st.george

What explains this antipathy? Staten Island, apart from its historic sites, has been thought of by nonresidents as having little cultural life to speak of; the place was thought of as a giant bedroom community that you spent a few hours asleep in before working and playing in Manhattan.

I spent a recent winter Sunday on a lengthy tour of St. George, the first neighborhood you're in when you step off the ferry, with artist/author Cynthia Von Buhler, who has done her part to contribute to Staten Island culture with ambitious shows in galleries in Manhattan and Staten Island. We will see more of her work a bit later. Some of my and Cynthia's friends were along -- we did not make it a public ForgottenTour since we were invited into several houses and venues along the way and felt it best to keep the guest list limited. I plan on doing a full St. George FTour soon, though (we did one in 1999 when just starting out and only two guests were on it! There will be more next time).

WAYFARING: ST. GEORGE/FORT HILL (open map in new window)

St. George was named not for the Roman noble, later martyred, who in fable slew a dragon, but rather for a land baron named George Law, who had acquired Staten Island waterfront rights at bargain prices. He agreed to relinquish some of the rights for a ferry terminal -- provided it be named for him! Prominent residents of St. George have been New York State Governor Daniel Tompkins and NYC subways bankroller August Belmont.

After meeting at SHOW Gallery at 156 Stuyvesant Place, co-owned by Theo Dorian (who co-owns three of the houses seen on today's tour), we proceeded to...

Among Curtis' notable graduates are Bobby Thomson, NY Giants outfielder who hit the Shot Heard Round The World sending the Giants into the World Series vs. The Yankees in 1951, and Chaplain Vincent Capodanno, who earned the Medal of Honor for valor in the Vietnam War; Father Capodanno Boulevard in South Beach bears his name. George William Curtis (1824-1892), for whom the school is named, was an acclaimed author and public speaker; he was named editor of Harper's Weekly in 1863, using his position to further emancipation, civil rights and social equality, civil service reform and public education. Curtis lived at 234 Bard Avenue in West New Brighton in a house that still stands.

The first of the Victorian classic homes you see as you make your way north along St. Mark's Place, this building near Castleton Park Apartments was once owned by Frank Alvah Parsons, who joined the Chase School in NYC in 1904, and after becoming administrator in 1907, added programs in interior design, graphic design and advertising. The school was renamed for him as the Parsons School of Design in 1941; it is now part of The New School. ForgottenFan Gerry Guadagno (right), an art director at the world-famous direct marketing company where your webmaster works, attended Parsons.

119 St. Mark's was built in 1890 by architect Edward A. Sargent, who built many of the eclectic Victorian-era masterpieces along this stretch of St. Mark's. The building was first home to Vernon Brown, a shipping agent for the Cunard Lines.

While many of Sargent's masterpieces can be found along St. Mark's Place, he also worked extensively elsewhere in the Northeast; he designed the 1st American Yacht Club building in Rye, NY, Lindenhurst, the suburban Philadelphia estate of department store magnate John Wanamaker; he also designed homes in Norwalk, CT, New Rochelle, NY (large tract development),West Orange, NJ, Nyack, NY, Mamaroneck, Larchmont, NY, Fordam and many other towns.

103 St. Mark's

Co-owner of 103 St. Mark's Place, Michael Harwood, greets guests at probably the most whimsical house we saw along the tour. Originally built by Sargent for banker Frederick A. Rodewald in 1890, it's filled with eclectic touches inside and out, such as the rounded edges, small oriel window on the left and intricate interior detailing.

Phelps Place is a tiny cul-de-sac on Hamilton Avenue a little east of its junction with Westervelt Avenue. The mansion at its rear, designed by architect Douglas Smyth in 1890, is notable not only as a premier example of Shingle Style architecture, but it was also part of the estate of millionaire banker Anson Phelps Stokes I. His son, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, became perhaps the borough of Manhattan's greatest historian. Stokes' six-volume Iconography of Manattan, 1498-1909, published between 1915 and 1928, presents hundreds of thoroughly annotated maps and prints that delineate Manhattan's progress from before the Dutch colonial era to the 20th Century. Your webmaster would love to have this seminal history, but even a reprinted version from 1998 runs for $750! Perhaps I'll give up a vacation one year and spring for it.

Fort Hill Castle

"Fort Hill" recalls the Revolutionary War. One of the highest points in St. George, the hill was used by the British to build redoubts out of soil. In the mid-1800s it was part of the estate of Daniel Low, but it was subdivided into lots in the early 20th Century and circular Fort Hill Place was constructed to rim the hill.

Sometime between 1920 and 1930 this 3800-square-foot building. modeled after Spanish castle, was constructed at 22 Fort Hill Circle. Cynthia and her husband, Russell Farhang (a violinist in the Howard Fishman Quintet) purchased it in 2005 after a lengthy search in which the couple even consulted FNY:

They pored over brownstoner.com, a favorite Web site, which decried inflation in Brooklyn and confirmed their own observations on price.

