PARKS Miscellanea

Again, it's time to look at some odds and ends that don't seem big enough for a post, but are of some interest nonetheless. And in honor of the spring season, they all have to do with the parks that tie Tudor City together.

First, a portrait of The Manor, No. 45 and No. 25, made around 1929. The grassy area is the site of the future South Park; they haven't done much with the landscaping as it was then the famous Tudor City Miniature Golf Course.

Also around the same time, a photo was made of two benches and a large pot grouped together in the North Park. Behind it, the lattice-worked wall that's the western border of the park. 

From the Daily News, May 17, 1939. Held from 1936‒1940, the tulip festival was an effort to have some good news during the Depression. More about it here.

A page from the July, 1965 issue of Tudor City View, enabling readers to identify the various trees of the North and South Parks. The parks were in terrible shape by then, but at least they could still name its trees.

The park's savior, John McKean, pictured at a community meeting. At the table beside him was a scale model and birds-eye view renderings of the two parks. What was said at this meeting is lost to time, but it is fine portrait of John McKean, selling an idea.

Special CARTOON Edition

Some perks of Tudor City, rendered cartoon-style, from a 1930 ad campaign:

In the beginning, Tudor City is targeted to a young, up-and-coming demographic, as pictured above ‒ a comely, cloche-hat-wearing crowd that likes miniature golf, maid and valet service, and is especially fond of dining out and being waited on. 

BURTON RASCOE, Cynic

Burton Rascoe, 1937

Burton Rascoe ‒ Tudor City scold ‒ is a journalist/editor/ critic who files one of the earliest stories about the enclave's opening. . . and does not like what he sees.

A cantankerous chap with a punchy writing style ‒ his Times obit cites his "skilled command of both bludgeon and rapier" ‒ he's best remembered for his syndicated column, The Daybook of a New Yorker, which appears in over 400 daily newspapers across the country during the '20s and '30s. It's one of many 'man-about-town' columns that are in vogue at the time, when Manhattan was considered the smartest place in America.

Rascoe's first raspberry for Tudor City runs on September 30, 1927, the very day the enclave officially debuts:

  The conveniences and inconveniences of New York apartment life cast a great light on present-day marriage. In Tudor City, a group of new apartment buildings at Forty-second St. and the East River, one may have a two-room apartment with facilities for refrigeration, but absolutely no provision for cooking, for $125 a month.

  The arrangement is significant. One provides for cocktail-making in today's pied-a-terre, but not for the homely comforts of breakfast and dinner cooked on the premises. Of course, percolators will be used by many, and the transgression will be overlooked by the management. But for the most part, the apartments will be used as jumping-off places. There will be a good deal of quiet, serious drinking, and more not so quiet. And there will be dinner at the restaurant in the building, and no little bride's biscuits burning cheerily in the oven. The cynic, however, may point out that these large buildings are not designed primarily for the earnest newly-married, but for the gayer birds of passage whose "love nests" delight the editors of tabloid newspapers. 

The screed is really free advertising for Fred French, whose youthful target demographic would no doubt relish living in a colony of "love nests" and "serious drinking" in buildings "not designed for newly-marrieds but for the city's gayer birds of passage."

Rascoe does bring up a good point about cooking, however. In lieu of kitchens, Tudor City's apartment hotels  ‒ Nos. 5, 25, 45, and The Woodstock ‒ offer serving pantries equipped with a sink and fridge, but no heating elements. The idea is that one would order up hot food via room service, an idea quite plausible in the Roaring Twenties that's a lot less palatable during the Depression.

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Four days later, Rascoe turns his gimlet eye on Tudor City's much ballyhooed miniature golf course.

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By November 1927, Rascoe seems to have warmed to the enclave. To wit, the following anecdote:

  A fashionable looking woman traveling east on a Forty-second streetcar the other night was telling an acquaintance she had moved into Tudor City, the group of new apartments way over at the East River. 

