More Articles...
Print
Exploring Bennett College
by Nadia ChaudhuryThe Bennett School for Girls in Millbrook, New York, also known as Bennett College, was abandoned in 1978 after filing for bankruptcy. Its ruins now stand desolate, which for us means it is time to go exploring. We pretend to walk towards Carroll Hall, once part of the college, but now converted into luxury apartments with central air, a pool, and a tennis court. Double-checking to make sure no one sees, we make a dash through the thick green surrounding the building and duck under cobwebs as we enter the dusty school.
Founded in Irvington, New York by Miss May F. Bennett in 1890, the college moved to Millbrook in 1907. It was a private all-girls school and offered Bachelor’s degrees to its students. The rising popularity of coeducational facilities and a failed attempt to merge with the nearby Briarcliff College led to Bennett College filing for bankruptcy in 1977. The school was officially closed a year later.
Everywhere in the now empty, peeling halls of Bennett reveal hints of its previous life: solitary hangers in open closets, springs from old box springs, shredded mattresses, and faded wallpaper in the dorms. A tag on a wall declares, “Don’t go in there.” The floor is strewn with crushed beer cans, cigarette butts, and even toilets. As we pass the rooms with wide, open windows, we are careful not to catch the attention of the neighboring condo residents. We make our way to the basement, crawling through a tiny opening. We use candles to light our way through the boiler room. As we climb higher, we have to watch our steps to avoid falling through collapsing floors. In some areas, we edge along the wall to avoid the soggy centers of the floor.
Now, Bennett is for sale. The school’s 29 acres are being pitched as another educational facility, a conference location, or a health-related complex.
After wandering up and down every floor and through every room, we leave covered in dust and scraps. We rush back to the street, acting as if we just played a set on the Carroll Hall tennis courts.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Notes Toward the Death of New York
by George GrellaJUL-AUG 2018 | Music
Nobody misses being mugged, but that danger was part of the every day reality of New York City in the ’70s and ’80s. Anyone could get mugged, pretty much any time or any place, including the old Times Square that, through the Vaseline lens of memory, has somehow been transformed into an object of sweet nostalgia.
Suzanne Bocanegra: Poorly Watched Girls
by Grant Klarich JohnsonNOV 2018 | ArtSeen
Active since the late 1980s, Suzanne Bocanegra is possibly best known for her “artist lectures,” where the well-worn, sober ritual of the professional artist is set on its ear by conscripting a professional actor (for example, Frances McDormand and Lili Taylor) to stand in for Bocanegra in front of a live audience while the ‘real’ Bocanegra feeds them lines in real time from the side.
BECKY HOWLAND: Weeds of New York
by Chloe RossettiMAR 2016 | ArtSeen
MOIETY gallery, an inviting first-floor space in a long-time artist-owned building opposite McCarren Park, dwarfed by the McCarren Hotel—that almighty glass gentrifier—and a neighborhood bar, is seemingly the perfect space to host a meditation on gentrification, weeds, the secret life of parks, defiance, and survival. Howland, a former member and one-time president of Colab (Collaborative Projects, Inc.), has lived in New York for several decades, seemingly spending them defying or thinking around the onslaught of real estate development.
Shifting and Symmetry of Time
by George WidenerJUL-AUG 2018 | Critics Page
Although my investigations and conceptions of time are certainly self-taught and personal, they are not necessarily outside the canon of human experience or destiny. They’re in fact juxtaposed to the future evolution of technology and human neurological development. This is to say that perhaps one day some of my pictures will awaken from their present hibernation. The question here is whether my calendric calculations and reference points are merely personal or whether they’re connected to a futuristic synergized public.
RSS