Visitation - Emma Goldman (1869-1940)

Emma Goldman was an anarchist.  An immigrant from Lithuania, she was a garment worker when she arrived in New York City in 1889. Her writing and speeches were very important in the anarchist movement. She founded the journal Mother Earth.  It is true that she had encouraged violence as a means to the revolution.  She plotted with her lover and fellow anarchist Alexander Berkman to assassinate Henry Clay Frick for his actions during the Homestead Strike. Maybe when the violence became real, and the attempt failed to spark the revolution, she realized the futility. She eventually renounced violence and was an early critic of  the Soviet Union and its repression of dissidents. She also championed women's rights, not in the mainstream way, she was not part of the suffrage movement.  She worked as a midwife and promoted birth control which caused her to be arrested. She was always getting arrested.  I thought the 1st of May would be a fitting occasion to have her visit. The Haymarket Riot that inspired the international workers holiday also moved Emma Goldman to become an anarchist.

I am sure she would have liked to visit Union Square, she gave many speeches there. In 1893 the stock market crashed and the panic created a five year depression.  Unemployment was at about 20%. There was no unemployment insurance, there were no food stamps.  The government did nothing to help.  The charities of the day felt that giving food away would make people lazy.  Ironically, many businessmen gave generously, offering food, inexpensive lodging. Still it was not sufficient and people did not have enough to eat, had no where to live, were sleeping in parks. It was a mess. In the midst of this, Emma Goldman addressed the crowd in Union Square, telling them to stand up for themselves, to ask the rich for work or at least demand bread.  The police described her speech in more incendiary terms.  She was found guilty of inciting a riot, although none occured, and spent a year in prison.

I placed her on the corner near Gandhi's statue.  She seemed happy.  In the afternoon there was a demonstration for immigrants' rights, many were angry about Arizona's new draconian immigration law.  I think Emma would have sympathized, her citizenship was revoked in 1919 because of her anarchist beliefs.

This is really just a close up of the previous picture, but she looks so pretty here.

We moved on to St. Vincent's Hospital which closed on Friday.  It was pretty shocking to everyone how quickly this hospital disappeared. 

It was a great place that treated the survivors of the Titanic as well as the victims of the September 11th attacks.  They had an incredible maternity ward with midwives and supported home births.  It was one of the first hospitals to treat HIV and AIDS.  It is a tragic loss.

If Emma Goldman were alive, I am sure she would be here denouncing the injustice. 

Looking for cheer, we headed to the Lower East Side.  Emma lived there when she first came to New York.  I think she would have really appreciated Babeland, the women-owned sex toy shop on Rivington Street.  Emma was a proponent of free-love but while her lovers wandered, she did not.  This leads me to suspect that anarchists of the day were perhaps not the most skilled in the amatory arts.  I think she would have appreciated a shop like Babeland.

Perhaps the neighborhood would feel familiar.

Or totally changed.

I really wanted to take Emma Goldman to Gorilla Coffee.  It is the building on the corner with the benches outside. On a Friday night in April, the entire staff resigned and the cafe was closed.  I do not ever remember something like this happening in New York.  The former employees were diplomatic, there was no detailed airing of grievances.

It was made clear that they could no longer stand working with one of the owners.  After two weeks, the cafe re-opened with newly refinished floors and a new staff.  I am glad that they re-opened.  I am actually quite fond of their coffee.  Indeed, a pot of their Espresso a Go Go fueled my adventure.  But this was truly an extraordinary moment.  I hope the owners learned something positive from their experience.  I hope the former employees found new jobs.

I wanted Emma Goldman's spirit to bear witness of this unusual moment of worker solidarity. I think she would have been proud.

The last place we visited was a small church near the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  

Although Emma Goldman was an atheist, she did like to dance and this church has free salsa lessons on Saturday night.

Cool Emma Goldman Links:

biography.com - one of the more sympathetic biographies

I Will Kill Frick - Emma Goldman's account of the assassination attempt on William Clay Frick

Anarchy Archives - more of Emma's writing

Dances With Feminists - an essay by Alix Kates Shulman about Emma and her dancing and how it ended up on all those t-shirts (I had one!)

