Christie's   I don’t usually buy expensive items, but there were two exceptions. When Beverly and I were in Rio in early 2004 (Reflections 2004 Series 6), H. Stern was so nice to us, and they had such beautiful Brazilian stones, that I bought Beverly two pendants. Later, in the summer of 2004, I bought a third pendant at the H. Stern on the QM2. I know she enjoyed them, but by October of that year she was gone. When I gave away most (not all) of her jewelry to family and friends, I wasn’t yet ready to depart with those three pieces. Also, in 2000, I made the mistake of buying a Rolex. I bought the name and as it turned out, really didn’t care for the watch, for many reasons. When I finally got my Movado recently at one-quarter the price, the Rolex went into a drawer.

This summer on the QM2 I decided it was time to finally sell the H. Stern jewelry, and their agent in their QM2 store suggested I visit the H. Stern in New York to see what I could do. So, on one of the steamingly hottest days we’ve had this summer in New York, I proceeded to Fifth Avenue for my latest adventure.

The H. Stern outlet in New York is on Fifth and 51st, right across from St Patrick’s Cathedral and Rockefeller Center. They were very supportive, but couldn’t help directly. However, they did steam the pieces, provide three new boxes and a snazzy carrying bag, and made a very interesting suggestion, one that I never would have come up with.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s are the two greatest auction houses in the world (and bitter rivals). They’ve been around for a couple of centuries each, and both have moved their headquarters from London to New York, where the art (and antiques) world has now centered itself. The H. Stern representative said that Christie’s was located just a couple of blocks away off Fifth, on 49th, and maybe they could give me some advice. I was doubtful, since Christie’s deals in merchandise far more valuable than my pieces, but: nothing ventured, nothing gained. So, in the blasting summer heat, off I trotted to Christie’s. It would be a New Experience.

The receptionist ushered me into a small room, and a representative of the jewelry department admired my newly-boxed pieces. He pointed out that they were signed H. Stern pieces (little metal tags at the clasp with the name), a point I hadn’t realized. He also mentioned that he himself happened to be from Rio (he had no accent), and—get this—he personally knew the Stern family. He did explain that Christie’s has cut back from twelve auctions a year to only four, which has now made them more selective than ever. He couldn’t help me, but he did advise me to sell the three pieces and the Rolex, not to some store from the yellow pages, but at a private wholesaler to the trade whose address he gave me that was located just two blocks further down on Fifth. And finally, he added with a smile: “Tell them Christie’s sent you.”

I too smiled when he said that. I don’t know if that statement really added any value to my pieces, but it gave me a good feeling that I had his moral support as I sold Beverly’s jewelry. The following week when it was cooler, I made my way back to Fifth Avenue to the dealer. They worked out of an office in a high-rise, and getting into the building, that had many such tenants, was like entering Fort Knox, including requiring a picture ID and going through checkpoints on entering and also upstairs. The appraiser did look up and smile when I mentioned Christie’s, and the circumstances. Of course I still got less than I wanted for the three pieces and the Rolex, but I’ve taken this step forward now, and felt that I left with not only a check but the pleasant feeling that I had been able to say: Christie’s sent me.

The Algonquin   Working my way down Fifth Avenue from the dealer at 47th Street, I decided to celebrate the sale by finally going to dinner at a place I’d been planning to visit for some time, the Algonquin Hotel on 44th Street, just off Fifth. The Algonquin was built in 1902, just a door or two away from the Iroquois Hotel, both named after Indian tribes. Neither hotel is very large. Although it’s several stories tall, the Algonquin is maybe the width of only three town houses. It was recently fully renovated, including its lobby up front and its dining room in the back, the Oak Room, but I understand the hotel rooms upstairs are tiny, in the style of the day they were built. It’s what you would refer to today as a boutique hotel. On entering, the lobby and Oak Room give the cozy feeling of heavy wood paneling. The lobby looks particularly inviting, with small groups huddled on overstuffed sofas having drinks and snacks. At the left of the entrance, on the floor, is a cat’s sitting area. One of the quirks of the Algonquin is Matilda the Cat. One day in the 1930’s a cat wandered into the hotel and was adopted by the staff. Over the years there have been numerous replacements, but now there is a pseudo throne area for the present cat to preside.

But, aside from being charming, why is the Algonquin so famous and the Iroquois isn’t? Why do plaques outside indicate that the National Trust for Historic Preservation lists the Algonquin as an Historic Hotel of America? Why is it listed as a New York City Landmark? Why do the Friends of Libraries list the Algonquin as a Literary Landmark? The answer is literary associations, but that sounds so stuffy. Famous authors over the years have stayed here, as one of the numerous plaques outside explains, such as William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Gertrude Stein, and James Thurber. But that’s secondary. The main reason is the Algonquin Round Table.

Starting in June 1919, a group of friends started to meet daily for lunch in the Oak Room, at a round table in its center. It was eventually referred to as the “ten-year lunch”, although it actually met every day for 13 years, but it can be visualized as a fixture of the 1920’s. All the regulars were writers, or journalists, or critics, or playwrights. Notable were Dorothy Parker (“A Star is Born”, poet, short-story writer), Robert Benchley (maker of short film comedies, drama critic, writer for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Life), Robert Sherwood (Pulitzer Prize winner, “Abe Lincoln in Illinois”), Harpo Marx (comedic genius of the Marx Brothers), Alexander Woollcott (NY Times drama critic), George S. Kaufman (playwright: Dinner at Eight, Stage Door, Of Thee I Sing, You Can’t Take it With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner), Heywood Broun (drama critic), Marc Connelly (Pulitzer Prize for “Green Pastures”), and a late-comer to the Round Table, Edna Ferber (Pulitzer for novel “So Big”; “Show Boat”, “Giant”).

