My Dear Alice by Pamela Bannos

During the decade of the ‘teens, when Alice Austen and Gertrude Tate spent their summers traveling through Europe, Alice’s correspondents’ lives’ changed also.

Even earlier, some of them were the victims of illnesses, and war.

Mr. Gregg, once Trude Eccleston’s fiancé, perished in a battlefield of the 1898 Spanish-American War.

In 1899, 28-year-old Effie Emmons Alexander died after a prolonged illness.

Also in 1899, Effie’s sister-in-law Lou Alexander Richards’s husband died, leaving her with two young children. Lou remarried within a year, had another baby, and then that husband died two years later, leaving her twice widowed with three children at the age of 34.

And during those first years of the new century, other life altering shifts would unfold.

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Julia Martin continued at her boarding house venture after recovering from surgery for chronic appendicitis. That same year, she bought a corner property where she moved her business, and in the following year, she bought the adjacent lot. In 1899, a local newspaper reported that Julia, her brother Walton, and their Aunt Adelaide were together in Los Angeles. Apparently, Walton Martin was there to deliver their mother’s sister to Santa Barbara. The 1900 census shows 34-yr-old Julia, her 47-year-old Aunt, and a 40-year-old Chinese cook named Sing who had been with Julia for at least four years.

[Julia Martin]

It is Sunday, 3pm, and as usual, I am keeping house. Ang, my house boy has gone to Sunday school, being a Christian. Sing, being a heathen has gone to Chinatown for a good time. My housekeeper is off for the afternoon, and so you see I am quite alone & the house is delightfully quiet & restful.

[Narrator]

A newspaper article from 1902 notes Julia visiting Los Angeles, and later that month she was at a resort near Lake Tahoe. In November it was reported that she had hosted a luncheon at a posh restaurant in Santa Barbara. And then after spending several weeks in Boston, she was on a steamship off Los Angeles. Just a few months later, a New York newspaper reported that Julia was visiting her father in Albany.

And then, the unimaginable.

In my tracing of her whereabouts, the 1905 census locates Julia in the Bloomingdale Hospital for the Insane in White Plains, New York.

When I told this story to a friend of mine, they responded: did she have a family member that was a doctor? And, of course, there was Julia’s brother Walton, the famous New York surgeon who also delivered Aunt Adelaide to California. A newspaper article reported at one point that “of the 535 patients treated for mental diseases in Bloomindale Hospital 419 were committed involuntarily.”

I dug deeper to try to make sense of this and found that Aunt Adelaide was chronically ill with tuberculosis. In early 1902, Julia had petitioned for and was appointed as Adelaide’s legal guardian; soon thereafter, a court order directed a sale of her Aunt’s personal property and this is when it looks like Julia went on some sort of “wild spree,” entertaining at posh restaurants and traveling to resorts. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but the reports of her excursions occur simultaneously with the legal activities. In the middle of 1903, it was reported that Julia was visiting her father in Albany. She never returned to Santa Barbara.

There is an empty envelope at the Alice Austen House with a May 1904 postmark from White Plains that suddenly and tragically made sense. But I’m heartbroken to not have Julia’s letter to Alice that might shed some light on what happened.

She was still at the Bloomingdale Asylum in the 1910 census; and in 1915; and in 1920.

Her Aunt Adelaide died in 1913 in Santa Barbara. She had a will in which she left the bulk of her sizable estate in trust to Julia. Julia’s brother Walton became Julia’s guardian, and there was also a guardian assigned to Julia’s estate in California who at Adelaide’s death, sold her Santa Barbara house.

By 1925, she had been transferred to another New York asylum called the Long Island Home, in Amityville. Julia Taber Martin died there twelve years later, in 1937, when she was 71 years old.

She had spent half her life in these places. It is really very tragic, terribly devastating, shocking and disturbing.

There’s no other known evidence linking Julia with Alice, but I’d like to think they were still connected. And I shudder to think that Julia’s example contributed to others’ keeping their personal lives in even lower profile. It did dawn on me that maybe Julia was with someone during that extravagant year before she was committed – and maybe it was a woman.

Which brings us back to Daisy Elliott.

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Ship manifests show Daisy returning to Europe every year from 1900 through 1910. It’s sometimes hard to track who she’s traveling with, but the name Leonie Stamm shows up several times. Stamm was famous in New York for teaching fencing to ultra-wealthy women.

Like Julia Martin, Daisy also has a baffling pivotal event. In 1911, when she was fifty-four years old, and while visiting her family’s ancestral town in England, Daisy Elliott married a man. A widower from Massachusetts, and the father of four grown children, Frederick Fosdick had been the mayor of the town of Fitchburg, having run on the Prohibition Party ticket. Upon her return to the States, Delia Marie Elliott disappeared on the ship manifest, replaced as Mrs. Frederick Fosdick. It was her last time abroad as a married woman and she moved from New York to Fitchburg, Massachusetts. The marriage ended thirteen years later when Mr. Fosdick died. Daisy was 67 years old, and a wealthy widow.

The following year, she got back on a steamship for Europe, traveling with Caroline Lawrence. The same Miss Lawrence with whom she bicycled across the alps in 1897. They would return to Europe together every year for the next eleven years. In 1936, at the time of their last voyage together, Daisy was 79 and Miss Lawrence was 84. Caroline Lawrence died the following year.

Daisy lived on for 14 more years, dying in 1951 at the age of 94.

[Daisy Elliott]

I am rather dependent on my independence, after all; yet most everyone thinks I am so self-reliant – you know as well as anyone the true fact of the case, don’t you, you poor dear?

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[Narrator]

Obviously, everybody dies in this story, and death is always sad. But all lives can be celebrated, especially if they weren’t conventional ones.

Julie Bredt and Bessie Strong never married.

Here’s Bessie at age 29:

[Bessie Strong]

You can scarcely turn a corner without running up against an engaged person these days. I never knew such a state of things before.

I am to have another chance to be bridesmaid. This will make the third time, but it does not worry me at all.

[Narrator]

In 1905, at the age of 40, she was still living with her parents in their massive New Brunswick, New Jersey home. Bessie’s father was an esteemed judge and she had three brothers who were attorneys; one who would serve as a state senator. Bessie was also active in politics – and as mentioned early on, she was fond of telling Alice about the gifts she received. Here she is in a letter from 1892:

[Bessie Strong]

The wretched Democrats are having a parade downtown, and the drums are beating furiously, all of which is calculated to rile an ardent Republican, like myself. So, if my letter is incoherent, it is attributable to the Democrats. They are responsible for a great deal of “cussedness” in this world anyway. I have been almost heartbroken over the election. Now I am trying to smile and smile and make believe I don’t care but O! I do.

Perhaps you may be interested to know what my birthday presents were.

