brianac
February 10th, 2008, 07:05 AM
Wedding-Bell Grille
By MICHAEL POLLAK (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/michael_pollak/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: February 10, 2008
Wedding-Bell Grille
Q. I’ve read that when marriage licenses were issued from the basement of City Hall early last century, they were dispensed from behind an ornamental iron teller’s grille fashioned of hearts and a Cupid’s bow and arrows. Whatever happened to it?
A. When the city’s marriage licensing office moved to the Municipal Building in 1916, the valentine grille stayed behind and was all but forgotten.
It’s still in the basement of City Hall — bow, arrows and hearts — but Michael Miscione, the Manhattan borough historian, doesn’t like the setting. “Sadly, all its inherent charm is being smothered by a layer of mindlessly applied paint and a random wire strung across its top,” he wrote in an e-mail message.
The grille, he said, is next to a room labeled “Chapel,” which has been used for conferences, office space and storage in the Bloomberg administration.
City Hall plans to remove that wire and to renovate the basement chapel.
There are no plans to remove the grille, which dates from 1902-03, when William Martin Aiken remodeled the basement. So it could become more prominent again.
In 1964, City Clerk Herman Katz tried to get the grille moved to the chapel in the Municipal Building in time for Valentine’s Day, but the Municipal Art Commission vetoed the request, saying it wanted to study the matter.
Nothing further came of it.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
By MICHAEL POLLAK (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/michael_pollak/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: February 10, 2008
Wedding-Bell Grille
Q. I’ve read that when marriage licenses were issued from the basement of City Hall early last century, they were dispensed from behind an ornamental iron teller’s grille fashioned of hearts and a Cupid’s bow and arrows. Whatever happened to it?
A. When the city’s marriage licensing office moved to the Municipal Building in 1916, the valentine grille stayed behind and was all but forgotten.
It’s still in the basement of City Hall — bow, arrows and hearts — but Michael Miscione, the Manhattan borough historian, doesn’t like the setting. “Sadly, all its inherent charm is being smothered by a layer of mindlessly applied paint and a random wire strung across its top,” he wrote in an e-mail message.
The grille, he said, is next to a room labeled “Chapel,” which has been used for conferences, office space and storage in the Bloomberg administration.
City Hall plans to remove that wire and to renovate the basement chapel.
There are no plans to remove the grille, which dates from 1902-03, when William Martin Aiken remodeled the basement. So it could become more prominent again.
In 1964, City Clerk Herman Katz tried to get the grille moved to the chapel in the Municipal Building in time for Valentine’s Day, but the Municipal Art Commission vetoed the request, saying it wanted to study the matter.
Nothing further came of it.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company