The Gothamist has been following the St. Vincent's story and the Gorilla Coffee story.  Links to their stories:
St. Vincent's Hospital Closing
Gorilla Coffee Walkout

Visitation - Deborah Moody: Part II

I went out with Gilles, the painter who took part my the Wish You Were Here project. It was fun to go with another person. Gravesend was so quiet. Things are not usually hopping at 4.30 in the morning but there were no cars, no stragglers. There were a couple of people speaking Russian by the school. When we finished hanging the tags, we went to Coney Island to watch the sunrise. On the beach was a group of women dressed in white, standing in a circle. Gilles said that there was a religious group in West Africa that prays on the beach wearing white to greet the dawn. There was a fit older man jogging wearing a Speedo. The sky slowly lightened and I worried that even on the beach, New York City sunrises are not as good as the sunsets. Then the sun burst out over the Rockaway inlet.

The women in white sang and clapped. The jogger turned his back (you can almost make him out on the left). Someone in the water waved their arms in welcome (black spot to the right of the sun). I am pretty sure someone was skinny dipping behind us. I glimpsed him putting his trunks back on near the jetty. Overall it was a pretty decent sunrise.

The northwest corner of Gravesend is called Lady Moody Square. The village angles away from Avenue U where there are small shops, everything looked family owned. Gilles found some coffee and awesome biscotti at an Italian bakery. The air was totally calm which kept my tags rather stationary. Occasionally they would flutter in a delicate breeze.



The neighborhood is fairly working class, nothing fancy.

This is the school where the Russians were.

The southwest corner is the cemetery where Deborah Moody is supposed to be buried. Her resting place is not marked.


It was still incredibly quiet considering the elevated subway a block away. No cars drove by, those in the picture are parked. It felt like a road in the country.

I do not remember the last time I saw telephone lines like this which run to wooden telephone poles. The silence was broken by two young men conversing in Spanish. I think Deborah Moody would have approved of the diversity in the neighborhood and its modest simplicity.

Things were a little jazzier on the east side. The houses were newer, or more recently renovated. The cars were more expensive.


The wires make it look as if she were fishing. I wonder if Deborah Moody ever went down to Coney Island and cast a line like the fishermen we saw at dawn. Fishing was men's work, but colonial women often did men's work. Maybe she went fishing with Peter Stuyvesant.

The northeast corner had a distinct outer borough style; the flat squat architecture, the lack of trees in favor of shrubs.


I am not sure what Deborah Moody would make of the artificial evergreen garland wrapped around the terrace. Maybe she would find it amusing.

The center of the village, where the town hall used to be, is the exit to subway. The el line shadows the street and an automated voice occasionally warns from above to 'stand clear of the closing doors'.

Around the intersection are low slung buildings, warehouses, plumbing supply, iron workers. It is nice to know that there are still iron workers in the city.


I did not visit the house that is supposed to be Lady Moody's, mostly because I forgot to go there. I was so taken with finding the original outline of the settlement and its center. There is an old house on Gravesend Neck road just over from the subway station, which is where Deborah Moody may or may not have lived. It is very old. The rest of Gravesend has certainly changed, but I think it kept some of original energy.

Visitation - Deborah Moody (1586-1689): Part I

I discovered Lady Deborah Moody while I was searching for something else. She is the only woman to found a colony what is now the United States. As a widow in her forties, she left England America because of her religious beliefs. Arriving in the Massachusetts Bay colony, she hoped to find refuge. Although the townspeople were pleased to have a noblewoman living in their midst, there was soon tension between her and the town elders because of her independent ideas. Deborah Moody believed that baptism should be reserved for adults. She felt that it was an assault on an infant's free will and should be reserved for believing adults. Anabaptists were severely persecuted in Europe where it was considered heresy. It seems that Lady Moody was chagrined to find the narrow minded spirit of the people of Salem. The elders were somewhat shocked to meet a woman who had not only read the scriptures but could debate them about their meaning.

She left Salem before she was banished. She led a group of dissenters to the colony of New Netherland and was granted land in Long Island. Although the Dutch were not fond of Anabaptists, they allowed Lady Moody and her group religious freedom. She named her colony Gravesend after the place in England where she lived with her family.

The town was divided into four quadrants which were subdivided into ten plots and was protected by a 20-foot high palisade. Outside of town were triangular farms known as boweries that radiated out from the wall looking like the spokes from a wheel. In the center of town was the Town Hall. Attendance at monthly meetings was required. The town leaders were elected democratically. Because Lady Moody held substantial real estate (including Coney Island, Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay), she had the right to vote, the first woman in the colonies with this right. She had a profound commitment to religious tolerance. Many groups shunned by other colonies took refuge in Gravesend. The first Quaker meeting in the colonies was held in her house.