From mother I had some evening gloves; from father, some money, which I invested in music. Theodore gave me an album for mounting photographs. Miss Van Rensselaer, a pretty little basket from Nassau. Helen’s present was a bonbon dish, Etta’s an exquisite copy of “Hyperion.” My sister-in-law, such a pretty Japanese table cover, pale blue worked in gold; and from Miss Dayton, a Columbian Exposition souvenir spoon. I think I was quite a lucky girl.

[Narrator]

Her brother Theodore – who she mentioned – would become the Republican senator. He married Miss Van Rensselaer who gifted the pretty little basket. They ended up having eight children, including six sons, all of whom became lawyers. Theodore and his large family moved into the family home and named it The Stronghold.

Bessie moved out and lived alone, remaining in New Brunswick for the rest of her life. She died in 1952 at the age of 86. Her obituary noted her as having been one of the board members of a local nursing home that pioneered a home environment like today’s assisted living facilities. She was also president of the Visiting Nurses Association, which was active during the First World War. Her yearly president reports are as thorough as her letters to Alice Austen.

I have little doubt that if Elisabeth Briard Strong had been born one or two generations later, she would have been a successful attorney like her father, brothers, and six nephews. And she’d likely have been a successful politician whose name would be familiar today.

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Speaking of famous people, Julie Bredt is vicariously connected to one.

In early 1894, she wrote:

[Julie Bredt]

We have been looking at a house in Llewellyn Park and I rather think we shall decide on it, though we shall not occupy it until August some time..

[Narrator]

Two years later, it was reported that Julia’s mother gave a tea for 200 guests at her home “The Pines,” in Llewellyn Park, noted as “the first planned community in America.” Inventor Thomas Edison’s house and factory were down the block from the Bredt’s house. Julia remained in Llewellyn Park for the rest of her life, residing there with her younger sister Ernestine to the end. Of those fifty-odd years, at least twenty of them were sandwiched between Thomas Edison and his phonograph factories. Edison died in 1931.

Julie Bredt became a champion golfer. Her name began appearing in newspapers in 1907 and her appearance in golf tournaments continued being reported on through 1938 when she was nearly 70-years-old. Bredt was also a gifted artist. One of her scrapbooks was acquired by the Alice Austen House Museum – found in a Westhampton, New York, bookshop ten years ago.

Julia Frederika Bredt died in 1949, just shy of her 80th birthday.

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And so now it’s time to return to Violet Ward …

[Violet Ward]

Maria Emily Graham McKay Ward

[Narrator]

And her sister Carrie …

[Carrie Ward]

Caroline Constantia Ward

[Narrator]

Violet actually shows up in some of the same newspaper articles with Julie Bredt – they competed against each other in golf tournaments.

But Violet and Carrie show up in the area newspapers for other reasons, also.

In 1914, a notorious public proceeding shows Violet on the witness stand defending her competency to maintain her estate, which had been put in trust to a bank.

The Ward sisters had taken separate apartments in Manhattan away from Oneata, the family grounds on Staten Island. Violet stayed on the Upper-West side at 86th St. and Carrie moved into the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park. In 1911, Violet moved back to Oneata permanently, and Carrie returned in 1917 after seven years in Gramercy Park.

It was while the sisters were separated that their estate was turned over to a trust – they were reported to have inherited several hundred thousand dollars from various family members – worth more than 6-million dollars today.

In 1913, they had modified the Oneata grounds to include a Montessori school and had started placing ads advertising “a little colony of bungalows” for “university graduates and others of culture” and “board for a limited number in a fine old mansion, use of a tennis court, and use of a 40-ft sailboat and automobile for tenants who “cooperate with up-keep.”

The ad sounded like Violet wrote it.

In 1915, the trust company was concerned that Violet would spend beyond her allowance, incurring debts that would complicate the trust. She had just bought a new Model-T Ford.

A newspaper more directly stated that the bankers said that Violet “had delusions, which indicated she was deranged.”

52-year-old Violet was a witness on her own behalf, so it’s anyone’s guess why she thought it was a good idea to tell the story that she did.

I won’t go into too many details, but basically Violet testified that when she was twelve, her father had her married to an army officer because he had to attend to emergency business elsewhere and it would put her in the care of the US government. Beyond that, she explained that her father had them go into a tent, where he left them for two days, apparently to consummate the marriage. Further, she asserted that she had given birth to twins – who had died at birth. When her sister Carrie took the stand, she said that she had never heard this story until four years ago, at which time she told Violet not to repeat it.

A doctor representing the bank testified that after examining Violet, it was his professional opinion that she was suffering from delusional insanity. However, the next day’s newspaper headline stated:

[Newspaper Reporter]

“Imaginary Twins of “War Bride” Win Over Jury. Miss Ward’s Delusion Does Not Make Her Incompetent, Staten Island Verdict.”

[Narrator]

That next day – I don’t know, maybe because she had an audience – Violet went further to say that she had been at the Civil War and that Carrie was not actually her sister. Violet was born in 1865, and Carrie was indisputably her sister. The doctor for the defense admitted that there were delusions, but said they were mainly based on exaggerated ideas of her ancestry and were due primarily to extreme egotism. I mean, I’d buy that.

Violet was declared sane, thoroughly competent, and able to manage her own affairs.

It is not lost on me that at this point in 1915, Julia Martin had been institutionalized for more than ten years, and this may go to show the power of money, if nothing else.

Violet and Carrie remained at Oneata through the end of their years.

Carrie appears to have lived adventurously for the next couple of decades, frequently traveling abroad, and in 1931 embarking on an around the world cruise – at the height of the great depression. She turned 67 during that five-month jaunt. More than thirty years earlier, Violet had written to Alice:

[Violet Ward]

Carrie is away and I hope will stay away for some time.

[Narrator]

They came to be known as Staten Island’s eccentric sisters.

Athlete, Author, and Inventor Maria Emily Graham McKnight Ward died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1941, just shy of her 78th birthday.

Caroline Constantia Ward died 6-months later of Ovarian Cancer at the age of 76.

Later in 1942, their home and its contents were sold at auction – the 1915 Model T Ford was still in the garage.

In 1949, Wagner College purchased the Oneata grounds.

For 35 years, the Ward mansion was home to the college’s music department. The choir practiced in the ballroom at the top of the main staircase that Alice Austen photographed in 1897. The staircase that everyone said Violet had fallen down that led to her death; some insisting that Carrie had pushed her.

A student paper titled “Rumors of the Ward House,” explored tales of paranormal activity. The house was sealed in 1983 and was torn down ten years later – the college football stadium now occupies the site, adjacent to the women’s sports field.

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It was just as Oneata was closed down in the mid-1980s that Clear Comfort re-emerged from its own harrowing spiral.

Which leads us back to Alice Austen.

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We left off in the first decade of the twentieth century, with Alice and Gertrude Tate’s yearly excursions abroad. These were the best years.

