Spanish Camp To Be Subject of Exhibit
Calling all former residents of Spanish Camp
The Staten Island Museum is planning an exhibit in October and hopes to display memorabilia from the community Sunday, July 22, 2007
By MIKE AZZARA
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Overlooking the Raritan Bay and Atlantic Ocean, Spanish Camp occupied 17 prime beachfront acres on Annadale Beach for around 70 years. Today, it is probably most famous because of Dorothy Day’s association with it.
In anticipation of a Spanish Camp exhibit in October, the Staten Island Museum is calling on former residents to search attics and basements for memorabilia from the community.
The bungalow colony was founded in 1929 (though some histories put it at 1927) by the Spanish Naturopath Society, a group of Spanish immigrants who were vegetarians. Early residents lived in canvas tents on raised wooden platforms. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, noted Bonnie Bell Nalwasky, the museum’s coordinator for special projects, the tents were replaced by small summer bungalows that later were winterized.
Over the years, many original residents sold or leased to non-members of the society. The most recent residents were evicted in the late 1990s when the society sold the waterfront property (residents owned the bungalows but leased the land) to developers for a reported $7.1 million. Late last year, Karen O’Shea, the Advance’s real estate reporter, disclosed that it was on the market for an asking price of $40 million.
Dorothy Day, a founder of the Catholic Worker movement who died in 1980, bought one of those bungalows in 1972. “She spent the last eight summers of her life enchanted by the sound of breaking waves through her kitchen windows,” Ms. Nalwasky said. Her bungalow was demolished in February 2001 while it was under consideration for landmark status.
In October the museum, located at 75 Stuyvesant Pl., St. George, will open an exhibit about Spanish Camp, its founding, its halcyon days and the battle over its preservation. Jim O’Grady, a New York Times reporter who has authored a book on Miss Day and was active in the effort to preserve the camp, will be curator for the show. The exhibit will feature the work of highly regarded photographer Michael Falco, a former Advance staffer.
In conjunction with the exhibit there will be panel discussions, ecology walks at the site and other activities. The deadline for submitting memorabilia is August 3.