Elizabeth Alice Austen House – Clear Comfort [1] | |
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Location | 2 Hylan Boulevard Staten Island New York City, New York |
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Coordinates | 40°36′53.7″N74°3′49″W / 40.614917°N 74.06361°W |
Built | 1690 [2] |
Architectural style | Dutch Colonial, later Gothic Revival [3] |
NRHP reference No. | 70000925 |
NYSRHP No. | 08501.000264 |
NYCL No. | 0371 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | July 28, 1970 [2] |
Designated NHL | April 19, 1993 [4] |
Designated NYSRHP | June 23, 1980 |
Designated NYCL | August 2, 1967 |
The Alice Austen House, also known as Clear Comfort, is located at 2 Hylan Boulevard in the Rosebank section of Staten Island, New York City, New York. [5] It was home of Alice Austen, a photographer, for most of her lifetime, and is now a museum and a member of the Historic House Trust. [6] The house is administered by the "Friends of Alice Austen", a volunteer group. [7]
In 2021, Clear Comfort was documented by the LGBT Historic Sites project, the first NYC site dedicated to a woman to be so recognized. [8]
It was originally built in the 1690s/early 1700s as a one-room Dutch Colonial House on the shore of New York Harbor, near the Narrows with brothers Jacob Johnson and Lambert Johnson being the likely first occupants. The brothers Johnson purchased 120 acres of land from George Brown in 1698. [9] Jacob Johnson's mother-in-law was Winifred King Benham, who was tried for witchcraft in Wallingford, Connecticut, and may have been a resident of the house after her acquittal and virtual banishment. [10]
The house was remodeled and expanded several times in the 1800s, most notably after John Haggerty Austen, Alice's grandfather, purchased, renamed, and remodeled it in 1844. [2]
In the 1950s and 1960s, photographers Berenice Abbott and Philip Johnson led a group of historic preservationists to save the house from being demolished. [11] It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and became a New York City Landmark in 1971. It was purchased by New York City in 1975 and opened to the public in 1985. [12] In 1993 it became a National Historic Landmark, and in 2002, it became a Historic Artist Home and Studio. [7] [2]
Alice Austen House participates as a museum in the Smithsonian program of Museum Day events. [13] In 2016 Austen House presented its first juried triennial exhibition, Staten Island Unlimited featuring 35 photographers from three boroughs of New York. [14] During the members' preview reception of the show, a toast was made to Alice Austen's 150th birthday. Other activities included Triennial Talks, discussions with artists about their work on the subjects of "Staten Island as Place" and "Staten Island as Community." [15]
In March 2016, the Whitney Museum hosted New Eyes on Alice Austen, a panel discussion in honor of Women's History Month and Alice Austen's 150th birthday featuring "scholars, academics, and historians who have investigated her incredible work and unconventional lifestyle." [16] This was part of the museum's re-interpretation to include Gertrude Tate, Austen's long time life partner. [17] [18] This also includes a new podcast, My Dear Alice. [19]
This led to the museum being designated an LGBT site by the National Register of Historic Places. [20]
An old neighborhood tradition told that, after midnight, one could hear the clanking of chains coming from the cellar. This was attributed to the ghosts of slaves who were kept there during the American Revolution. Another apocryphal story is that of a British soldier hanging himself from a beam in the parlor because of a broken heart. It is said that the sound of his military boots and the clinking of his spurs may be heard in that room after midnight. [21]
Staten Island is the southernmost borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County and situated at the southernmost point of New York. The borough is separated from the adjacent state of New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull and from the rest of New York by New York Bay. With a population of 495,747 in the 2020 Census, Staten Island is the least populated New York City borough but the third largest in land area at 58.5 sq mi (152 km2); it is also the least densely populated and most suburban borough in the city.
Elizabeth Alice Austen was an American photographer working in Staten Island. She is best known for her street photography and her intimate depictions of women's lives and relationships in the Victorian era.
Ward's Point is the southernmost point in the U.S. state of New York and lies within Tottenville, Staten Island, New York City. It is located at the mouth of Arthur Kill, across from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, at the head of Raritan Bay. The site is part of modern-day Conference House Park.