In 1903, in France, Alice and Gertrude appear in a rowboat with Alice standing, steering with one long oar and Gertrude smiling broadly at whoever took the photo. In another picture, taken by Gertrude from her seat, Alice faces her, smiling, while rowing with both oars.

Gertrude is the object of Alice’s gaze, throughout. Here is the great love story of this podcast.

There’s Gertrude Tate sitting at a Parisian café; there she is on a donkey being led on a mountain trail; there’s Alice standing over her on a terrace at morning tea; there she is leaning out a 2nd story window, smiling at Alice, and under a tree amongst a picnic spread; and there she is again in Paris, in a horse drawn carriage, the roof overloaded with steamer trunks – one with EAA, Alice’s initials, stenciled onto it – the carriage door reading in French, ETAT – Tate spelled backwards.

Alice Austen and Gertrude Tate spent three to four months a year traveling overseas throughout the decade. Mid-decade, Austen’s photography was mentioned in a newspaper article titled “Women of Society in Trade,” and she made more quarantine photographs for Dr. Doty – two of which were featured on the front page of the New York Tribune. And Gertrude Tate was teaching dancing classes. But none of this alone would support their lavish vacations.

Gertrude’s family was said to have had and then lost money; Alice had the support of family inheritance. Her mother left her a sizeable estate, and earlier, her grandmother left her all the money she had deposited into banks, the interest of which could provide income. There’s a document in the archive that lists five bank accounts, each with a $3,000 balance – and each showing the collected interest sums.

During the first decade of the 20th century, and well into the nineteen-teens, Gertrude remained living with her mother and younger sister in Brooklyn, even while she spent more and more time with Alice. Gertrude Tate’s sister Winifred was seventeen years younger than her, and it seems that Gertrude was expected to help support their family.

Many years later, Winifred said that her family felt that Alice had absorbed Gertrude. And she said they felt there was “a wrong devotion” on both sides. A wrong devotion. It’s no wonder that these women stayed on Staten Island.

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In 1910, Uncle Oswald and Aunt Min still lived upstairs at Clear Comfort; and three live-in maids remained in residence.

Oswald Otto Miller died at the end of 1912, just weeks after Alice and Gertrude returned from Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, including a visit to Copenhagen, his birthplace. It would be their last trip abroad for more than ten years.

Alice and Gertrude’s circle of friends had shifted and they were spending time in the company of more wealthy friends – participating in lavish parties and automobile excursions to Long Island and up the Hudson Valley. Alice drove a Franklin automobile, today an obscure brand, but then, a luxury car, made in New York – and she carried her own tools.

Austen continued to copyright her photographs and in 1911, four of her pictures illustrated a newspaper article titled “Makeshift Photography” for a series called “A Page for Misses,” with a photo credit that called her Miss Alice Austen – her photographs showed makeshift ways of doing photography, like tying a camera to a tree and putting it on a pile of books if there was no tripod.

And again in 1912, with five photos of Clear Comfort’s front yard, her work illustrated an article called “The Winter Garden Club for Girls.” These syndicated features appeared in newspapers from New York to San Francisco. That article, which talked about how to form a garden club may have inspired Austen. The following year, she founded the Staten Island Garden Club.

By the mid-nineteen-teens, Alice was crazy for gardening and automobiles, and Gertrude was becoming prominent as a dance instructor who also organized afternoon tea dances, known as The Dansants. In the same newspaper, from one paragraph to the next, Alice was mentioned as hosting the first Garden Club meeting, and then Gertrude’s The Dansant was noted as an upcoming event. The following week she hosted 200 dancers at the Heights Casino in Brooklyn.

The Garden Club expanded to include an antiquarian society. Together, they opened a tea house at the Old Perine House, the Club’s 17th century headquarters. A fundraiser was held to raise money to purchase the house, and it was reported to have been brought to a close by a grand march and butterfly dance led by Miss Gertrude Tate.

They were constantly listed in the society pages as being at all sorts of events.

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In 1917, Gertrude finally moved into Clear Comfort. She took an upstairs bedroom, down the hall from Auntie Min. There were still two live-in maids. Gertrude was now 45 and Alice, 51. They had been together for nearly twenty years.

They were now spending time with the wealthy Jessie Vanderbilt Simons who threw extravagant costume parties – in which Alice consistently dressed in drag, wearing a van dyke beard.

Just months after that party, World War 1 began and the women went to work. Jessie Simons was active with the Red Cross, and Alice Austen had initiated driving classes. She was later said to have “organized four classes of 100 or more women to study to become ambulance drivers and mechanics” as part of a motor corps that would travel overseas.

Austen had always photographed passing ships from Clear Comfort’s front lawn; her photos from this period show an inventory of war vessels, along with her meticulous notations. One says: “troops & nurses on a transport / passed the house very fast at 1:30. We displayed the flag & they cheered.” There are photographs of Gertrude Tate waving an American flag at passing vessels.

Austen recorded so many ships coming and going that they serve as an extensive record of the time.

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Auntie Min died in April 1918 at the age of 77.

Minnie Austen Hicks Muller left everything she owned to Alice.

Clear Comfort was to be Alice Austen’s house for as long as she chose to live there.

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In 1920, Alice bought a new Franklin car, and she and Gertrude appeared together in New York’s Social Register.

Her petition to build a landing pier in front of Clear Comfort was denied, but in 1922, Alice was among those who purchased apartments in a new building on Lexington Avenue in New York City. She listed her residence as the Colony Club – a private women’s club. That same year, she and Gertrude and another woman opened a gift shop by the Staten Island ferry terminal.

Things had calmed down a bit as the 1920s were coming to a close, Alice was active with the Garden Club and Gertrude with her dancing activities. Austen hosted what she called a “wisteria tea party” to celebrate the blooming of her beloved wisteria vine that had now wrapped onto the house. She’d photographed it for 40 years; its roots now appeared to be growing down into the house’s cellar. The New York Evening Post reported that the “magnificent wisteria” covered one side of the house and was more than 100 years old. Alice once posed in costume as some sort of wizard standing next to her beloved wisteria vine.

It was now the end of the 1920s and everything was about to change.

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I’ve been saying from the beginning that Austen was evicted from her home – but I haven’t mentioned that things got so bad that she ended up in the poor house – what was called the New York City Farm Colony.

The rest of this story is a roller coaster ride.

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There are many versions of the story as to how Alice Austen lost Clear Comfort.

The version that makes the most sense, because it was relayed while she was still alive, states that Alice had hired a financial adviser three years before the 1929 stock market crash, giving over her assets in exchange for ongoing payments of a percentage of its value – this had been going fine until the market crashed.

It seems that the finance man had been borrowing on her funds and lost all of it with the collapse of the market.

In 1931, Austen took out a mortgage on Clear Comfort.

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All associated papers related to this next horror are part of the Jessie Vanderbilt Simons archive at Duke University.