The Round Table was known for its highly-defined wit. It was referred to humorously as “A Vicious Circle”. It launched the careers of many, notably Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Robert Sherwood, and Edna Ferber. Just the list of Pulitzer Prizes from Round Table regulars is impressive.

I often wondered how a group of people lunching could become famous. The answer apparently is that another member was Franklin P. Adams, the columnist. He eventually started describing the daily goings-on of the Round Table in his column “The Conning Tower”, what he said intrigued and interested the public, and the rest is history.

One more member was Harold Ross. In 1925, he mentioned to the others at the Round Table that he wanted to start a new magazine. He eventually got financing, and a number of contributors, from among the Round Table regulars. You may have heard of his little magazine. It’s called The New Yorker. I find it extremely appropriate that every single hotel guest at the Algonquin to this day receives a complimentary copy of the current issue of The New Yorker.

So I had dinner in the Oak Room, at a table near the Round Table. There’s a large mural of the Round Table regulars behind the table, and on the table, some placecards with quotes of interest.

There is also a list of specialty cocktails. I enjoyed a “Vicious Circle”. There is also one called the “Fair Lady”. So many menu items and drinks have explanations, and the explanation for that name is that Lerner and Loewe wrote “My Fair Lady” on the ninth floor of the Algonquin.

Groucho Marx was apparently a visitor to the Table, and he said that roast duck should only be made at home—unless you’re lucky enough to dine at the Algonquin, so I had the roast duck.

George S. Kaufman said his favorite thing at the Algonquin was “those pushovers or popovers or whatever you call them”, and I was glad when popovers arrived in the bread basket.

I have some examples of Round Table wit; only a couple of items from George S. Kaufman, but a whole list from the sharpest wit of all, Dorothy Parker.

Kaufman, reviewing a new play, found it “absolutely full of single-entendres”.

Reviewing a comedy, he said: “There was laughter in the rear of the theater. Someone must have been telling jokes back there.”

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) was an author and poet, but is most often remembered as being a humorist and wit. Everyone’s heard:

But few realize when they say that that they’re quoting Dorothy Parker. Once, when told she was outspoken, she asked: By whom?

When reviewing a book, she said: This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Then there’s her very famous putdown of Katherine Hepburn, to be found in most Hepburn biographies: She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

President Calvin Coolidge was known for saying very little. Once, at a party, a woman (not Parker) supposedly approached him and said that someone had bet her she couldn’t get Coolidge to say three words, to which Coolidge replied: You lose. When Dorothy Parker was told that Coolidge had died, she asked famously: How can they tell?

When asked to use “horticulture” correctly in a sentence, she replied famously: You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.

Other Parkerisms:

Finally, two of her poems. The first one I had memorized years ago, but had forgotten it until I came across it again doing this current research:

It’s a charmer that loses something in the fact that Parker used a contemporary reference which has little meaning to today’s public. In the period between the World Wars, Queen Marie of Romania was more than royalty. She was a much admired celebrity. When a ship with Marie of Romania sailed into port, it was front-page news. We do, however, have a reference from our time, Princess Di. Beyond being a royal, she too was admired as a person, and people followed her whereabouts. Reread Parker’s poem and, where it says Marie of Romania, picture Princess Di.

Finally, try this:

What more can you say?

Klimt   This is the story of the most expensive painting in the world, about which you may or may not have heard, and its interesting odyssey. I’m starting with that statement, since an article on art might otherwise cause too many eyes to start skimming.

I read a few weeks ago in the New York Times that the five Klimts in the news this year would be on exhibit only until mid-September. Carpe diem! Off I went to see them at the Neue Galerie. Their story is a story pretty much covering the breadth of the last century, from about 1906 to 2006. It’s worth telling in the sequence it occurred, stitched together from the Times article, the museum brochure, and other research.

Gustav Klimt was a painter in early 20th Century Austria. He was a portraitist of the Viennese upper class, especially women. His work was considered to be a transitional style from the previous century into the new. By the time of his death at 56 in 1918, he was considered Austria’s leading artist. He passed into history virtually at the same time as vast Austria-Hungary did after World War One, when Vienna became the capital of only tiny Austria, but his death was not war-related; he died from a stroke and pneumonia.

The most striking feature by far of Klimt’s works involves his “Golden Style”. A number of his paintings are primarily gold in color, with just heads and hands and little else in other colors. The gold coloring in these is not all the same; it’s different shades, and in a variety of different patterns. It always reminded me of Russian icons in their golden Byzantine style. Actually, there is such a connection. Apparently in 1903, Klimt traveled to Ravenna, Italy, to see their famous golden mosaics, including the Byzantine Empress Theodora in a bejeweled setting inlaid with gold, and adopted this style for some of his works.

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was a prominent Jewish business leader in Vienna in this period—he was the head of Austria’s sugar industry. His wife Adele was one of Vienna’s most prominent society figures, hosting a salon attended by leading artists, musicians and intellectuals. In 1907 Ferdinand commissioned Gustav Klimt to do a portrait of Adele, which Klimt decided to do in his Golden Style. It’s considered to be one of Klimt’s greatest achievements. Adele sits as a regal icon in a gown of gold and silver, on a golden chair before a golden backdrop.