Conference House is a stone house in the Tottenville neighborhood of Staten Island in New York City. Built by Captain Christopher Billopp some time before 1680, it is located in Conference House Park near Ward's Point, the southernmost tip of New York state, which became known as "Billop's Point" in the 18th century.
The term North Shore is frequently applied to a series of neighborhoods within the New York City borough of Staten Island.
Rosebank is a neighborhood in northeastern Staten Island, one of New York City's five boroughs. It borders Clifton to the north, Arrochar to the south, and the Upper New York Bay to the east.
The New York City Farm Colony was a poorhouse on the New York City borough of Staten Island, one of the city's five boroughs. It was located across Brielle Avenue from Seaview Hospital, on the edge of the Staten Island Greenbelt.
Sailors' Snug Harbor, also known as Sailors Snug Harbor and informally as Snug Harbor, is a collection of architecturally significant 19th-century buildings on Staten Island, New York City. The buildings are set in an 83-acre (34 ha) park along the Kill Van Kull in New Brighton, on the North Shore of Staten Island. Some of the buildings and the grounds are used by arts organizations under the umbrella of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden.
Edward A. Sargent was an English-born American architect, known for his work on New York City schools, churches, office buildings, clubs, armory and country homes.
Hylan Boulevard is a major northeast-southwest boulevard in the New York City borough of Staten Island, and the longest street in a single borough in the city. It is approximately 14 miles (23 km) long, and runs from the North Shore neighborhood of Rosebank, then along the entire East Shore, to the South Shore neighborhood of Tottenville. It was renamed in 1923 for New York City mayor John F. Hylan, before which it was known as Southfield Boulevard and the northern segment as Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Garibaldi-Meucci Museum, formerly known as the Garibaldi Memorial, is a circa 1840 Gothic Revival cottage in the Rosebank section of Staten Island, New York. It was home to inventor and candle maker Antonio Meucci (1808–1889). The Italian revolutionary and political leader Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) lived there from 1851 to 1853.
Historic Artists' Homes and Studios program is a network of about 30 artists' homes and studios in the United States. The network of house museums is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Buono Beach is a small shorefront public park in the New York City borough of Staten Island, in the neighborhood of Rosebank, at the foot of Hylan Boulevard. Buono Beach borders New York Harbor and is adjacent to the park containing the Alice Austen House. The park contains a local veterans' memorial fountain.
McFarlane–Bredt House is a historic home at 30 Hylan Boulevard in Rosebank, Staten Island, New York. It was built about 1840 and is a two-story, wood-frame clapboard house in the Italian Villa style. The house, located atop a hill on Staten Island's North Shore, faces New York Harbor to the northeast. It consists of four sections: the original, two-story central section built about 1840; the extension to the original section built about 1860; a wind added about 1870; and a three-story western addition completed in the 1890s.
Tompkins Avenue is a main artery in northeastern Staten Island New York City. It connects southern Tompkinsville in the north to northern Arrochar in the south, passing through the Fort Wadsworth, Rosebank, Shore Acres, Clifton, and Stapleton neighborhoods. It is mostly a residential street, though it also has commercial districts.
Diana Mara Henry is an American freelance photographer and photojournalist.
The following is a list of LGBT historic places in the United States. It includes sites that are recognized at the federal, state, county, or municipal level as important to the history of the LGBT civil rights movement. They represent the achievements and struggles of the community and provide context to understand these events and people. The National Park Service is amid an effort to chronicle LGBT sites across the nation, and have identified almost 400 of interest.
For 78 years, this was the home Elizabeth Alice Austen (1866-1952), a remarkable photographer whose work predates in subject matter and technique the photographs of other giants in the field. Austen began her career in the 1870s, and, although she used subjects as other women photographers of her time, her pictures have a realistic and natural edge rather than the blurry romantic view advocated by magazines of the time. Austen also veered away from the conventional studio poses; instead she took pictures of people during the course of their normal activities.
For 78 years, this was the home Elizabeth Alice Austen (1866-1952), a remarkable photographer whose work predates in subject matter and technique the photographs of other giants in the field.