Where once 96 shower baths, six bathtubs, and later a pool helped cool off up to thousand neighborhood residents each day, according to a 1905 article in Brooklyn’s the Daily Standard Union newspaper, there are now nine separate apartments. (Stebbins, unsurprisingly, was not in Cushman’s obituary, but Cushman did remember her in her will.) By the time Lady of the Waters was unveiled in 1873, Stebbins had paused her art career to care for Cushman, who ultimately died in 1876 of pneumonia. The couple returned to America in 1870, according to the New York Times piece. In 1869, Cushman had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Stebbins may have had other concerns to deal with. The same day, the New York Times described it as a “feebly-pretty idealess thing of bronze.” The New York Daily Herald pronounced it “one of the most exquisite ornaments of the park” in a Jedition of the paper, a day after the unveiling. “The iconography of Stebbins’ sculpture furthers this connection, with the lily in the angel’s hand symbolizing the purity of the water and the four cherubs surrounding the pedestal representing peace, health, purity, and temperance.” Posted in Houses of worship, Upper East Side | 17 Comments »Ĭlean Croton water “was ‘healing’ to New Yorkers, who had suffered through numerous devastating disease outbreaks because of contaminated drinking water,” continued the Conservancy. Tags: Community Parks NYC, pocket parks New York City, St. It’s worth noting that she’s the patron saint of those who heal the sick, and the church named in her honor is appropriately near major hospitals and medical centers. Catherine’s Church across the street-and maybe to the real St. Their goal wasn’t to make the park an ecclesiastical space but to pay homage to the influence of St. Influenced by progressive-era ideals, city officials believed that neighborhood parks would help make a dent in the poverty and crime endemic to dense tenement districts, as the blocks in the East 60s and 70s were at the time. The photo above, from 1902, shows the space before it became a park and reveals the original 1897 church building, replaced by another structure in the 1930s). Catherine’s Park was one of dozens of local parks built in the early 1900s.
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