That portrait is now known as Adele Bloch-Bauer I, since in 1912 Klimt was commissioned to paint Adele Bloch-Bauer II, a more standard non-gold portrait of her in street clothes of the time, before a flowered background. Adele retains the distinction of being the only woman painted twice by Klimt.

However, in 1925, Adele died of meningitis at 43. Her husband turned her bedroom in their mansion in Vienna into a memorial to her, with her two portraits and three other Klimt paintings he had acquired. However, with the arrival of the Nazis in Austria, the palatial Bloch-Bauer mansion was seized in March 1938, including the five Klimts in the memorial room. Ferdinand managed to flee to Switzerland, where he died in 1945.

We are now in a period of history where the provenance of art objects is being repeatedly questioned. Provenance for art or antiques is like a title search for real estate. If you can’t prove a clear, legal title from owner to owner for real estate you buy, you could lose the property. If art or antiques owners can’t prove a legal chain of provenance of objects they own, they could lose them, too. Recently the Metropolitan Museum of Art returned some objects to Italy when it was decided it did not have proper title to them. Similarly, the Getty in Los Angeles has just returned some objects to Greece. Of course, Greece has been claiming the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon from the British Museum for a century and a half.

As it turns out, the five Klimts that had been seized by the Nazis from the Bloch-Bauer mansion have been hanging for years in the Österreichische Galerie (Austrian Gallery) of the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. (The Belvedere also owns “The Kiss” one of Klimt’s most famous golden paintings, of a man and woman embracing.) The Austrian government claimed title to the five Bloch-Bauer Klimts based on a will of Adele’s. It is not unusual to leave valuable property to one’s country, but considering the subsequent history of the time, when Ferdinand drew up his new will in Switzerland, being childless, he left everything to his niece Maria Altmann and her two siblings.

Maria Altmann lives in Los Angeles. In August 2000, she sued the Austrian government, maintaining that Ferdinand’s Swiss will was the valid one, that the Austrian government had no valid claim to the five Klimts, and demanded restitution of the stolen property. Altmann’s suit was upheld in June 2004 by the United States Supreme Court.

In January 2006, an Austrian panel of three judges also decided in favor of Altmann, and the five paintings crossed the Atlantic. The five Klimts were shown at museums in Los Angeles, and now at the Neue Galerie in New York. Maria Altmann and her two siblings have decided that none of them is in a position to keep the very valuable paintings. Altmann also went to Vienna this summer to see the mansion, where she had spent much of her youth. She said it was not recognizable, no longer having the look of a palace but instead of a place of business. She couldn’t even find Adele’s bedroom, or even anything that resembled a bedroom. She does agree with art historians, who have always suspected that Klimt and Adele were lovers.

Ronald S. Lauder, the executive of Estée Lauder cosmetics, is the individual who helped establish the Neue Galerie five years ago in the mansion on Fifth and 86th, naming Café Sabarsky after Serge Sabarsky, a New York art dealer who had fled from Vienna. Up until now, the highest price ever paid for a painting was in 2004 at Sotheby’s, when a 1905 painting by Picasso called “Boy with a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)” was sold for $104.1 million. But just recently, Lauder purchased for the Neue Galerie at Christie’s—ahem-- the most renowned of the five Altmann Klimts, the golden Adele Bloch-Bauer I, for $135 million, the new record for the highest price ever paid for a painting, about 30% more than the Picasso had gone for.

It is estimated that the other four Altmann Klimts, painted between 1903 and 1916 and as yet unsold, are worth together about $100 million. They consist of Adele II and three landscapes. Christie’s—ahem—will be selling them this fall, and is not yet determined if it will be done by private sale or by auction. There is speculation that Lauder might buy them. He says he would consider buying one or more “if the price is right”, particularly Adele II to keep those two oils together. Stay tuned.

So once again there I was at the Neue Galerie. It having been a private home before (albeit a mansion), most of the (actually very few) upstairs rooms are not as large as you’d imagine, but there is a very large ballroom upstairs, and this is where the five Klimts are hanging for the time being, the fate of the other four being undecided at the moment. At least Adele’s pictures are hanging in a mansion again, as Ferdinand had wanted. I do need to comment about a curiosity of Klimt’s style. There is absolutely no perspective. Everything is flat. His forest picture looks like all the trees, large and small, are right in front of you, with no depth. Adele looks like a flat paper doll against a flat chair against a flat wall. It’s unusual to say the least. Here’s a copy of “New York’s Mona Lisa”: Gustav Klimt: Adele Bloch-Bauer I {{PD-US}} Anyway, I ended the evening with dinner at Café Sabarsky, where, by the way, Marta Eggerth will give three concerts again in September (Reflections 2006, Series 4).

The odyssey of these Klimt paintings is a fascinating story, starting with the social world of pre-World War One Vienna, Adele’s death, the collapse of the civilized world because of the Nazis, the attempt to achieve restitution of stolen property over decades, final resolution of these paintings. It is significant, not only that the paintings not only hang once again in a featured room of a mansion, but that this mansion, in New York and not in Vienna, is nevertheless dedicated to the 20C art of Austria and Germany, so that these five Klimts, in a way, have come full circle.

[Note: since we are discussing art, I’ll point out that the Edvard Munch paintings of Skrik (“The Scream”) and Madonna that I saw in the National Gallery in Olso this summer were only one of several copies Munch made of each, the ones in the Munch Museum having been stolen. This past week Oslo police recovered, relatively unharmed, the Munch Museum’s copies of Skrik and Madonna.]