During that same year, a series of newspaper articles detailed a plan to build a transportation tunnel. The tunnel would emerge at the site of Alice Austen’s house.

In a series of letters from state officials, attorneys, and her title company, Austen is informed that despite her grandmother’s original surveys and deeds, she does not own the riparian rights in front of Clear Comfort. The land extending beyond the shore into the Narrows belonged to the State of New York.

Then, talk changed to plans for a connecting ferry service that would dock at the front of her house. Austen was told that she might be able to buy the water rights to avoid their sale to a ferry company. Alice appealed to her cousin, attorney William Wheelock, Aunt Sarah Ann’s grandson, but he was on holiday in Europe.

The attorney who did sign on to help suggested that she sell Clear Comfort. She would not. The conversations continued through the end of 1931 and included the suggestion that perhaps the house could be moved to another location.

Then the communications come to a complete halt.

I can’t help but think that Jessie Simons had something to do with it since these letters are with her papers.

Ultimately, there would be no tunnel or ferry dock – and the Verrazzano Bridge, which currently joins Brooklyn with Staten Island a-ways south of Clear Comfort was not built until 1959.

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Alice Austen’s financial troubles deepened and she began selling antiques and furniture.

The 1810-vintage Duncan Phyfe sofa that belonged to her great-grandparents while they lived on the Bowling Green was put up for auction. It brought $1,400 –a huge sum that Austen undoubtedly used to help dig herself out of debt.

Another cousin – Rogers Winthrop, the grandson of her Aunt Mary Austen Townsend – responded to some questions with a letter that began: “I am sorry to say that I have not any good news for you.”

Alice was looking for someone to lend her $5,000 against her home. Winthrop mentioned hearing talk that the house could be used as a tea house or a restaurant and closed with his regrets that he could not help her.

At the end of 1934, the same day that Alice utilized a new bankruptcy clause, filing for an extension on her debts, a bank bought Clear Comfort in foreclosure proceedings.

Inexplicably, two days later, Alice sent Jessie Simons a telegram saying, “Appreciate Kindness Foreclosure Stopped.”

Simons was staying at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna; and although it appears that the foreclosure went through, Alice was allowed to remain rent-free at Clear Comfort, so maybe that was why she thanked Jessie Simons.

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Alice and Gertrude Tate did end up opening a Tea House at Clear Comfort, serving lunch on the front lawn. In 1937 and in 1941, the New Yorker magazine mentioned it in reviews; as did Vogue Magazine in 1941. The chief attraction was the view from the front lawn.

By this time, Alice was 75 and Gertrude 70.

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Alice Austen never stopped photographing; and in the 1930s, she had begun making short 16-millimeter films at Clear Comfort. We see ships passing; tables on the front lawn; short clips of her beloved Franklin car; and lots of footage of her cats – and her wisteria vine; and we see Gertrude with her dancing teacher colleagues who came to visit.

In one delightful set of film clips, two smiling men walk Gertrude up Clear Comfort’s front walk, then they walk arm-in-arm with Alice from the same point; then in a reverse cut, each of them walks back, flanked by Alice and Gertrude, all three smiling and laughing.

These men were Lloyd Hyde and his partner Arvid Knudsen, gay antique dealers and interior decorators, both in their thirties. Hyde had auctioned the Duncan Phyfe sofa.

Years later, Gertrude’s sister Winifred offered that Alice and Gertrude had a separate gay life in which they socialized with Lloyd and Arvid, and which they did not share with their Staten Island society circle.

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Austen started creating a photographic inventory of furniture and objects from the house, setting them outside to photograph them: the antique Hepplewhite Chairs from the dining room set; two silver candlesticks. Objects she would sell for cash.

Two giant links from the legendary chain that a Townsend ancestor’s forge had made, to draw across the Hudson, foiling incoming ships during the Revolution. They had always been mounted to the parlor’s fireplace mantel. She documented the links & then they disappeared with the other things.

As did the Baby Grand Steinway piano.

In 1941, a Fifth Avenue New York auction house advertised a big sale, including items from Austen’s family. The auction catalogue’s cover page announced: Property of Miss E. Alice Austen, Clear Comfort, Staten Island, New York.

The items included Japanese objects and vases from Aunt Minnie’s travels, among other pieces seen in her photographs – Alice penciled the final prices in the page margins of the catalog – they did not fetch enough to make a difference.

Austen also began suffering from a debilitating arthritis that would soon force her into a wheelchair.

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There are some very sad letters imploring Rogers Winthrop to help her – and he did continue sending small sums of money. But in 1944, the bank trust that owned Clear Comfort sold the house to a local Staten Island family – the Mandias – for $7,500. And the new owners would soon begin eviction proceedings, giving Austen and Tate 90 days to pack up and leave.

In August, someone put up a “For Sale” sign. This turns out to have been illegal and triggered an action to help Alice and Gertrude stay – the new owner had acquired the place with the stipulation they would live in the house.

The Associated Press reported on this in stories that appeared coast-to-coast, with headlines including:

[Newspaper Reporter]

“Woman in Home 78 Years Spared From Eviction: Spinster, Once Offered $100,000 for Staten Island House, Saved by OPA Rule.”

[Narrator]

The articles detailed the house’s history, long known as the “Old Austen Homestead,” and told of Austen’s struggles, the Tea House, and one also mentioned that …

[Newspaper Reporter]

“she and Miss Tate, a companion of her own age who lives with her, were able to lead the peaceful lives they wanted,” remaining “in the old house, living quietly with their memories…”

[Narrator]

There is mention that Alice Austen had been one of the first women tennis players, but there was no acknowledgement of her as an important photographer.

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Within weeks, Alice and Gertrude had taken in two boarders – a husband and wife, he being a medical student – so at least they had some help and company.

Then a storm caused a tree to fall on the house, destroying the porch where Auntie Min had spent her days. The boarders moved out; and then the Mandias decided that they wanted to move into their house. And the eviction process began again – initiating a frenzy of activity.

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Alice Austen was a classic hoarder. There are oral histories that convey that her bedroom was piled ceiling-high with newspapers. In addition to the antiques and collections gathered by her family over the years, she didn’t throw anything away.

And that is one reason why we have this story to tell.

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Gertrude and Alice had people helping them empty the house, and members of the Staten Island Historical Society arrived to see what could be of value – discovering photographs and glass plate negatives that they hauled out, box after box.

They worked as fast as they could, because in her haste, Alice had sold the contents of the home to a furniture dealer for $600, and he would soon arrive to empty the rest of the house.

Aspects of the story fall apart here with the byproduct being that thousands of negatives went missing.

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The women moved into an apartment building called The Wisteria, then when Gertrude could no longer care for Alice, she went to the Mariner’s Family Home that took her in because of Uncle Oswald’s maritime connection.

