The Hudson-Fulton Celebration: New York's River Festival of 1909 and the Making of a Metropolis [Hardcover]

Kathleen Eagen Johnson (Author), Kenneth T. Jackson (Foreword), Mark F. Rockefeller (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 082323021X | ISBN-13: 978-0823230211 | Publication Date: May 15, 2009 | Edition: 1

An invaluable window on how New York self-consciously and very publicly transformed itself from a city that was merely 'the largest' to an undisputed world-class metropolis. . . . A rich historical record of newspapers, manuscripts, artifacts, photographs, and graphics . . . offers a new lens to examine identity, industry, and environment.-Kenneth T. Jackson, from the ForewordFor two weeks in the fall of 1909, New York City threw itself the biggest party it had ever seen-attracting millions of people to a sprawling festival 150 miles long, from Brooklyn up the Hudson River to Albany. This extraordinary event, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, was officially meant to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson's discovery of the river bearing his name and the centennial of Robert Fulton's first successful run of his steamship Clermont. But in an era of grand world's fairs, the Celebration was really created to showcase New York's coming of age as a world metropolis. On city sidewalks and along the river, millions enjoyed a nonstop circus of fireworks, concerts, museum exhibitions, children's festivals, and military and naval parades, each designed to link past glories to present challenges and future progress. And to show the world that its biggest city worked.For city leaders, the Celebration was to be a gaudy catalyst for change-technological, commercial, cultural, and political. There were great flotillas of the world's navies. New, glittering electric lights illuminated bridges and skyscrapers. Jawdropping flyovers by Wilbur Wright and Glenn Curtiss introduced New Yorkers to the airplane. The Queensboro Bridge had just been built, as had new subway lines. Thousands of children in ethnic costumes marched to celebrate the new American melting pot. No one had seen anything like it.This fascinating book commemorates that commemoration. With a rich selection of full-color images-photographs, graphics, memorabilia, paintings, and much more-it tells the story of what those two weeks meant to four million New Yorkers and one million out-of-town guests. Johnson brings back a city feverishly at work and play, from the grand schemes of the planners to the way the Celebration put the city and its people on a world stage.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The centenary has also occasioned the publication of the first full-length study of the event, The Hudson-Fulton Celebration: New York's River Festival of 1909 and the Making of a Metropolis.

Johnson's book comes alive with 239 photos and illustrations displaying the two-week long Hudson-Fulton Celebration held in 1909 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River and the belated centennial of Robert Fulton's first successful run in 1807 of his steamship Clermont up the river to Albany.

Johnson's attractive book, with its hundreds of photographs and color illustrations, brings the mammoth celebration and the times to life.

About the Author

KATHLEEN EAGEN JOHNSON is Curator of Collections at Historic Hudson Valley and the author of many articles and books on the region's history and culture. She has most recently been nominated to the Senate Curatorial Advisory Board which is responsible for advising and assisting the United States Senate Commission on Art in acquiring, preserving, and displaying documents and artifacts that are of historical importance to the Senate wing of the Capitol and the Senate office buildings.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press; 1 edition (May 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082323021X
• ISBN-13: 978-0823230211
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,256,855 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ships That Launched New York, June 8, 2009

By 

Laura Beach (Mystic, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hudson-Fulton Celebration: New York's River Festival of 1909 and the Making of a Metropolis (Hardcover)

Told with wit and charm, Kathleen Eagen Johnson's engaging account of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration restores to prominence an all but forgotten chapter in American history, the two weeks in September 1909 when New York boisterously announced its arrival on the world stage with a dazzling variety of parades, pageants, and parties.

Commemorating Henry Hudson 1609 voyage of discovery and Robert Fulton's 1807 introduction of commercial steamship travel between New York City and Albany, the Celebration built on Washington Irving's world famous history of Knickerbocker New York - here gloriously illustrated by George Cruikshank, Maxfield Parrish and others - to create an Empire City whose past rivaled that of Boston and Philadelphia.

The backstory was more complicated. New York's great history parade advanced a confused social agenda bent on tutoring immigrants - New York was awash with them - in traditional American values while selling the public a raft of progressive programs. Electricity, used with manic zeal to illuminate every bridge, boat and boulevard in the five boroughs and beyond, was the Celebration's leitmotif.

Johnson's lively pictorial review makes outstanding use of the fine and popular arts produced by the Celebration, reproducing more than two hundred photographs, illustrations, and souvenirs of every variety, from medals and badges to sheet music, cigar box labels, china, silver, and needlework.

An expert on the material culture of Dutch and English New York, the author has an eye for telling detail. Dressed as Dutch girls or sailor boys, children marched in parades throughout the state in a quixotic display of cultural diversity. Barely recognized, writes Johnson, were African Americans, who had lived in New York since the early seventeenth century.

Art afficionados will likely recall the Hudson-Fulton Celebration for the pair of exhibitions Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art organized in tribute. In the great international art grab of the post Civil War era, American wealth trumped European lineage. American financier J.P. Morgan organized the Met's spectacular Dutch paintings show, including thirty-four Rembrandts, twenty Hals, and five Vermeers, a staggering assertion of power even by today's blockbuster standards.

The Met's tandem exhibition is rightly considered pivotal. It marked the first time that American decorative arts were displayed by a major American fine-arts museum and validated the ensuing antiques collecting craze that continues today.