Pennsylvania Trilogy: Prolog   It is so easy to get used to modern life. History seems so abstract, and it’s a bunch of wars and all, right? Who cares? Try forgetting about all the wars and try to imagine this scenario in the Northeastern United States, as well as the world in general. Erase from your thinking the airports. Remove the modern interstate highways. Subtract the railroads, and even the canals. All these are to one extent or another aspects of “modern” life? So what’s left? How do I get from Point A to Point B?

You have two choices. One is water. You can take coastal ships up and down the shore, and also up and down the rivers. But remember: they are not yet steamers. You wait for the wind to sail you along, and may you not arrive on schedule. The other is the roads, but be forewarned. They are winding dirt roads, full of ruts, and muddy in the wet season. Not a pleasant way to travel. You are now looking at the world as it had been up to and including the beginning of the 1800’s.

Above we removed the plastic overlays of the maps, layer by layer. We can now slowly return them. First came the canals. Later the railroads. By the 20C paved highways, then later on airports. For our purposes here, we’ll eliminate later technologies and stick to discussing the earlier ones: canals and rail.

The first changes to the transportation landscape were the canals. This was a booming state-of-the-art technology starting in about 1820. The canal boom was short-lived; by 1840 there were 4,000 miles of canals in the US, but that was already the beginning of the end. Railroads were on their way as the new technology. Then, by mid-20C in the US, they began to falter as well. The tragedy of it all is putting in a state-of-the art system, let’s say of canals, then destroying, or at best neglecting, most of it. Then put in a state-of-the-art rail system, and go through the same process once again. Not all of Europe’s canals are intact, but those that are no longer commercially viable are now used for tourist or pleasure boat purposes, such as with the Göta Kanal. Not all of Europe’s railroads are what they were, but passenger rail travel remains a normal way of life. The story in the US has been too much destroying and neglecting of canals, and a pronounced neglect of our remaining rail system.

Let’s first look at the canal system the Northeastern US had—and has, and then also discuss the rail systems that replaced them, and their current status. I’ll first mention three smaller canals, then three larger ones. The last one will be the Pennsylvania Canal (never heard of it? I’m really not surprised), which will lead into this Pennsylvania Trilogy.

I’ve recently discussed the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. Review how the Hudson starts in New York, then separates New York from New Jersey. Somewhat to the west, review how the Delaware River also starts in New York, then separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. The three smaller canals I’ll discuss all connected these two rivers, with the goal of bringing Pennsylvania commerce, largely coal, over to New York City. This discussion is not meant to be comprehensive, just to give an idea of what was.

The Delaware & Hudson Canal connected the rivers not in New Jersey but north of it. It actually physically started in Pennsylvania coal country, then crossed into New York at Port Jervis and went northeast to the area of Kingston, New York, for a total of 108 miles. It was started in 1828 and operated until 1898. Beverly and I visited the remnants in High Falls, NY, where we took the “Five Locks Walk” (locks 20-16) in the dry canal bed through the woods. These locks had dropped the canal 70 feet. Only after having navigated the ladder of locks on the Göta Kanal do I fully understand what we walked through in High Falls. The remnants are a National Historic Landmark. After the remains of lock 15 are the ruins of the acqueduct that brought the canal over Rondout Creek. High Falls has the noted DePuy Canal House restaurant, located in the historic canal house for the D&H. But except for ruins, everything’s gone. As a curious sign of those times, the D&H Canal company was the only one to successfully convert itself into a railroad, the D&H RR.

Both the other canals connecting the two rivers are/were physically in New Jersey. The 102-mile Morris Canal was started in 1824. It had numerous locks to enable boats to cross the state, which took five days. In 1923, the state destroyed the infrastructure of the by then unused canal. Actually, the Newark City Subway (essentially underground streetcars) was laid out on the part of the bed of the Morris Canal where it had passed through Newark. Directly—literally--across the Hudson out my window, in Jersey City, the outlet to the Hudson of the Morris Canal still exists as two basins used as marinas, the Morris Canal Big Basin and Little Basin. It is also highly ironic that immediately to the left of the basins stands one of the most attractive buildings in the area. Up until the 1950’s the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which surely was one of the railroads that caused the decline of the canal, continued to use its magnificent brick terminal at the river’s edge. It is a gorgeous, towered brick structure that reminds one of the Dutch and Baltic traditions of cathedrals and city halls. It has docks in front of it that brought commuters over to Manhattan. This was the way most railroads from the west serviced Manhattan, via terminals in New Jersey, then ferries. Only when the Pennsylvania Railroad (more on that coming) tunneled into Manhattan did we have a direct connection. The Jersey Central didn’t disappear; it just stopped using its gorgeous terminal, which is now a museum, with grass where the tracks used to be, in favor of using the PRR tunnel into Penn Station directly. But it is ironic that I have a daily reminder out my window of past glories of canals and railroading. Sic transit gloria mundi.

The other canal in NJ still exists for the most part, maintained as state parks. It’s the Delaware and Raritan Canal, which crosses the narrow wasp waist of NJ. It was started in 1830 and was only about 44 miles long, of which 36 miles remain. It ran from Trenton to New Brunswick on the Raritan River, which exits south of Staten Island into Lower New York Bay. It also has a 22-mile feeder canal running along the Delaware. In 1932 it was abandoned as a waterway. Beverly and I have driven along the feeder canal and, in the suburbs of Trenton, also found spots to view the canal.

