Don't trust historians

Here's an easy quiz. You'll find the cornice bust below on Broome Street. It was built in the 1890's when the neighborhood was largely Jewish and Italian. It's the largest bust on the Lower East Side. Who is this man with the flowing beard?

If you need a hint, notice the stars of David:

Well that was easy. Obviously, it's Moses. But why is it obvious? It isn't to historians, because...they're historians.

When you first see this from the street, you immediately recognize Moses, but maybe you wonder, what's he doing there? Was this a religious building? What's the back story? When you get home you google up the address and look for clues. You access the social historians, the preservationists, the architectural historians. They all concur. There's no evidence that this is Moses. Usually it's "The bust may be a representation of Moses, but we cannot confirm." "We don't know for sure who is represented." "It may be Moses or it could be Abraham."

You turn from your computer thinking, if the authorities don't know who it is, then it must be quite a mystery. I thought it was Moses, but now who knows? This is where professionalism misleads. If there's no documentation, the historian can't commit to speculation. That's what historians are for. Reliable research. But notice, research does not equal truth. It's just one means to it, and not always the most reliable.

So first, let's settle the facts. It's Moses. How can you tell? Because it doesn't say "Moses" on it. Because it's obviously Moses, and anyone placing a bust of Moses would know that everyone seeing it would recognize it as Moses without a name.

But what if it wasn't Moses? Well, consider if it was the landlord's cousin Seymour. You can be damned sure that Seymour's name "SEYMOUR" would be up there because Seymour and his whole landlord family would know that if "SEYMOUR" weren't up there, everyone looking at the bust would mistake it for Moses.

So the fact that there's no record of it not only doesn't cast doubt on Moses' identity, it substantiates that the bust is Moses. The absence of record is the evidence.

But what about Abraham? Couldn't it just as well be Abraham?

No way. When you think of Moses, what image do you see? Wise-looking, dynamic old man w/flowing beard. There's a ton of iconography for Moses and it's all wise, dynamic old man w/flowing beard. This is not Charlton Heston's invention or Cecil B. DeMille's. It's all over the Renaissance, and the most famous, Michelangelo's, has the same sideward glance as 375 Broome.

Now, when you think of Abraham's face, what image do you see? Um, nothing. There's no facial iconography for Abraham and for good reason.

Abraham's mythic, not heroic. Everything about him is beyond the human and not even quite humane. He's somewhere beyond the human scale. His faith is an ideal aspiration, not a graspable possession. No father wants to be Abraham, and you can be damn sure no son wants Abraham as a father.

Compare Moses. He abjures his privilege, power and wealth in the establishment culture to go seek out his Jewish roots (every assimilated Jew will resonate with this one), returns as defender of his people to speak truth to power and lead his people in victory. And he's human -- he stutters, makes mistakes, and pays for it by never seeing the land he brought his people to. What a story! Who doesn't love Moses? Who doesn't want to be just like him? He's the rock star of the Old Testament, and the moral, humane center of it. The only hero comes close is Esther. David is cool, but what a mess that man is. Nope, Moses is the model.

It's worth reflecting that it actually wouldn't matter if the landlord wanted it to look like Seymour. It wouldn't matter if the artist used his brother Irving instead of Seymour as a model. It wouldn't matter if, after it was unveiled, the four of them bickered over who it really was. What matters is that the bust had no name, so it was given to the viewer in this culture to decide, and that's going to be Moses. There are multiple truths. The answers you find depend on the questions you ask. The question, "Who is it really?" hides a bunch of assumptions that research alone can't tease out.

So there he is, high above Broome Street, still looking over his people, though they've long since gone astray. Under the bust there's a mask of another old man. It appears in several Herter brothers buildings (375 was designed also by the Herter brothers -- non Jewish Germans who built many tenements and the Eldridge Street Synogogue for Jewish clients). Whomever it represents in the other buildings, here it fits right in with the iconography above it

Now tell me that man isn't your angry pharaoh dad who totally disapproves but's got to give you grudging respect. You win Moses.

Next up, don't believe the know-it-alls.

New series: The Tenement Puzzle, a social, cultural, economic and architectural history

Why are some tenements -- built in the ghetto for poor, immigrant labor -- so elaborate, covered with expensive terra cotta and glazes, stone and tinted brick while others are simple and plain?

Over the years I've heard several speculative explanations, often ingenious, but always wrong, always misled by a simple deception of the streetscape. Unlike an archeological site arranged in chronological layers each earlier than the one above, the street shuffles the history together in one jumble. Each style of tenement belongs to a structure of a particular moment in the city, not to its neighbor on the street.

Why is the city streetscape so varied with big and small, plain and ornate, dull and colorful? Why are some old neighborhoods lined with narrow buildings, others with only expansive, stately buildings? Why are corner buildings in those narrow-lined neighborhoods typically more grandiose than the midblock buildings?

The real estate of New York is a direct reflection of the social and economic growth of the city, including the government and cultural ideological response to that growth. Unlike any other aspect of the history of New York, the architectural history is in plain view -- if you can read it. This series intends to show how to read it, and to show where the documentary record misleads: the only way to read the history is through experiencing the history itself, and the buildings are that faithful historical remnant. Architecture does not lie -- it's history presented in brick and stone. The subtext of this series is "don't believe everything you read." Look -- with informed eyes.

I'll start with two speculations about why some tenements look so lavish. one, landlords looking for better tenants; the other, landlords accommodating illiterate tenants. The actuality reveals a much deeper cultural relation between rich and poor.

Solving the tenement puzzle

I'll be giving the illustrated lecture Solving the Tenement Puzzle again, this time at the Neighborhood Preservation Center/Historic Districts Council, 232 East 11th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Wednesday, September 25, 6:30pm. Light refreshments will be served.

The talk involves the whole social history of 19th century New York, New York's wild politics, economy, real estate and land use, the development of the immigrant ghetto, speculation, arts, culture and reform. Using the photography of Stefania Zamparelli and Amy Chin, we'll read it all on the face of the tenements. And we'll debunk popular - and even historians' - misconceptions about the tenement.

I'll also address the surprising paradoxes of the immigrant real estate economy in which land rent declines as building rent rises, and the quality of living space (a use value) declines as price (exchange value) increases, contrary to the market outside the immigrant quarter. 

Solving the Tenement Puzzle: dispelling myths and misconceptions of an architecutral vernacular.