Gertrude moved in with her sister Winifred in Jackson Heights, Queens, but handled the loan agreement of Alice’s materials to the historical society.

This remaining part of the story, alone, could be its own podcast – so many are the details that I will gloss over.

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After the Mariner home, and a couple other places, Alice Austen was declared a pauper, and was moved into the New York City Farm Colony – the poorhouse that was located on Staten Island.

As part of the process, Alice had signed everything over to Gertrude. The Historical Society would pay her $50 for the title to all of Austen’s photographs. They had now been sitting in the Society’s basement for five years.

Within days of that transaction, C. Coapes Brinley, a curator there, had begun contacting area museums. The New York Public Library thanked him for the print donation.

Brinley wrote to the George Eastman House, the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the Museum of the City of New York, asking if they’d be interested in purchasing Alice Austen’s negatives. They were all interested and began a series of correspondences.

Brinley then wrote to every conceivable magazine and New York newspaper, offering them exclusive rights to publish Austen’s 1890s Street Type portraits; leading to another series of correspondences.

And he wrote to the Marine Historical Association and the Smithsonian Institution, inviting them to review Austen’s ship photographs.

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Around this time, a random occurrence changes the course of the story again.

I did say this would be a roller coaster ride.

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At the end of December 1950, when Alice Austen marked five months in the poor house, a letter arrived at the historical society from a researcher named Constance Foulk.

It began:

[Constance Foulk]

“I am preparing a picture book … dealing with the changing status of women in America from 1880 until the present day.”

[Narrator]

She was querying local archives for unpublished photographs – and she landed on a gold mine.

The book publisher, a photo-editor named Oliver Jensen, picked it up from there.

Jensen recognized Alice Austen’s value – both as a resource for historical photos, as well as her worth as a trail blazing photographer.

It was only after a couple of meetings while he was asking about the people in the photographs that he was told that Austen was still alive and that he could visit her in the poorhouse.

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Brinley’s communications with museum and magazine people did not lead anywhere.

Nobody was more interested in Austen’s photography than Oliver Jensen, who was well connected and saw her as a cross between Matthew Brady and Grandma Moses – as he says in one of his letters – and he described her as about to burst onto the scene, as a result of his efforts.

Jensen wanted to publish her photographs in his book, which would be called The Revolt of American Women, and he also pitched her story to LIFE magazine, who sent along Alfred Eisenstaedt – the famous journalistic photographer best known for his VJ Day photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square.

Glossing over the struggle between Brinley and Jensen to monetize and divide the proceeds from Austen’s works, the effort was now on getting Alice out of the poor house, which happened in August. She had been there for a year.

Gertrude Tate was ultimately the great negotiator in these efforts – she was there, steadfast, through every twist and turn of the last harrowing decade. And through all of everything from the previous forty years. In the end, Alice Austen’s photographs would be responsible for the relatively happy ending to this story.

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In September 1951, Austen was celebrated with a photo-feature in LIFE magazine.

There’s Auntie Minn holding one of the family cats, and Alice’s mother in her fancy striped and polka-dot dress; and Uncle Oswald on Clear Comfort’s porch. There’s Julia Martin and Mrs. Snively with Alice in bed. And The Darned Club. And Trude Eccleston with Alice performing their scandalous masked burlesque. There’s Henry Gilman and Julie Bredt playing cards with Alice. And there’s Violet Ward with Daisy Elliott on her bicycle. And of course, there’s Alice Austen perched on top of a fence, poised with her camera, photographing a car race – with Gertrude Tate standing beneath her.

In October, the Staten Island Historical Society proclaimed an Alice Austen Day and hosted a celebration in her honor. LIFE Magazine was there again, and published photos from that occasion in the next couple of weeks. Austen was interviewed on the radio amidst other excitement that unfolded.

She was finally recognized for her groundbreaking photography, and Gertrude Tate was at her side.

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Elizabeth Alice Austen died in her sleep in June 1952; she was 86.

Gertrude Amelia Tate died ten years later at the age of 91.

In a diagram of the Austen family cemetery plots, Alice had Gertrude positioned alongside her. Alice’s grave remained unmarked for 25 years and Gertrude’s family kept her remains in Brooklyn. It may still be feasible to return them alongside Alice – the space remains available.

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After Alice and Gertrude left Clear Comfort in 1945, the Mandia family stayed for twenty years.

Subsequently, the house declined.

Someone let a scrub tree grow against the front step.

Stories of squatters and drug users further sullied the place.

There was talk of building a high-rise in its place.

In 1975, the city of New York took over the property.

Then a group called the Friends of Alice Austen House was formed.

In 1979 they made a historic structure report, and in 1983 an archaeological survey.

In 1984 renovation work began, and the following year, the work was completed.

The house was rebuilt using Alice Austen’s nineteenth-century photographs as reference. She had documented every part of it, inside and out. Even though it had many permutations throughout the years, it now looked the way it did when she made the work she is now best known for.

As the house returned to its appearance from the 1890s, someone from the Mandia family returned to Clear Comfort with four boxes of letters that had been found in an attic closet.

They had arrived back at the place where they had originally been sent – to the house that again appeared as it had then.

And so now we’ve come full circle, returning to the place where we began.

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This is a story of home, history, celebration, and reclamation.

Clear Comfort, now known as the Alice Austen House Museum, sits on the bank of the Narrows with a sweeping view of the Manhattan skyline. Dating back to pre-Revolutionary days, this modest cottage remains a sentry to our changing world.

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The Alice Austen House and grounds are owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, operated by the Friends of Alice Austen House, a non-profit organization, and a member of Historic House Trust. The Alice Austen House is a New York City and National Landmark, on the Register of Historic Places and a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s distinctive group of Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios. In 2017 the designation was updated to become a National site of LGBTQ History.

The Alice Austen House fosters creative expression, explores personal identity, and educates and inspires the public through the interpretation of the photographs, life and historic home of pioneering American photographer, Alice Austen.

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This audio production was written and produced by me, Pamela Bannos, and was presented in collaboration with the Alice Austen House Museum. The accompanying website, My Dear Alice dot ORG, shows hundreds of photographs and documents that illustrate Austen’s story, as told through her own photographs and the letters that she saved.

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This episode featured the following voice talent, in their order of appearance: Liv Glassman, Kristen Waagner, Natalie Welber, Sydney Hastings-Smith, Madeleine Bagnall, Maya Slaughter, Charlie Niccolini, and Jennifer Webster.

Sound editor: Kendall Barron. Original music by Nicolas Rosa-Palermo and me, Pamela Bannos. Other music from Adobe Stock, MuseOpen, and other attributed sources. Links are at the website that accompanies this podcast. That’s My Dear Alice dot ORG.