But these were small canals. What about the big picture? Consider the major cities in the Northeast, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore (in the period we’re discussing, Washington was barely an adjunct of Baltimore). How did these cities reach westward? At first, by water. Later—and amazingly, not very much later--, by rail.

The mountains were always the problem. How to break through the Appalachians? New York had it easiest. In 1825 it built the Erie Canal, which is still in use (thank goodness!), primarily for pleasure craft, to connect Lake Erie at Buffalo across the naturally open upstate area to the Mohawk River in the east, which flowed into the Hudson north of Albany, at which point, water traffic proceeded down the Hudson. Boston never had its own canal, since presumably traffic could proceed along the coast between New York and Boston. With the advent of railroads, this same route was used by the New York Central (the “Lake Shore Route”, a name emphasizing “no mountains”). To this day, Amtrak runs the Lake Shore Limited from Chicago via Buffalo, which splits at Albany, part continuing directly east to Boston and the rest going south along the Hudson to New York.

Leaving Philadelphia and Pennsylvania for last, let’s look at Baltimore. Entrepreneurs started the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in 1836 at Georgetown, in the west of the District of Columbia. I first got curious about the C&O when visiting one of our favorite restaurants in Washington, Filomena’s, in Georgetown at the foot of Wisconsin Avenue, south of M Street. The entrance to the C&O is still visible there, and used for recreation. The word “Chesapeake” in the title really refers to Baltimore traffic, which would sail down Chesapeake Bay and then up the Potomac to Georgetown, and then up the 184.5 miles of the C&O that were constructed. The elevation change was 605 feet, via 74 locks, aqueducts, and a tunnel. The C&O remained a Maryland project (even Georgetown had been in Maryland before the District of Columbia was created), with the canal bypassing the Great Falls of the Potomac, passing Harper’s Ferry WV (on the MD side), and reaching Cumberland MD, close to the Pennsylvania state line. The C&O, for the years until 1924 that it was in use, was really a canal to nowhere. Well, that’s not true. It did service Maryland. But what about that “Ohio” in the name? Why would you want to reach the state of Ohio and not some other state? Only after I researched the Pennsylvania Canal did I have an epiphany. The C&O wasn’t trying to reach the STATE of Ohio. It was meant to reach the Ohio RIVER, famously formed where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join in Pittsburgh. The name “Chesapeake & Ohio” should be really understood as “Baltimore & Pittsburgh”, since these were the two centers it was really meant to serve. But construction never crossed into Pennsylvania, since the railroad era had already started. In 1889 the B&O Canal was purchased by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, largely to keep the right-of-way from falling into other hands. In 1938 the US government purchased the canal, and has now repaired and rewatered the lower 22 miles, nearest Washington. But the majority of the canal remains dry. I also find it ironic that the B&O railroad did use the word Baltimore in its name instead of Chesapeake, but it never did actually refer to Pittsburgh, retaining the word “Ohio” instead. So its C&O for the canal and B&O for the former railroad.

Well, that’s an extensive prolog, but it does now lead in to discussing three items connected to the Pennsylvania Canal, which will be the promised Pennsylvania Trilogy. In August 1999, Michelin came out with a new US guide, one covering the mid-Atlantic states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York State. We had traveled those areas earlier, but my experience is that Michelin will find you interesting places you didn’t know exist. This was the year when I began to feel that Beverly would be able to start some traveling again, and we did numerous one-week trips, which led up to our return to Europe the following year (and every year since), after an absence of a decade, since 1990 in Spain. Anyway, the Michelin showed where Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater (a house built into a waterfall) was, south of Pittsburgh. To break up the trip to Fallingwater and later up to Niagara Falls, I found a nice intermediate trio of destinations. It seemed that on Allegheny Mountain, halfway across Pennsylvania, there was a historic site called Allegheny Portage Railroad. Nearby was the famous Horseshoe Curve of the Pennsylvania Railroad. And on the other side of the mountain was the Johnstown Flood National Memorial. These three grouped themselves together well. Fortunately, we happened to see them in that order, which is the historically correct sequence. We went to the first two on arrival from New York, spent the night in Altoona, and saw the third, and Johnstown, the next day, before going on to Fallingwater. Obviously, as interesting and famous as Fallingwater is, this trio was the experience to write about.

Pennsylvania Trilogy: Allegheny Portage Railroad   You can always learn by looking at maps and thinking: Why? Why is Pennsylvania the shape it is, especially considering the barrier of the mountains in the middle? Well, I suppose part of it comes down to greed. Look at old copies of colonial maps, with land claims. States that had been populated only coastally decided to make ludicrous land claims westward. It seems I remember once seeing a map showing both Massachusetts and Connecticut hopefully being extended into the Midwest. They look like two bars of color crossing the country. But that never happened, since New York claimed land northward up the Hudson River, cutting off any New England hopes. But this sort of thing did work quite effectively in the South. The northernmost section of Carolina (before it split into NC and SC) had a westward claim all the way to the Mississippi. It succeeded, to an extent, although the part beyond the Great Smoky Mountains eventually broke away to become Tennessee. That explains that long bar-shape that Tennessee has. Coastal Georgia north of the Spanish Florida and Gulf area also claimed land to the Mississippi, but that too broke away to form Alabama and Mississippi, or at least the non-Gulf Coast parts of them.

