PS 268, on East 53rd Street between Clarkson Avenue and Winthrop Street, bears an image of the Statue of Liberty on its front door, quite fitting because its namesake poet’s most famous work has been inscribed on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Harbor Lady since 1902.
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) was not an immigrant, as you would expect. Her family, of Sephardic Jewish extraction, had resided in New York City for several generations. She became a poet, playwright and novelist in her youth, her work attracting the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the 1880s she became acutely aware of the depredations of European Jews and the pogroms in Russia, and wrote several fiction and nonfiction works about Jewish immigration to the United States.
Her sonnet, “The New Colossus,” was written for and donated to an organization raising funds for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. Lazarus was also an early voice for Zionism, the movement to give Jews a permanent homeland in Israel.
Lazarus passed away from Hodgkin’s lymphoma a year after the Lady Liberty was dedicated and it’s unknown if she ever laid eyes on the statue that inspired one of the most famous poems ever written:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The actual pedestal leaves off the comma after “Keep,” making it grammatically incorrect! That comma makes a big difference.
1/22/15
5 comments
The construction of PS 268 was completed, I believe, in 1953, at which time I entered the first grade there and attended through the sixth grade. I lived right opposite the facade in the photo until I was 14, when my family moved to Queens.
I went to ps268 followed by ps232 and remember these years fondly . Some years later I went to SUNY DOWNSTATE a mile down the road . New York City you were very good to me . Mitchell Steinway M D
I have many fond memories of PS 268. I attended from Kindergarten thru 6th grade. My younger sister also attended PS 268 and since then, her 2 daughters attended now one of her granddaughters attends the school. 3 generations!
Steve Kasdan, I, too, entered PS 268 in first grade. My teacher was Mrs. Ripple. I did kindergarden and part of first grade at Winthrop before moving around the block. Back to Winthrop in 7th grade before I moved to Mill Basin.
I remember too Ms. RIPPLE From the first grade. I guess I was in the first grade there about 1959. I remember that school well and thereafter I went to PS 232 Winthrop. It seems so long ago but I have some real vivid memories. I lived down Clarkson Avenue a little bit on East 56th street. PS 268 was East 53rd street. So I used to walk to school. Across from me on Clarkson Avenue and East 56th Street was a luncheonette. Lil was the mom and Arnie was the son and they both own that luncheonette. We used to go in there for cherry vanilla ice cream cones and egg creams and all those Delicacies from Brooklyn. Across from PS 268 on Clarkson Avenue was a pizza restaurant, a candy store, and the pharmacy. The candy store was really cool for little kids. They had school supplies and all sorts of candies that you don’t see anymore.