VOICE TALENT

Cast in the order of appearance:

Julia Martin: LIV GLASSMAN

Daisy Elliott: KRISTEN WAAGNER

Bessie Strong: NATALIE WELBER

Julie Bredt: SYDNEY HASTINGS-SMITH

Violet Ward: MADELEINE BAGNALL

Carrie Ward: MAYA SLAUGHTER

Newspaper reporter: CHARLIE NICCOLINI

Constance Foulk: JENNIFER WEBSTER

Voices in the introduction (in order):

MUSIC ATTRIBUTION etc.

MUSIC AND SOUND FILES USED IN THIS EPISODE:

Theme music by Nicolas Rosa-Palermo: Interpretation of the 1889 Santiago Waltz (two iterations)

Sheet Music Singer (Fred Feild) by permission:

1855: Listen to the Mocking Bird (derived from)

The Sheet Music Singer’s YouTube Channel

Musopen website:

c.1720: Antonio Vivaldi, Concerto for Bassoon in A minor, RV 498, (licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 license)

1830: Frederic Chopin, Nocturne in b flat minor, Op. 9 no. 1, played by Eduardo Vinuela (licensed under CC Public Domain Mark 1.0 license)

1835: Frederic Chopin, Waltz in B minor, Op. 69 no. 2 (licensed under CC Public Domain Mark 1.0 license)

1869: Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dance no. 7 – Allegretto in F Major (licensed under CC Attribution PD License)

Freesound website music:

Herman Ruzh – Shostakovich second waltz on guitar (licensed under CC Attribution 0 license)

Incompetech website: (incompetech.com)

Kevin MacLeod: Thinking Music (Licensed under CC Attribution 3.0 License)

Kevin MacLeod, “Waltz (Tschikovsky Op. 40)” (licensed under CC Attribution 4.0 License)

Kevin MacLeod, “Sheep May Safely Graze – BWV 208” (licensed under CC Attribution 4.0 License)

Adobe Stock music:

Who We Are, Audio standard license, via Adobe Stock

First Snow Valse, Audio standard license, via Adobe Stock

Lily’s Dance, Audio standard license, via Adobe Stock

Pamela Bannos:

Flute melody (Julia Martin music)

Lilty waltz 5 tracks & Lilty waltz v2 bassoon & flute (Bessie Strong music)

Steinway Riff (ending music)

NOTES ON THE GALLERY IMAGES

In this final chapter of My Dear Alice, we hear of the remaining biographies of the correspondents and we see how Alice’s and Gertrude Tate’s lives play out. We also learn of the demise and resurrection of Clear Comfort, leading to the return of the letters that allowed this story to be told.

Pictured from 1894 are Austen’s married friends, each of whom had two children by that year: Julia Marsh Lord, Effie Emmons Alexander, and Lou Alexander Richards. Also pictured, is Violet Ward at Clear Comfort during a blizzard at the period when she and Austen were spending much time together with their mutual interests.

Listen to the audio or read the transcript to learn of Mr. Gregg, Effie Emmons, Lou Alexander, Daisy Elliott, Bessie Strong, as well as Violet and Carrie Ward and their home Oneata.

The last letter in the collection is from Julia Martin in Santa Barbara, California, in April 1898. But there are some empty envelopes from the regular correspondents, and as they trail off, there’s one dated May 1904 (pictured) from White Plains, New York.

Julia Martin, who wrote the most letters – 87 – continued running her Santa Barbara boarding house. From 1900 through 1903, she thrived, traveling and entertaining in posh restaurants. In 1902, she became her Aunt Adelaide’s guardian, also petitioning to sell her ailing aunt’s personal property. In the middle of 1903, she visited her father in Albany, NY – and she never returned to Santa Barbara. In a jarring realization, the May 1904 White Plains envelope is from Julia Martin. Apparently, at the time of her Albany visit, Julia was committed to the Bloomingdale Hospital for the Insane in White Plains. She remained there until 1925, when she was transferred to another asylum until her death in 1937, at the age of 71. There are more details in the audio and podcast transcript.

Alice Austen and Gertrude Tate also thrived during the first years of the 20th century – and throughout the next two decades. Photographs in the gallery show them in Europe during five separate years. They would travel overseas nearly yearly until 1912, staying 3-4 months each time; and for 5 months in 1909. View some travel photos from 1909.

Also, during the new century’s first decade, Austen continued working for Dr. Alvah Doty, the Health Officer at New York’s port. She would copyright nearly 50 of those photographs in 1901, alone. Her quarantine station and related photographs would be published in multiple outlets, including in the New York Tribune and the Medical Record journal. In 1907, she copyrighted 30 more photos, and in June of that year she was recognized in the article, “Women of Society in Trade,” in the New York Tribune.

In a few more years, Austen would publish two syndicated newspaper photo stories (pictured) in a series called A Page for Misses: “Makeshift Photography” and “The Winter Garden Club for Girls.” She would soon be a founder of the Staten Island Garden Club. During this time, Gertrude was active with New York Society of Teachers of Dancing, and then together they would run the tea room at the Stillwell-Perine House, which housed the Antiquarian Society that joined with the garden club.

From 1915: Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Staten Island Garden Club in Picturesque Quarters.

One of the most interesting club houses in Greater New York is the one recently acquired by the Garden Club in conjunction with the Antiquarian Society of Staten Island.

The Garden Club, which was founded about a year ago by Miss E Alice Austin, numbers among its members some of the most prominent people on the island and was started simply with the idea of increasing and fostering the love of gardening among the owners of beautiful homes in various parts of Staten Island. The club meetings, which were held at the homes of different members have been of real benefit to the garden lovers for at each meeting. Illustrated lectures on the various phases of gardening were given by prominent garden experts. However, the membership of the club increase so rapidly it was found advisable to secure a clubhouse.

On the Old Richmond Road, running between Stapleton and Richmond stood the old Perine house. Built in 1688 and associated with incidents in the revolution and the War of 1812. A number of the members of the Garden Club had seen the deterioration of the old place with genuine regret. and as was proposed that the club purchased the house for a headquarters, the Antiquarian Society of Staten Island volunteered to assume half the responsibility, and at present the two societies have their headquarters there.

When World War 1 broke out, Alice and Gertrude joined in local efforts. Austen taught women how to drive.

From a syndicated article from April, 1917 (pictured):

The league takes pleasure in announcing the following classes which are ready to begin work and in which Staten Island women may begin training for several lines of service. Two classes in motor driving are to be started in Raider’s Garage, corner Old Town road and Richmond road, under the chairman, Miss Austen, who has already formed several classes in private garages. These classes are to be held Mondays and Wednesdays from 2 to 4pm and 4-6pm. Evening classes to be held Tuesday and Friday evenings from 8-10pm.