So how about Pennsylvania? It seems clear to me that William Penn’s holdings along the Delaware River were the cradle of the state, which then, despite mountain barriers, just claimed land westward, a claim that was successful up to the point where the State of Ohio presently is, giving Pennsylvania its long, horizontal shape.

But then a curious thing happened. Pittsburgh quickly developed at its river juncture at the head of the Ohio River, and Pennsylvania became what I like to call a Janus state. Janus was the Roman god of gates and doors. We get the word “janitor” from his name, to describe a person whose functions apparently moved from being a doorman to maintenance. We also get the word “January” from Janus, since that is the “doorway” month of the year. He is always depicted as having a second face on the back of his head, to be able to look in both directons from his spot in the doorway. Now picture Philadelphia and northeastern Pennsylvania’s water routes being oriented eastward to the Delaware and on to the Atlantic, and then Pittsburgh being oriented westward down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, and you’ll see what I mean about Pennsylvania, with its two faces looking in opposite directions, being a Janus state.

Supposedly, Pennsylvania could have split into two states along its mountain spine, just as Tennessee broke away from Carolina at the mountains, but this didn’t happen. Pennsylvania needed instead to connect its two opposite-facing sides. Remember that, in the early 1800’s, if you didn’t go by water, you went by rutted, muddy, dirt roads. At that time, it took about 28 days to travel overland from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, with the biggest barrier being, not surprisingly, Allegheny Mountain and the ridge running north and south from it.

The solution was the Pennsylvania Canal, more formally known as the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, built by the state. But, just as the Göta Kanal is actually only the central part of the ROUTE of the Göta Kanal connecting Stockholm and Göteborg, much of the Pennsylvania “Canal” was not a canal. Part of it was, incredibly, a real railroad, part a pseudo-railroad, part river connections, part canal. This gave rise to the other name for the route, the Main Line of Public Works, a name that attempted to accurately describe this hybrid system. I’ll describe in in four sections.

The first segment out of Philadelphia was the Columbia and Philadelphia Railroad. It left Philadelphia due west, past the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and reached the Susquehanna River at Columbia, south of Harrisburg. I suppose it just shows that railroad technology was progressing even over the couple of decades that canal building was at its height. My guess is that it was still felt that railroad technology was still in its infancy, that railroad building was too expensive, and that for the moment, railroads were felt to be useful locally, and not for long distance, for which canals would be better. That’s only my guess. Of course, this railroad carried canal boats, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I should also mention that this stretch eventually was taken over by the Pennsylvania Railroad, and that its route and name are extremely well known. Because this railroad was part of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, the term Main Line has always been applied to this stretch. The region attracted the elite of Philadelphia society to settle in this suburban area, and Philadelphia society has always been referred to as Main Line society. Along this route are such towns as Paoli, Haverford (with its college), Bryn Mawr (with its college), and Villanova (with its university). And all this is the result of it having been the canal route.

The second section of the route was a canal along the Susquehanna River from Columbia past Harrisburg to the town of Hollidaysburg, south of Altoona. Then came Allegheny Mountain. The solution for this third section I’ll come to in a moment.

The fourth section, beyond Allegheny Mountain at Johnstown, followed the Conemaugh River through Johnstown northwest to the Allegheny River, then southwest to Pittsburgh, as the Allegheny is one of the two rivers joining at Pittsburgh to form the Ohio.

But what about that third section over Allegheny Mountain? The solution was the Allegheny Portage Railroad, which I referred to as a pseudo-railroad. Remember that to portage a canoe is to carry it from one river to another. That’s what happened here to the canal boats. They were portaged. Here is how it worked.

Passengers would stay on the canal boat for the entire trip. A train would leave Philadelphia on the Columbia & Philadelphia Railroad with the canal boats secured to rail cars. However, in order for the long canal boats to be able to negotiate rail curves, there were special canal boats for this canal that were separated into three parts each, and each part was on a railcar. At Columbia the boats were lifted off the railcars, reassembled, and put into the canal for the trip to Hollidaysburg. There, they were lifted onto flatbed cars again for the incredible portaging over the mountain.

Ten double-tracked inclined planes had been sculpted into the mountain, five rather closely spaced ones on the east side up to the summit of Allegheny Ridge, then five widely spaced ones down the west side, spreading out in the direction of Johnstown. An inclined plane is a slope, leading up to a plateau. The point was to drag the combined boats and railcars up gradually, resting at each plateau. I personally call this a pseudo-railroad, since it had tracks, had cars, but had no locomotives. To me that’s not a complete railroad. What they did have was a fixed steam engine on each plateau. A rope was brought down, attached, and the steam engine would pull up the boats-on-cars to its level. This was then repeated all the way up, and all the way down. The total vertical ascent from Hollidaysburg was 1300 feet/424 meters, and the descent to Johnstown was 1172 feet/355 meters. The height of the ridge is almost 2300 feet above sea level, which is the highest level canal boats have ever been carried. The complete portaging took 6-7 hours, and must have been a spectacular sight. The entire Allegheny Portage Railroad section of the entire system was 36 miles long.

After the last river segment, the boats arrived in Pittsburgh. I understand there is a marker there on the east side of Grant Street at Liberty, indicating that that area had been the loading basin and canal terminus, which I expect to see shortly.

The entire Pennsylvania Main Line Canal system between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh opened in 1834 and was 400 miles/640 kilometers long. It reduced the month-long trek by dirt road across the state to just 3½ to 4 days. It was state-of-the-art for its time.

