A haunting, distant echo stopped me cold while I walked through the the Met’s big post pandemic show. Alice Neel’s art fills a full wing, and it’s in many ways, a story of her life. It twice touches Roosevelt Island.
By David Stone
As we posted earlier, a friend sent us a photo of Neel’s revealing painting of Roosevelt Island pioneer and literary legend, Alice Childress.
But here was a surprise, this one sad, awaited.
In 1954, just three years before the institution closed, Neel made an ink drawing of her mother in City Hospital during the last year of her life.
With her mother, also named Alice, in a wheelchair in the foreground, you can see the East River and Manhattan skyline, as it was then, out the windows.
Read more about the fate of City Hospital here. Also designed by James Renwick and begun three months earlier than St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it was not saved like the Smallpox Hospital after being abandoned.
The area where it stood is now the north end of Southpoint Park.
More from the Roosevelt Island Daily
- Queens Public Library Ransomware Attack: Digital Services Still DisruptedThe Queens Public Library ransomware attack continues to disrupt public computers, digital books and online services, with no confirmed restoration date.
- A new RIOC appeals officer denied records on how its general counsel was hiredA different RIOC appeals officer denied records on how RIOC hired general counsel Lance Polivy. RIOC’s internal deliberations on the hire stay withheld.
- Monday’s PSD blotter: two hospital transports, two disputesRIOC’s Nov. 9 PSD blotter lists 14 incidents, including four aided calls with two hospital transports and a verbal dispute at 750 Main Street that drew FDNY.
- Flushing Spa Murder: Man Charged After Woman Found Stabbed to DeathFlushing spa murder investigation leads to a murder charge against a 54-year-old man after a woman was found fatally stabbed in a Queens storefront.
- Sunday’s blotter: four medical calls, three non-criminal investigationsRIOC’s Nov. 8 PSD blotter lists 19 incidents, including four aided calls (two hospital transports) and three Investigation Non-Criminal entries at 465, 580 and 546 Main Street.
Who Does This?
At the June 18 meeting of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation’s Real Estate Development Advisory Committee, President and Chief Executive Officer B.J. Jones acknowledged that there had been no progress finding a tenant for the long-discussed medical space on Main Street. Hudson/Related Realty LLC had told him that filling the space, along with other vacant storefronts, was proving more difficult than expected.
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