My Own Little Leaking Monticello: John A. Noble's Legacy for the Snugs by Erin Urban
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t was a stroke of good fortune that my first glimmer of life on th e water came from artist John A.Noble. I met him in 1983,j ust a few weeks before he died. I was wo rking for Wagner Coll ege in Staten Islan d, New York, in the Publicati o ns Office when the college was celebrating its centennial. We we re give n permission to interview fam o us people, and because we agreed o n a thirty-minute interview, we go t in the door with a few. I lobbied to interview Nob le and expected to be o ut of his house in thir ty minutes, too. The college's photographer, Bill Higgins, and I met there earl y that morning. I felt a little un easy when I asked my first question, "What brou ght yo u to State n Island?" and No ble replied in his gravelly vo ice, with its distinct cadence, "The Harlem River brought me to Staten Island ." As he d rew me in , though, I realized he was n' t a slightly demented old salt, but rather a mas ter sto ryteller ten steps ahead of me. We touched o n many things-from the life of his father, the famo us romanti c painter Jo hn "Wichita Bill" Noble, to why he used a rowboat to navigate the little inl ets, creeks, and islands of the harbor. "Well, how else wo uld yo u do it?" he asked. T he interview stretched into lunchtime, when we adjourned for a m artini, and then we set off for Bayo nne to visit his houseboat studio. "Higgins, " Nob le decl ared "H iggins. T hat's a good name for a chauffeur. You drive, Higgins." Bill took the wheel of Noble's convertible jeep, and as we roa red past Sailors' Snug H arbor, the famo us retirement hom e for mariners, Nob le stood and saluted . T he houseboat was beached and boarded up, bu t it was important to No ble that we see it. He slammed som e loose boards back in place over a window and seemed thoughtfu l and sad . I recall the soft breeze in the meadow grass. We returned to Staten Island and dropped Noble at home. I remember how Bill and I emb raced before we separated. We were excited, and I could not take my eyes off the wate r. John Noble died three weeks late r, the evening before I was to visit him to go over the text of the interview. His vo ice had filled o ut offices at Wagner for days as I transcribed almost eight hours of tape. I
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j ohn Noble working aboard his studio barge thirty years before the author interviewed him for Wagner College. The photograph was taken for the 1954 National Geographic article "Here's New York Harbor." (Courtesy Nation al Geographi c, December 1954) mourn ed my loss, and I was angry. A n art historian by training, I had at last found a subj ect and original resource, and he was go ne. But not a week went by when some mention of John Nob le did not come across my desk. Finally, fearfully, but with incipient excitement, I decided to accept th e Nob le family's offer to wo rk for the estate and write a book about No ble. Opossum Acres, the Nob le home at 270 Richmo nd Terrace, was a treasure trove of art and original writings, and it was a piece of No ble in the material sense, with its po rthole through the living room floor and captain 's bell to summ o n the artist from upstairs. So much histo ry-art, w ritings, photographs, and artifacts-re m ained in the house that when I applied for a Charities Registratio n to raise mo ney for the houseboat-still languishing on the shore of the Kill van Kull-my attorney recommended we apply for a museum charter. We did, and we formed a Board of Trustees and received the Provisional Museum C harter in 1987. In 199 1, the problems of renting the house from the new owners and its shrine-like nature made it impractical as a museum . We needed a home for the collection and the houseboat. T he Nob le Collection came to Building
D at old Sai lo rs' Sn ug H arbor to bring the spirit of the sailo rs back to their hi sto ric home. No ble loved Snug Harbor; he had gone to sea with some of the Snugs, and he knew about their lives and the hardships they had faced . We co uld thinkofno m o re appropri ate home for his work. Nob le was in the fo refront of a successful co mmunity effo rt to preserve the eigh tyacre site from developers when Sailors' Snug H arbor so ld the site in the late 1970s and relocated the las t seamen to North Carolina. His passion helped convince New York C ity mayo r Jo hn V. Lindsay to defy his advisors and buy the property back from the developers. In 1991, just before moving to Building D, the Co ll ectio n gain ed the support of the State n Island borough president, G uy V. Molinari . H e provid ed the first in a series of allocatio ns totaling $2.4 million to adapt the landmark do rmitory, built in 184 1, in to a code-compliant and accessible museum and study center. At the sam e time, an extraord in ary partnership formed. On a cold morning in March 1992, a coterie of volunteers cam e toge ther to wo rk on the bui lding, and the No ble C rew began. T he idea of the C rew was born at the Open House to Close the House, a party in
SEA HISTORY 103, WINTER 2002- 03