"I would get discouraged and say, 'Let's forget it and in the meantime we will save every penny,' " Mr. Farhang said. "But Cynthia would take the computer into the other room and house hunt for hours, and in the morning there would be all these e-mails waiting for me.
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Another favorite Web site, forgotten-ny.com, introduced them to places they had never heard of. Often, on weekends, the two would pick a neighborhood that sounded interesting and drive out, just to see... NYTimes

Cynthia and Russell immediately set about giving the interior a bold new look:

...The interior "was boring white," remarks Von Buhler. So she sponged rich hues onto the textured walls and installed her gothic-meets-Renaissance pieces throughout (a painting in the living room depicts Adam and Eve, complete with a very convincing plaster snake ... Time Out NY

The octagonal purple room, ringed with some of Cynthia's pieces, is at the top of the tower and serves as the guest room.

In an attempt to lure more people to Staten Island, the couple created prodigalborough.com, which features the areaís loveliest for-sale homes. "The neighborhood has welcomed us," says Von Buhler, describing the "mostly liberal Democrats" on their block. "Everyone should live here."

More views of the Fort Hill Castle can be seen on Cynthia's web album.

Cynthia's pieces are prominent in her house, as well as SHOW Gallery where the tour met. She is a critically acclaimed artist, illustrator, author and performance artist who combines, in her words, "painting, sculpture, performance, video projection, installation, living fauna, collage, photography, human detritus, and electronic audio ... "

"Regardless of medium, all of [her] pieces require the viewer to get involved: sometimes physically, by pulling a cord or inserting a coin to operate a machine, and at other times mentally, when the message sent strikes a chord with the viewer. The Artist is a disembodied mannequin head and wooden hand in a booth. The work takes your quarter, deliberates a moment, and then gives you a tongue-in-cheek assessment of your artistic temperament, dispensing a postage-stamp-sized example of your style ..."

Cynthia's website
Cynthia's wikipedia entry
Cynthia's blog
Cynthia's children's book page

Many of Cynthia's works can be seen at SHOW Gallery on Stuyvesant Place in St. George. They combine practicality, accessibility and good old-fashioned outrageousness... some remind me of the box sculptures of Joseph Cornell, although hers are a great deal more interactive than Cornell's were.

"The Artist consists of a disembodied mannequin head in a booth with a paintbrush-wielding hand ... when the coin mechanism is held in, the Artist's head moves and her hand paints..." --CVB

In 2007, Cynthia curated Andy Warhol: In His Wake, a compendium of artists who woked with him at his studio The Factory. The Great Warhola was created for the exhibition: when the viewer holds in the coin mechanism, a Campbells' soup can opens, revealing that it is filled with money. It also plays a recording of Warhol himself (Warhola was his real name).

"Cynth-O-Matic" offers the brave a chance to buy one of various plastic capsules containing actual samples of the artist's body hair and fluids from a gaily-decorated vending machine. The piece is Von Buhler's critique of those who attend art openings to chat with the artist and scarf hors d'oeuvres while ignoring the art. "For your 25 cents you can actually have a piece of the artist.". wikipedia

Cynthia Von Buhler

The Art of Cynthia Von Buhler

RIGHT: "What I Am Now You Will One Day Be." Inspired by a church in Italy that preserves the bones of monks (Cimitero dei Cappuccini), which have been assembled into chandeliers, decorative molding and arched walls. A placard in the Cimitero reads "What I Am Now You Will One Day Be," a rehash of the "ashes to ashes" theme. Cynthia's canvas depicts a priest with parts cut away to show the bones underneath; the peach he is holding has a slice cut out to show the pit. Cynthia has already produced a Part II, with herself as the subject, and says she plans to keep creating pieces in this theme for the rest of her life.

Von Buhler describes her approach to art as continually expanding. "My work has become more dimensional over time. I am interested in trying to do things that no one else has done, to push myself -- and my art -- further." She is rarely discouraged by the difficulties involved in her feats of creation. When asked about the logistical complications of creating such diverse work (isn' it exhausting to figure out how to make a talking sculpture and publish a book in a matter of months?), she explains, "I'm not afraid of electronics or power tools. I find it empowering to be able to visually communicate using a wide variety of media."And is there anything that this Renaissance woman isn't into? Perhaps one thing: "I am not interested in creating works of art that are passive," she says. NYArts

I'm glad the ForgottenBook can be found on Cynthia and Russell's book shelf. (Yes, I checked.)

308 Westervelt, on the NW corner with Hendricks -- is largely a mystery as far as its own history is concerned, since it's not in the guidebooks or pamphlets I've been able to consult. Yet, its owners received us warmly and, for your webmaster, it may have been the most encouraging house on the whole tour. While I can't afford any of the places I've seen today (and I'm satisfied with chez webmaster in Little Neck) what I can do is trick my own place out like this porched, cupola'ed building:

photographed January 25, 2009; page completed February 8, 2009

erpietri@earthlink.net