, South Street in the Afternoon of Sail, was hurried into print so that if our venture collapsed, it would leave at least something behind to inspire the next attempt. On the way home that first ni ght, Karl Kortum said to me: "That 's a fine schooner, Peter. But you ' re not going to be able to keep her and do the museum. " I had a chilling premonition that he was right, but what the hell , I was young (it seems now) and I shrugged this off. We had to give up Athena a few years later, short of time and money to keep her going, but not before the museum had acquired two great schooners, the Lettie G. Howard, a Gloucesterrnan of 1893 , and the Pioneer of 1885. Both these vessels sail actively out of South Street Seaport Muse um today , making the place a true home for schooners, as we had PS dreamed.
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