  "You ought to join us," she told her friend gayly. He had about him the unmistakable air of the thespian. "There are lots of Lambs over there already." But the poor fellow, looking mournful and envious, was already peering out to see if the car had passed Grand Central Station. "But you see, I live in ‒ er ‒ the country," he protested. "That is, 167th Street and Jerome Avenue ‒ the Bronx." And he cast a wistful glance at the lights of Tudor City, across the eastern sky, as he stumbled toward the subway, a good Lamb gone astray.

The Lambs Club is America's oldest theatrical club (founded 1874) and its members are, naturally enough, called Lambs.

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Rascoe's final mention of the complex runs in January, 1928:

That's Tudor City in a nutshell, heavenly and haughty.

INDOOR GOLF

A miniature golf craze sweeps America in the 1920s, and Tudor City, ever the full-service community, has its own 18-hole version. An inspired publicity stunt, it's touted by the French Company as "the most expensive course for its area in the world, occupying land worth over a million dollars."  Read more about it here.

In 1930, the golf course is dismantled and the lot re-landscaped into the South Park. To compensate, an indoor course is installed in No. 5 that same year. It has a brief run, closing in 1932, concurrent with the waning of mini-golf mania.

Set in a Windsor Tower subbasement, the course includes a water hazard, above, and is very popular with the ladies. The ivy on the pillars is a nice touch.

Above, indoor golf featured in a 1930 newspaper ad. In its early days,Tudor City is marketed to "young executives," and golf ‒ along with maid service, room service and on-call radio technicians ‒ is meant to lure youthful, upwardly mobile types.

The SOUTH PARK

Some time ago, we posted an overview of Tudor City's historic parks, and today we're zooming in on the South Park, opposite No. 25.

1940s postcard

The site originally houses a miniature golf course, a publicity windfall for the French Company that was originally conceived to distract from all the construction chaos around it.

But by mid-1930, most of the construction is complete and the miniature golf craze is starting to wane, so it's decided to reconfigure the site into a formal park. The Tom Thumb course moves across the street to the vacant lot that would later be used for tennis courts. 

Designed in the same formal English style as its northern cousin, the South Park has a similar gatehouse entrance and identical lamp posts. In addition, two octagonal gazebos, made from heavy timber, are set in its northeast and southeast corners. 

Like its northern sibling, the South Park is initially more lawn than park. This 1942 view looks east toward No. 25, showing the park's signature gazebo (top center) and gatehouse entrance (upper right).

A shady respite outfitted with English-style furniture and what appears to be the water hazard from the golf course still in place, opposite the bench.

A tender scene near the gatehouse. Locals referred to it as the 'Lich Gate,' 
after the British term for roofed gates in churchyards.

In 1952, the South Park is narrowed by 22 feet to widen Tudor City Place as part of the neighborhood upgrades for the arrival of the United Nations. The gatehouse and gazebos are removed, and the park is reconfigured as shown above, roughly the same layout it has today.

The Tudor City GOLF COURSE

Miniature golf ‒ a scaled-down version of the real thing, focusing on the putting aspect of the game ‒ takes America by storm in the '20s, and helps the French Company parlay a temporarily vacant lot into a publicity goldmine.

The 18-hole course (set on the future site of the South Park), opens in 1927, when much of the complex is still under heavy construction. It's a good distraction from the chaos surrounding it, and the French Company immediately recognizes its PR value, billing it as "the most expensive course for its area in the world, occupying land worth over a million dollars."

A map of the course, which looks much more elaborate than it really was.

Laid out on grass, the course is a par forty-three covering 330 yards, with a concrete-lined water hazard as its centerpiece. Other hazards include sand traps and dog-legs, as well as gate and bridge obstructions. The course is lit for nighttime play, and a local pro is available for lessons.

The water hazard

In 1930, the land is remade into the South Park, and the putt-putt course moves across the street to the southwest corner of 41st Street and Tudor City Place.

It only lasts there for a season, as the miniature golf craze has begun to wane. Tennis courts take its place in 1931 ‒ an equally fine PR gimmick ‒ and remain there well into the '50s. Today the site is home to No. 2, Tudor Gardens.