I used a word a while ago without comment, but I hope it made you gasp. I said that the boats-on-railcars were pulled up the mountainside by steam engines to the next level—by rope. Can you imagine? I suppose that rope technology, so extensively used on ships, was the only technology of its sort at the time. But ropes would snap, resulting in horrible and spectacular accidents. How that problem was addressed is another major contribution to world technology developed at and for the Allegheny Portage Railroad.

John Roebling is most famous for building, with his wife and son, the Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, which I drive over regularly to go visit family. The Brooklyn Bridge was only possible because of the wire cables Roebling developed that hold up the roadway. Thin wires are braided together to pencil thickness, then these are braided again, until a massive cable is constructed. Roebling had perfected this cable technology on earlier structures, such as the bridge now named after him over the Ohio River at Cincinnati. But before that, in 1844, Roebling was called on to solve the rope problem of the Allegheny Portage Railroad, for which he supplied his steel cables, solving the problem. This would have been the first, or one of the first, uses for his cable technology.

But this magnificent system of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, including the Allegheny Portage Railroad, was doomed, with the advent of the railroads. Its assets were either destroyed, abandoned, reutilized, or cannibalized. More about that in a moment.

In 1999, Beverly and I arrived at Allegheny Mountain, not by canal, not by railroad, but by car via Interstate and other highways. So much for a sign of the times. We drove up to the road along the Allegheny Ridge, and by chance happened to go first to the visitors’ center for the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, about which we had known NOTHING in advance. The museum showed how it all worked, and had small models of the special canal boats. There was also an excellent film showing what it’s all about. You then walk out to a woodsy area where a sample steam engine and maintenance house have been reconstructed. You can look down the mountain and judge where the route was, but where there is no sign of any other structures. Even though it no longer exists, the Allegheny Portage Railroad has been declared an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

Pennsylvania Trilogy: Horseshoe Curve   In the first half of the 1800’s, rail technology was breathing down the neck of canal technology. Once the Pennsylvania Canal showed that the two ends of this Janus state could be tied together, and as rail technology evolved, showing it, too, could indeed cover long distances, in 1846 the State of Pennsylvania chartered the Pennsylvania Railroad. The handwriting was on the wall. The Pennsylvania Canal and its component systems, which has shown the way such a short time earlier, was now doomed.

The Allegheny Portage Railroad, for all its glory, was in operation for just two decades, from 1834 to 1854. By 1854, the Pennsylvania Railroad had established an all-rail service between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh taking only 13 hours. What had taken up to 28 days by dirt road not so very much earlier, then up to 4 days by canal, now took about half a day. Progress is fine, but it’s so often followed by destruction.

With all the freight and passenger business shifting to the railroad, three years later, in 1857, the Canal was bankrupt, and was purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad. The PRR utilized what it could, notably that first rail section out of Philadelphia, to this day called the Main Line, and either abandoned or otherwise disposed of the rest. Although one era was over, another was starting.

I always wondered why the station in New York is called Pennsylvania (Penn) Station. I knew as a child, of course, that it was named after the (now defunct) Pennsylvania Railroad, by how had that gotten so important? Why was there, for instance, not a Connecticut Station or New Jersey Station in New York. (There are also Penn Stations elsewhere, such as in Baltimore.)

I now suppose it’s all due to that unusual long geography of Pennsylvania. The canal was built to connect the two ends. The railroad replaced the canal, establishing the railroad’s original east-west orientation for what it, too, called its Main Line. It was meant to just connect the two cities, but once you’ve built a railroad to Pittsburgh, why not go on to Chicago? And from Philadelphia, why not up and down the Northeast? I’m now convinced that the great length of the state of Pennsylvania is the original basis for the success of the Pennsylvania Railroad, as opposed to Connecticut or New Jersey doing so. Actually, it was also the extended length of New York State from Albany to Buffalo that got the New York Central started, with its Lake Shore route to Chicago.

By the way, just as the New York Central ran its Luxurious Lake Shore Limited out of Grand Central Station to Chicago (still run under that name by Amtrak) the Pennsylvania Railroad ran its luxurious Broadway Limited out of Penn Station to Chicago, across Pennsylvania. No train by this name still exists. And although people usually assumed that the Broadway Limited referred to show biz glitz, it really did no such thing. The PRR was proud of the fact that much of its route was multi-tracked, and was therefore referred to as the “broad way”, hence the name Broadway Limited, which travelled along the broad way.

But wait. Back to Allegheny Mountain. If the canal had so much trouble crossing it, how did the railroad make it? In order to gain the necessary altitude on the east side of the mountain, the railroad decided to send the line down a side valley, then cross over and come back on the other side, with the route going up constantly to gain altitude. The result is the famous Horseshoe Curve.

By chance, this was the second item we saw that day, which was good, since it fit in sequentially. It was only a few minutes drive along the ridge to Horseshoe Curve. Please do not think that people take something like this lightly. Aside from the museum at the foot of the curve, there is actually a funicular to get up the hillside to see the view, that’s the extent of interest in it. At the top end of the funicular there were park benches, and a sign telling at about what times various freights were due through (as another sign of the times, passenger trains, run by Amtrak, are far and few in between). Trains came screeching by every few minutes going around the curve.