In 1918, Austen’s Aunt Min died. Her will stated, in part:

“All the rest, residue and remainder of my property, real and personal and mixed … I hereby give and bequeath, absolutely and in fee, unto my niece, Elizabeth Alice Austen, sometimes known as Elizabeth Alice Austen Munn, it being my express wish that she shall occupy, rent free, the premises upon which I now dwell so long as she may elect so to do or so long as same may continue to be a desirable place of residence.”

Earlier, Alice’s grandmother had included these instructions in her will:

“ … the dwelling house and grounds belonging thereto on Staten Island now occupied by me shall not be sold during the life time of my two daughters or the survivor of them; and so long as it is occupied as a home by any of my family my wish is that no greater rent shall be charged therefor than an amount sufficient to cover the taxes, insurance and ordinary repairs thereon.”

Later, in 1918, Austen was offered considerable sums to sell Clear Comfort. The area was becoming developed and industry and piers began lining Staten Island’s shores.

From Ann Novotny’s 1976 biography, Alice’s World:

In 1918 the real estate operator Joseph P Day offered $100,000; a few years later, the dry dock dredging company of Merritt Chapman & Scott made a proposal of $125,000, and the American Chicle Company offered $175,000.

WW1 was in full swing during this time, and Alice Austen kept an ongoing extensive inventory of passing ships. Her negative sleeve descriptions were always similarly thorough, but these notations almost imply spying or government work.

June 20:

Film pack #1: Big French Steamer / left Red Cross Hospital / ship white / Fine / sun / wind / cool / 60 degrees / 2 / 4 / 3 / D/3pm /

June 23:

Film pack #2: Red Cross Ship / Comfort / anchored off Penn Ave / Fair / light / sun out / June 23rd / 1918 / 24 / 4 / 2 / D / 7:40pm / scout patrol

June 25:

Film pack #3: Hospital Ship Comfort / across end of terrace / No sun / hazy light / June 25th / 1918 / 12 / 4 / 2 / D . 12:30pm

June 30:

Film Pack #5: Steamer 4 stack / groups of 11 / camouflage / blue & white / GAT waving / Fine / sun / June 30th / 1918 – 12 / 4 / 3 / D / 2:30pm

Film pack #6: Ducca deglia della Abruzzi & four piper in groups / Fine / sun / June 30th / 1918 / 12 / 4 / 3 / D / 2:30

Film pack #7: Entering Narrows / Aquatania / another big boat / four pipes in groups of two / Fine / sun / June 30th / 1918

Film Pack #9: Camouflaged / Convoy / 4 pipes / Battleship / camouflaged / passing out / Fine / sun / June 30th / 1918 / 12 / 4 / 3 / D / 3:12pm

Film Pack #10: …coming in / passing Battleship 4 pipes / convoy / going out / Sun / fine / June 30th / 12 / 4 / 3 / D / 3:15pm.

July 1:

Film Pack #11: The Briton / English steamer / coming in / Sun / Hazy / July 1st / 1918 / Blue Black & Camouflage white / 12 / 4 / 3 1/2 / D / 4pm

Her ongoing cataloging of passing ships continued, and in September 1920 she photographed Gertrude Tate and others with flags waving at a passing ship that was returning with the remains of American soldiers (pictured):

“Group watching for the US transport Pocahontas / with col & Mrs Ford / above Major & Mrs Dunsmore & child / Roswall / The col / orderly / Dr & Mrs Thomas & GAT / Sept 7 1920”

During the 1920s, Alice and Gertrude spent time with wealthier friends at parties and automobile excursions. They were often with Gertrude’s Brooklyn friend, Guy Loomis, who they motored with in New York (pictured) and also in Europe. Oral histories tell of close friendships with sisters Faith and Jessie McNamee. Faith Morton died at age 57 in 1928; Jessie Simons and Alice stayed close, with Jessie’s parties and excursions to Ocean City, Rhode Island.

And then in November 1929, the stock market crashed.

From the podcast transcript:

“There are many versions of the story as to how Alice Austen lost Clear Comfort. The version that makes the most sense, because it was relayed while she was still alive, states that Alice had hired a financial adviser three years before the 1929 stock market crash, giving over her assets in exchange for ongoing payments of a percentage of its value – this had been going fine until the market crashed. It seems that the finance man had been borrowing on her funds and lost all of it with the collapse of the market.”

In 1931, Austen took out a mortgage on Clear Comfort.

She also began raising money by selling antiques and furniture from her home, creating a photographic inventory as they went. In 1931, the 1810 Duncan Phyfe sofa that belonged to her great-grandparents was sold at auction (pictured), bringing $1,400. In 1933, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a Chippendale armchair.

Later, a marble bust of great-grandfather David Austen went to the Museum of the City of New York, and painted family portraits were returned to the Staten Island Historical Society. Alice had given these items to her cousin Rogers Winthrop in exchange for monetary help he had been providing her. (Winthrop was her grandfather’s sister’s grandson)

In 1934, Austen lost Clear Comfort in foreclosure proceedings.

Between 1931 and 1934, Jessie Vanderbilt Simons helped Alice through various legal proceedings, including frantic activity around a proposed tunnel from Brooklyn to Staten Island, that would emerge at the site of Clear Comfort. Plans changed to a commercial ferry that would dock at the site of Austen’s house. All correspondences relating to these plans are with the Jessie Vanderbilt Simons papers at Duke University. The last communication is a telegram from Alice to Jessie.

From the podcast transcript:

“At the end of 1934, the same day that Alice utilized a new bankruptcy clause, filing for an extension on her debts, a bank bought Clear Comfort in foreclosure proceedings. Inexplicably, two days later, Alice sent Jessie Simons a telegram saying, “Appreciate Kindness Foreclosure Stopped.” Simons was staying at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna; and although it appears that the foreclosure went through, Alice was allowed to remain rent-free at Clear Comfort, so maybe that was why she thanked Jessie Simons.”

Jessie Vanderbilt Simons died in London, England, in August 1936. She was 63 years old.

Rogers Winthrop had suggested that Austen could turn Clear Comfort into a restaurant or tea house, which she and Gertrude Tate did around 1937. Pictures in the gallery include an advertising card, images of the tables on the front lawn, and notices from the New Yorker and Vogue magazines.

In Austen biographer Ann Novotny’s notes for her 1976 book, she states that Gertrude Tate was friends with Charles Hanson Towne, who also suggested that the women could serve meals at Clear Comfort. Towne was a poet, writer, and magazine editor, and was known as the ‘quintessential New Yorker.’ His influence may have helped Austen and Tate’s tea room get press.

Gertrude and Alice had many acquaintances through their travels and individual interests, and they befriended a 30-something gay couple, Lloyd Hyde and Arvid Knudsen. Hyde auctioned the Duncan Phyfe sofa, and they both visited Clear Comfort on a day that Alice was filming with her 16mm camera. Stills from that day’s footage are pictured in the gallery. The men were antique dealers and interior decorators. Gertrude’s sister Winifred told Novotny that these men had a gay social life with Austen and Tate.