She had a little trouble calming down the local Indians. There was a nasty fight where she had to call in help from the Dutch. She finally bought them off with some pelts and trinkets. She pretty much lived happily ever after. She was buried in the Gravesend cemetery under an unmarked grave. There is an old house in Gravesend which is supposed to be where she lived, but there is no real proof. The deepest trace of her passage is the outline of her village which is still present in Brooklyn, skewing the street grid.

The impression I got from everything I read was that Deborah Moody was a very intelligent woman who was honest and clear in her beliefs and unafraid to speak her mind. She suffered a great deal because of her outspokenness. The deputy governer of Salem wrote in warning to the governor of New Amsterdam, "She is a dangerous woman." She also gathered a group of devout followers and many people respected her and sought her counsel including Peter Stuyvesant. The men of her family were educated at Oxford, it seems clear that the women were at least taught to read, write and reason. She lived during a time of great turmoil. The reform movement brought about many new ideas, I think Deborah Moody lived in a privileged and enlightened world. She had a strong influence on her fellows which has filtered down to us.

Cool Links:
Gravesend on Wikipedia - scroll down to early history to click on map showing outline of Gravesend on a Google map of Brooklyn.

Lady Moody on History of Women Blog - Nice summary of her story


A Dangerous Woman: New York's First Lady Liberty:
The Life and Times of Lady Deborah Moody
by Victor Cooper - some awesome exerpts from this book on Google books which gives a unique perspective on the thinking of Deborah Moody. (I know, I should have bought and read the whole book, not just parts. It seems to be very well written and offers much to ponder.

I will post the pictures from the street art installation in Gravesend soon.

Visitation - Lene Lenape Woman: Part II

The night was cloudy and the air was heavy when I went out. I didn't really want to go, but things had dragged out too long. Daylight crept in slowly it was more a lessening of the gloom than an actual dawn.

The wonderful book Gotham by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace was helpful in giving me and idea of where to go. There was even a map of Indian encampments. One was in Dumbo, so I thought that would make a good starting point.

I went to the end of Jay Street near the Con Edison power plant and placed the woman in front of a trendy home furnishing shop. The picture I chose is odd in that the woman sometimes looks as if she is smiling and sometimes as if she is frowning. It was probably my imagination because the light was pretty there, but she seemed to be smiling.

It was as if she liked all the clean lines and the grey tones.


The sun broke through the clouds briefly over the Con Ed plant.

There was a habitation near Battery Park, but I felt it was just too weird for the woman. What would she make of the tourists? According to Gotham, Pearl Street got its name from the piles of oyster shells left behind by the Lene Lenape. I thought it might make an easier transition.

It took me a while to find a place. There were a surprising number a people milling around. There must be some kind of club down by the seaport. It was hard to find a quiet spot without either party goers or security guards or police.

The spot was typical of Wall Street, dark canyons with the muffled hum of air conditioners. In the morning gloom it was even more depressing. I worried she wouldn't like it there. It started to rain.

But when I came back on a sunny day, there was a lot of activity, a small crane was lifting something nearby and she seemed amused by it.

I was planning on placing her near Foley Square where the Lene Lenape would camp by a deep pond. But I was so depressed by Pearl Street that I had to find somewhere else.

So I took her to the Time Landscape on Laguardia Place. It was planted by eco-artist Alan Sonfist and is composed of native plants. It is supposed to look like a scrap of land before human intervention.

It was a little awkward hanging her up as there was an all night cafe across the street. A few people were at the tables outside, the waiters were bored. There was really nothing happening except for me with my ladder hanging art off a street sign. I tried to find a more discreet spot but the only place that worked was right across from the tables.

I liked the way she looked with the poster for the Yinka Shonibare exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and the ghost bike. It was all a little eerie.

Things were quiet here and she seemed serene.

Minetta Street traces the path of Minetta Brook which was buried in the 19th century. I though she would like it here because there is a pretty garden and the street is twisty.

She did not seem to be happy here at all.

She clung to the street sign. It was hard to find a good angle. It looks as if her picture has picked up some grunge.



She appeared to scowl at the American Apparel store.

The last place I chose was Gansevoort Street near the High Line where the Lene Lenape fished and planted. I thought her spirit would enjoy the wild flowers of the park.

I took only one picture in the muted pink dawn light. The High Line was too dark. When I came back, she was gone. I should have put her across the street. Clearly some territorial park employees saw her and took her down. They keep things really tidy on that side of the street and her spirit had flown.