Horseshoe Curve, opened on February 15, 1854, makes a 220° arc, which is 61% of a circle. It had been two-tracked, then four, now three. The outer edge has a radius of 194 m (637 ft), while the inner tightens to only 186 m (609 ft). It’s 549 m (1,800 ft) across, has a grade of 1.85% for the 19 km (12 mi) from Altoona to Gallitzin, and the west side is 37 m (122 ft) higher than the east. From Gallitzin the route descends 40 km (25 mi) to Johnstown with a maximum grade of 1.1%. Horseshoe Curve is a National Historic Landmark.

This is a map showing the area west of Altoona (Map by Keith Pickering). The location of the valley housing the Horseshoe Curve to gain altitude for the route is obvious. This is an aerial view of the Curve as it goes around the visitor center and viewing park, as well as a local reservoir. Trains going counterclockwise are ascending.

Pennsylvania Trilogy: Johnstown Flood National Memorial   After spending the night in Altoona, we crossed Allegheny Mountain to visit the Johnstown Flood National Memorial on the west side. The museum is excellent, including the explanatory film. I had known bits and pieces about it all, but now understand the full tragedy of the event. After consideration of it over time, I now have come to two rather surprising conclusions.

The Johnstown “Flood” was not a flood. The name is a misnomer.

The Johnstown “Flood” is a direct result of the Pennsylvania Canal.

Consider what a flood is. Water rises, usually, quite gradually. Potential victims usually have time to reach higher ground, or higher parts of the house. Of course, there are flash floods which are sudden, but these more often occur in dry river beds after a sudden storm.

Picture the proverbial cartoon character sitting in an easy chair reading his newspaper. The river rises, and his ankles get wet, so he flees. Now picture him again in his chair, and also that equally proverbial full bathtub of water upstairs, that bursts through the ceiling and flattens our character.

The water on the ankles is a flood. The bathtub coming down on his head is what happened in Johnstown, and just because water was involved doesn’t make it a flood. Another parallel is an avalanche of earth, or of snow, coming down on a town all at once.

What hit Johnstown that fateful day was not a flood, it was a damburst. And it was all related to the Pennsylvania Canal.

Remember that canals in mountains need sources of water. The Göta Kanal has Lake Viken, a natural lake high enough to maintain the flow of water in the canal. The Panama Canal has the artifical Gatun Lake up in the mountains. The Pennsylvania Canal had built an artificial lake, lake Conemaugh, way up on the Johnstown side of the summit to supply the canal with water. When the Pennsylvania Railroad disposed of the canal’s assets piecemeal, this lake, contained by the South Fork Dam was sold to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which built its facilities on the side of the lake and was obliged to maintain the dam.

Just before June 1, 1889, it had been raining unusually heavily and the ground was saturated. Debris had collected at the earthen dam, which had not been maintained properly. The valley of the Little Conemaugh River, which joined the Conemaugh in Johnstown, was 14 miles long from the dam to Johnstown, and Lake Conemaugh, held artifically on the side of the mountain by the dam, was 450 feet higher than Johnstown.

Now don’t think in terms of a flood, which usually occurs over a period of time. Johnstown has regularly had its share of real floods, being on a river. Picture instead an earth avalanche or a snow avalanche, how that happens and is over in moments.

The Johnstown Damburst occured when the South Fork Dam gave way. 60 million tons of lake water suddenly rushed down the valley towards Johnstown, in a wall of water 60 feet high, at 40 miles an hour. It washed everything away that was in its path, right into Johnstown. IT WAS ALL OVER IN TEN MINUTES! 2200 people were killed. They never had a chance.

I maintain my two statements. If the Pennsylvania Canal had never existed, the lake and dam wouldn’t have been there for the club to neglect. Also, this was not a flood, but a damburst, which is really much more deadly because of its suddenness.

Logically, then, this was the third thing sequentially for us to see at the top of Allegheny Ridge, and by chance, we saw them in order. Also, the museum points out that a Pennsylvania Railroad train was making its way up the valley from Johnstown to go over the ridge, which would mean it would have reached Horseshoe Curve once it had crossed over, which it never had the chance to do. As the dam burst and the wall of water rushed forward, the entire railroad train was swept down the valley back to Johnstown, such was the force of the water.

As I said, Johnstown has had many real floods, in addition to this damburst. Two years after the damburst, in 1891, a funicular called the Johnstown Incline Plane was built to connect Johnstown with communities in the hills. Beverly and I had the opportunity to ride the Plane with friends once, and it has been used to get people up to safety in times of flooding. It was built as a reaction to the damburst, but of course, it wouldn’t have been able to save anyone, giving the circumstances of the damburst.

Driving over the ridge, you come to where the lake had been, with the tiny stream that had been dammed running down the center. The former club buildings (no one was ever held responsible) are up on the hillside, which looks odd, since there’s no longer a lakeshore for them to be on. You can take the road across the former lakebed to the visitor’s center, then drive afterwards to either side of the remnants of the dam (we went to both sides). We then drove down to Johnstown to follow the route of the damburst.

Then, finally, we were off to Fallingwater.

Northeastern US   I am about to take a quick trip, mostly by rail, through the New England and Mid-Atlantic states. I had said when in Skagway, Alaska, last year that I wanted to see some other sights I’ve been putting off, such as the Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire; I also wanted to check out Amtrak’s Acela express service. Carpe diem! I’ll be going up to Boston and Portland, down to Philadelphia and Washington, and out to Pittsburgh (along Horseshoe Curve!). From Portland I’m renting a car to visit Mount Washington and Middlebury. Reports will follow.