The seasonal Clear Comfort tea house did not do enough business to sustain itself and seems to have closed at the end of the 1941 season. There are also stories related to concerns about German spies going there to monitor the passing ships.

An excerpt from a sad 1940 letter that Alice Austen wrote to Rogers Winthrop is pictured. She is thanking him for his help and asking for more support, also telling of her arthritis and how the house’s heat was shut off due to non-payment.

She also wrote, “Old age and poverty are very hard to cope with, but I keep trying, & am thankful I am allowed to stay in my dear old home.” The 1940 NY tax photo shows the beginning of the house’s physical decline.

In 1941, Austen sold many family items at a Fifth Avenue New York Auction House. The cover page and a page of auction listings are pictured. Her inventorying of other objects shows silver candlesticks and two links from the legendary chain that had been forged by a Townsend ancestor to draw across the Hudson River to foil incoming ships during the Revolutionary War (both pictured.) The links had always hung on the parlor’s mantle. Austen also sold the Steinway baby grand piano that is detailed in Chapter 6 of this podcast.

In 1944, the bank trust that owned Clear Comfort sold the house for $7,500 to the Mandia family, who initiated eviction proceedings.

The Mandias posted a For Sale sign at the house, which turns out to have been illegal and initiated a series of sympathetic newspaper articles. Austen’s family story was told and she was recognized as an early tennis player, but there was no mention of her being a photographer.

Later in 1944, the women rented part of the house to two boarders: a medical student, Richard Cannon, and his wife. They stayed for 9 months. During that time a hurricane caused a tree to fall and crush the 2nd floor porch where Aunt Minn had spent her days.

In 1945 the eviction process began again and the women began packing up their house.

In her haste, Alice had sold the contents of the house to a New Jersey furniture dealer for $600. Representatives from the Staten Island Historical Society arrived and removed box after box of photographs, negatives, and other items they considered of historic value. In a series of unfortunate occurrences, including storing some of Austen’s items with a neighbor to avoid their removal, 1,000s of negatives went missing.

Alice and Gertrude moved into an apartment at another part of Staten Island.

A note from that time, written by a Historical Society officer, states:

“Miss Austen and her engaging companion Miss Tate have moved from the old home. Not quite broken in spirit, but broken in health and finance, Miss Austen has at last been forced to leave the only home she has ever known.”

Alice Austen had become wheelchair-bound as a result of severe arthritis, and when Gertrude Tate could no longer care for her, she went to the Mariner’s Family Home. Tate moved in with her sister Winifred in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Listen to the audio or see the transcript for more details between 1945 and 1950.

In 1950, Alice Austen was declared a pauper and was moved into the New York City Farm Colony – the poorhouse that was located on Staten Island.

As part of the process, Alice had signed everything over to Gertrude. The Historical Society paid her $50 for the title to all of Austen’s photographs.

Then the story takes another startling turn.

From the podcast transcript:

“At the end of December 1950, when Alice Austen marked five months in the poor house, a letter arrived at the historical society from a researcher named Constance Foulk. It began: “I am preparing a picture book … dealing with the changing status of women in America from 1880 until the present day.”

The book’s publisher, a photo-editor named Oliver Jensen, picked it up from there.

Jensen recognized Alice Austen’s value – both as a resource for historical photos, as well as her worth as a trail blazing photographer. It was only after a couple of meetings while he was asking about the people in the photographs that he was told that Austen was still alive and that he could visit her in the poorhouse.

Jensen wanted to publish her photographs in his book, which would be called The Revolt of American Women, and he also pitched her story to LIFE magazine, who sent along Alfred Eisenstadt – the famous journalistic photographer best known for his VJ Day photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square.

To see LIFE magazine’s collection of 77 Alfred Eisenstaedt photographs of Alice Austen – some of which are quite sad, even appalling – go to https://artsandculture.google.com, and search “Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photographs of Alice Austen.”

Austen would remain in the poor house for one year. Jensen’s sales of her photographs helped transfer her to better accommodations. After the September 1951 LIFE magazine story, the Staten Island Historical Society proclaimed an Alice Austen Day and celebration, and another LIFE photographer documented that event for an October issue.

Alice Austen died in June 1952, nine months after she became recognized for her groundbreaking photography. Gertrude Tate died in 1961.

At Alice’s death, Gertrude wrote to Oliver Jensen (she had worked closely with him over the previous two years):

My dear Mr. Jensen,

I have just read your letter in “Life” about our dear friend Alice Austen. Your expression of admiration for her, and her beautiful artistry is always so sincere & at this time, particularly, when my heart is so full of sorrow at my deep sense of loss. She was a rare soul, and her going leaves me bereft indeed.

She’s at peace now, & with her loved ones. God was good to spare me these long years when she needed me so much & so I can only thank him for answering my prayer, that I might be with her to the end – and too, I feel that he gave us just one more friend in you –

Thank you always – sincerely, Gertrude A. Tate

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The Mandia family stayed at Clear Comfort for around 20 years. After that, the house declined. It was declared a national landmark in the 1960s, and then the City of New York bought the entire property in 1975.

From the 1979 structural report:

New York City took title in 1975. Four years later The Friends of Alice Austen House was chartered to oversee the restoration of the house. In August 1979, the group completed a comprehensive Historic Structures Report, detailing the history of the property and plans for restoration. Award-winning photographer Diana Mara Henry thoroughly documented the condition and transformation of the building before and during restoration.

From 1981-1986, Margaret (Peggy) Riggs Buckwalter served as Executive Director of the Friends of Alice Austen House. During her tenure, she oversaw the restoration of the property, made possible by a $1,050,000 grant obtained from the City’s capital budget through Borough President Anthony R. Gaeta, and began the operation of Austen’s home as a museum through an agreement with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Restoration began in January 1984, and was completed in April 1985. The museum opened to the public on May 14, 1985.

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The Alice Austen House Museum also maintains the Ann Novotny archive and materials she gathered for her book Alice’s World, published in 1976. The materials include interview transcripts, photographs, and correspondences, including with Oliver Jensen. The collection also contains copies of letters written beginning in the 1940s by C. Coapes Brinley of the Staten Island Historical Society to museums and magazines, as well as the correspondences from Alice Austen to her cousin Rogers Winthrop (donated by Winthrop’s secretary) among other items. Ann Novotny died in 1982 at the age of 46.

As a result of Ann Novotny and others’ efforts, Austen’s grave was dedicated with a marker and in 1976, Staten Island’s PS 60 school was renamed Alice Austen School. In 1986, the Alice Austen Staten Island Ferry was launched in Austen’s honor.

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There are endless other fascinating details and stories that deserve to be told concerning Alice Austen, Clear Comfort,

and the journey to get Austen and Tate’s relationship truthfully recognized.

...more

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My Dear Alice

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