Daily News from New York, New York • 856

SDNBMa'MEWS MANHATTAN-BRONX SECTION TWO Largest circulation in MANHATTAN-BRONX NEW YORK'S PICTURE NEWSPAPER Copr. 1968 Kewt Syndicate Co. toe. New York, N.Y. 10017, Sunday, November 6, 1966 side the nurses, quarters andsand Goldwater Hospitals were built.

Since the Lindsay Adminis By OWEN MORITZ Old, blemished and wasting away from years of neglect and badly in need of rehabilitation, Welfare Island is New York's main welfare case. be too far distant. Coler and Goldwater Memorial In between are housing for 400 nurses, a delinquent girls' home, a power station and a Fire Department training center and large pockets of unkempt land filled with weeds and abandoned structures of a bygone day. Quarry on Island Accessibility is difficult. The Queensboro Bridge straddles the island and buses run to the island Relief, however, may not The Board of Estimate un ceremoniously authorized an application last month for up to $250,000 in federal funds for a feasibility study of the oblonsr 147.3-acre island.

"We're talking: in terms of urban renewal possibilities." ex- Elained a spokesman for the city lousing and Redevelopment Board, which prepared the request. "Many things have been suggested, but we can't go in with any preconceived determination. What will be done is what will best serve the needs of the city: It's Been a Long. Long Time "But 111 say this much: This is the first positive step in a long, long time." Over the years. Welfare Island bas been considered as a site for well-to-do and modest apartment developments, a modern penal colony, a medical center, a United taken to Long Island City by five men and raped.

Now a police squad car escorts all buses serving the island between midnight and dawn. The island was purchased in 1828 from Jacob Blackwell for $52,500. The graystone quarry on the island provided the city with stone for en insane asylum, alms house, prison hospital and auxiliary structures. It became a depository for the city's social outcasts. Hence, the island's name.

The next time you piay trivia, ask what the island's two previous names were. Answers: Minnahonnonck, the Indian title. and Blackwell's Island.) Hospitals Put Up In 1871 Boss Tweed was py- iled to the isle and promptly converted it to a private suburb. In splendor, thoue-h TmminnlW in jail, he ordered half a wall demolished so he could view Manhattan. Periodically, thereafter, it was a fashionable locknn fnr fashionable criminals until Mayor Fiorello H.

LaGuardia stopped the practice in 1934. The old institutions vpm nhan doned soon after, as the Coler 1 Tribute to Paicj' Gives Pop Art filae Simla By LAWRENCE HALL "Pop art leaves me cold. It doesn't make me think," said Alexander Z. Kruse. whose exhibition, "50 Years in American Art," opens Nov.

22 at the Burrell Galleries, 955 Madison Ave. a from Queens. Elevators from the bridge to the island's southern part operate irregularly. The transportation problem could be solved if. a subway station were built on the island as part of a projected new subway tunnel between Queens and mid-town Manhattan.

Although it is close to midtown. the island rarely draws attention. When it does, it is often unpleasant news. A year ago an Israeli nurse, 28. in this country eierht weeks, was abducted from out- And at some of his early sketches of the neighborhood are the basis for his latest paintings.

The "man who 1 painted the lower East Side" conducted his first art school at 19 on E. 125th St. called it the Metropolis School of Art and invited children and their parents to take painting lessons. Much later he taught at the Brooklyn Art School and the Riverside Drive Museum. Kruse has some advice for the young painters of today.

It is the same advice he has always given his pupils. "They must learn to-cultivate a livelihood first. If the compulsion to paint is that great, then they will find ways and means odd jobs which will give them the spare time they need need for self-expression." Kruse, who lives at 54 Riverside Drive, knows, for he has held many odd jobs, during his "50 Years in American Art." ravrarMBaBMMrMrnaaMaaMaaMaaMMSMMral HTrB'a'i'Sfi3BH'k3Wff'MM'H'M Litin.Jiyvr'rHriH'rteHi'XHrWMmM-arrara HaawraBMiMaMaaBaaaavKHHBKVMaHBMHMaHBiaainMMMMHHaaaaaaBa tration came into office, moves have been made to spruce up the island. The Buildings Department has condemned 45 of the old structures. On a tour pi the hospitals, the Mayor's dark-haired wife was appalled by conditions on an island that is in Gracie Mansion's backyard.

Plan For Apartment Colony In 1961, two renowned architect-builders, Victor Gruen and Frederick W. Richmond, proposed an apartment colony for 70,000 to 80,000 persons. When city officials complained that it would overwhelm municipal services, the architects trimmed their plans, allowing for recreational and other facilities. The plan is reportedly still under study. Meanwhile Welfare Island is a large municipal problem.

"Everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air which was very painful," observed Charles Dickens in 1842. He was not talk- in? about Oliver in the catacombs rf London, but of Welfare Island, after a visit. The same lines could apply today. a Trouper zeal to draw lots of cars into their huge parking lots, place large "Enter" signs at all their driveways, and never admit there's an exit. One of the true classics of sttreet signs is just through the Lincoln Tunnel in Wayne, NJ, where there is a short roadway running between two crossover lanes on Route 46.

On each end of the road is a sign, and each sign says "One Way, Do Not Enter." Champion Oddball Then there are the elevators which have two items attached to their walls. One is a "No Smoking" sign, and the other is an ashtray. But the oddball sign is one that some enterprising soul pasted over the other advertising signs a suoway ar. it read DON'T READ THIS SIGN. Nations school and an education park, an exhibition center and even a park modeled on Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.

Whatever does become of it housing, particularly for medical personnel, is the inside favorite the island may acquire a new name in the process. "Who wants to live on a welfare island!" asked Mrs. John Lindsay during an inspection last spring. "We ought to think of a new name for the place." East River Island A college eirl. among a btoud cleaning up the island, volunteered "Fun City Island." "No, no!" pleaded Mrs.

Lindsav. "East River Island is better." Welfare Island, a forelorn length of island 750 feet at its widest, parallels the luxurious East Side from 51st to 86th St. It is framed by immaculate hos pitals at each end: the Bird S. Israel his paintings hang in mu seums and art galleries. His works also can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the New York Public Library.

Kruse, who had among his teachers John Sloan, George Luks and Robert Henri, worked for 10 years on the now-defunct Brook- Eagle as an art critic. Later he did a column for the New York "Art With a Small Everyone Helped "The lower East Side was a great place. The street peddlers and the hucksters went around telling people to buy their bargains. They would sell everything, he said. The people too, he felt, were different.

Life in this part of New York has changed. When a woman got sick, there were always women in the neighborhood who would scrub her floors, take care of her children and even do the shopping. Today, Kruse is known in the art world as the man who captured a section of Manhattan. the lower East Side. I -V3 Mrs.

Burton Turkus, wife of the labor arbitrator of the Port of New York, meets with Maurice Chevalier to discuss tribute to the late Ed Wynn. Three-city event will be held Wednesday, which would have been the beloved comedian's 80th birthday, by the American Parkinson's Disease Association at New York's Ameri- cana Hotel, and in Chicago and Los Angeles. Oty SIwvjs Sure Signs oftonhsion By DON SINGLETON In New York City, where more people -follow more directions printed on more signs than in all of Kalamazoo, somebody must be doing something wrong. "A work of art should make one think, feel and communicate. Many of the young painters today appear to be cheating them selves by picking up the new art forms, like' the pop art.

Thus they crowding out what could be their own individuality and originality in art," he said. Henry McBride, noted art critic of the early 1900s, whi'e teaching at the Educational Alliance, once told Kruse, "Walk around your neighborhood, the lower East Side, with a sketchbook and put down your impressions of what you see and feel." All Over World The young artist did just that. For years he filled books with ketches of men. women and children during their unguarded moments at work, play or shopping at the local stores. His work is scattered throughout the world and is a part of the private collections of such persons as Lord Marley in England, Edward G.

Robinson, the late Bernard Berenson, art critic, Mrs. Nat King Cole and others. In Paris, London, Ottawa, and Kruse's 1916 painting of 1 a red bag over the meter head, witn iso farting" stenciled neat ly on its side. (It should be noted that the apparently signs don't bother some drivers, particularly those witb lit' Li and FC plates. The spot is almost always occupied.) But No Exit Then there's the rest room at the north end of the Lexington Avt.

IRT station at 69th which is another story. As you stand on the downtown local platform, you can see three letters above a door. The three letters are and N. Which is fine, until you get closer to the door. On the.

door are five letters: and N. And it's a long hike to the other end of the platform, especially at rush hour. There are shopping centers, which, in their understandable cctauae eer nuw ana again. in New York, the people who put up the directional signs get their signals switched, with soma frustrating results. Like the parking space on the east side of Third just south of 37th St.

You can tell it's a parking space right away, since lines are painted on the street and since there's a parking meter there. But on the other hand, you can tell it's NOT a parking space, too, since there's a regulation-type fire hydrant right in the middle of the space. Don't Bother Some Then again, you know it HAS to be a parking space after all, since there's a little sign on the meter that advises "Do Not Park 4 P.M. to 7 P.M. Except Sunday." Which means, turned around, DO park 7 P.M.

to 4 P.M., and on Sundays park all day. But wait, maybe it isn't a parking space after all, since there's..