This post is from a blog called Conversant, formerly published by the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.
Indeed, on the very night of the closing of the Grand Union Hotel in New York City, Mr. Frank Cousins (1851-1925) of Salem, proprietor of the Frank Cousins Art Company, produced a set of sixteen photographs, which are today held by the Phillips Library as part of the Frank Cousins Collection. Nowadays, Cousins is best remembered for his visual records of – mostly but not exclusively – the Colonial style architecture of Salem, its vicinity, and the upper eastern seaboard. Over his active years (1890s-1920s) he developed a thoroughly characteristic style, revealing a very structured approach to his subjects and a high degree of attention to detail, which makes his work intriguing as more than just documentation of architecture.
This September, I was honored to be afforded the opportunity to travel across the pond from Germany to perform research on this very collection, as the oeuvre of Frank Cousins is the main subject of my PhD dissertation. Not only did I have the chance to gain a comprehensive impression of Cousins’ overall work, but this month-long stay also taught me much about his incentive to compose this vast collection of about 4,000 negatives.
As I sat there, working my way through the forty-something boxes of materials, this specific series of sixteen images struck me as particularly compelling. Not so much because of each individual image, but because the series as a whole provided a unique synopsis of Cousins’ general project.
Exterior view of the Grand Union Hotel, 1914.
The series documents the closing night of New York City’s Great Union Hotel in May 1914, shortly before its demolition in the name of ‘public improvement’. Originally intended as a collection of personal mementos, the entire set was published by the Art Company due to popular demand.
Exterior view of the Grand Union Hotel, 1914.
The Grand Union Hotel used to be located on the southeast corner of 42nd Street and 4th Avenue (now Park). Around 1870 the building was bought by Samuel T. Shaw, who over the next few years added the Park Avenue front all the way down to 41st Street. Due to its proximity to the Grand Central depot, the hotel quickly became one of the most popular houses of the city (especially with New Englanders). By 1914 it was widely celebrated as “par excellence in every respect.”[1] However, to many it was more than just a fine hotel: it was considered a landmark, one of the “reminders of deeds and men dear to the heart of the people.”[2] In short, the Grand Union was part of the city’s cultural heritage.
Ode to the Grand Union Hotel by permanent resident and poet T.B. Evans.
Ode to the Grand Union Hotel by permanent resident and poet T.B. Evans.
When in the 1910s the decision was made to extend the Interborough Rapid Transit Subway to connect the Lexington and 4th Avenue lines, it was impossible to protect the building from the massive excavation work beneath its foundations. Eventually, like so many of the structures Cousins documented, the Grand Union had to yield to progressing modernization. So it ensued that Saturday May 2, 1914 would be the last night of this “so royal a house.”[3]
Cousins’ elaborate captions and the circular announcing the publication of the sixteen photographs in question, show that he too felt the closing of the Grand Union to be the end of an era. In fact, the study of his oeuvre reveals that he has always been highly appreciative of historicity. The Grand Union had been his choice of residence for many years and he maintained close ties of friendship to its staff and regulars, especially Simeon Ford (one of the owners); hence the desire to pay his last respect to this “dear old homely home” and to preserve this heritage at least on paper.[4]
Only marginally addressing the building’s architecture in this series, Cousins meticulously chronicled the final moments of one of the oldest hotels in that part of the city. Apart from six scenes of the last gathering at the hotel shortly before the ceremonial turning of the key at midnight (ironically there was no key to be found to the Grand Union, as its doors had never been locked), Cousins also made sure to record the last two pages of the register, and even returned to document the deserted spaces of the place the next morning as they waited in silence for the wrecker’s ball (7 shots).[5]
At first sight, these photographs of the Grand Union may not seem to fall in line with Frank Cousins’ general project of visually documenting – thus preserving – the architecture of New England’s golden age. In fact however, the opposite is the case, as these photographs are exactly representative of Cousins’ overall project.
The bar at the Grand Union Hotel, New York City: The Farewell Toast.
Throughout the Frank Cousins Collection there is evidence that not just this particular set of photographs, but Cousins’ work as a whole, is about more than merely architectural merit. Rather than making a point of simply recording buildings, Cousins portrayed (historical) spaces, both public and private, as part of a present cultural context intended to conjure up a sense of place that encapsulates ‘the way things used to be’.
The bar at the Grand Union Hotel, New York City: The Farewell Toast.
Among the most evident results of my study of Cousins’ oeuvre (both photographs and publications) at the Phillips Library is certainly the confirmation that his project was about the preservation of material (architectural) evidence of a past elapsing ever more rapidly with ongoing modernization. However, more than this, he confers significance to the place of these memories in his own cultural present and therefore the traces of human conduct through time. His work remains a remembrance project on a bigger scale and this 16-piece series inimitably reflects Cousins’ ability to surpass intentions of physical documentation by recording cultural memories.
Nora Riediger is a PhD student in the department of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. During an internship at the Photography Collection of the Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin she was introduced to the photographs of Frank Cousins and has been performing research on him since her MA in ‘Arts & Heritage’ from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. She is currently working on her dissertation “Re-presenting Frank Cousins: Turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Architecture Photography as a Project of Cultural Remembrance” (working title), which analyzes Cousins’ oeuvre in terms of current theories of cultural memory.
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