Soldiers Parade Down Broadway in 1918, painted by Gifford Beal.

This week, I saw an image of one of my favorite paintings used as the introduction to a Facebook page. Old Newburgh News Clippings on Facebook is run by my friend Kris and most who navigate through its interesting shares likely don’t know the background of the scene depicted. It is a luminous painting by a Newburgh artist, Gifford Beal, who created it in 1918. What was happening here in Newburgh that year? The community was deep within the trauma of World War One. The scene Mr. Beal created is not a happy family day with a summertime parade passing by. The scene is local men marching down Broadway to the train where they will leave to fight overseas. The woman in the foreground is standing with her children but also with a heavy heart. The crowds along the street are cheering but many are crying too. On July 22, 1918, six thousand Newburghers got up early and walked beside the march of young soldiers who left the Broadway Armory and accompanied them to the train and wished them godspeed. Then all those citizens walked back up the steep Newburgh streets to their jobs that day and waited through the long months ahead.

Gifford Beal’s painting of the Newburgh troops’ departure wasn’t really celebrated in the artist’s lifetime (1879-1956). The painting was discovered in 1999 in the Phillips Collection, the first museum of modern art in America, founded in 1921 in Washington, D.C. Conservators at the Phillips found the painting when they were cleaning a different Beal work, “Parade of Elephants,” a circus scene. Mr. Beal had evidently put his second canvas (dated 1924) on the stretcher holding his 1918 Newburgh scene. For 75 years the Newburgh parade picture had been hidden until the ultraviolet light conservators were using to assess the circus painting revealed a second set of tacks beneath the first canvas surface. They carefully lifted the Parade of Elephants and what a blessing they discovered for Newburgh, NY, not to mention for their collection. There was this wonderful scene of a mother and children watching a passing parade of soldiers heading down a steep Newburgh street. The Phillips staff gave the painting the title “On The Hudson At Newburgh.” It remains in their collection. Perhaps The Phillips Collection (1600 21st St. NW, Washington, DC. www.phillipscollection.org) galleries should be added to your itinerary next time you visit Washington, D.C.

Gifford Beal, whose father was a founder of Central Hudson Gas and Electric Company, painted many Newburgh scenes in the early 20th century. His bright and engaging canvases tell us much about the history of our city. For example, below the crest of lower Broadway – the scene of his parade picture - was a well-landscaped Broadway Park developed on the slope between Colden Street and Water Street. Lucky for us, Beal captured that on canvas too. In preparation for the big Hudson-Fulton Celebration extravaganza of 1909, Newburgh stabilized and planted that unused hill as a scenic overlook to watch the river and to have a safe walkway between business districts along a series of steps surrounded by flowering shrubs. Little Broadway Park is still there but much diminished from its landscape in the 1910’s.

Seeking out the scenes captured by our artists of previous generations may be one of the best and most creative ways to plan what will be incorporated into Newburgh of the future.