The $3.5 million renovation of Building D, the Noble Maritime Collection's home, was completed in 2000. After seven years of an extraordinary partnership between private citizens and government, what was a desolate building is now an exquisite home for one of the country's most significant maritime collections.
Gracing the historic grounds of Snug Harbor Cultural Center, the Noble Maritime Collection is a major catalyst for further advancement of the site, for volunteerism to improve community life, and for the preservation and study of art and maritime history.
Music
Hughie Jones, Bob Conroy, STOUT
Books
Hulls and Hulks in the Tide of Time: The Life and Work of John A. Noble by Erin Urban, American Maritime Paintings of John Stobart, Stobart: The World of Sail & Stream, Hulls and Hulks in the Tide of Time: The Life and Work of John A. Noble by Erin Urban, Bon a tirer : The prints of Herman Zaage, John A. Noble: The Rowboat Drawings by Erin Urban, The Mezzotint History & Technique by Carol Wax, Nothing But a Burning Light by Bill Murphy, Along Martin Luther King Travels on Back America's Main Streets Jonathan Tilove with photos by Mike Falco, New York City WPA Writer's Project A Maritime History of New York, Winslow Homer & the Sea by Carl Little, Winslow Homer's America, The Fight for Sailors' Snug Harbor
A collection of Noble's correspondence and essays, Sailors' Snug Harbor 1801-1976
by Barnett Shepard
Heroes
John A. Santore, John A. Noble, John ("Wichita Bill") Noble, Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island, New York State Council on the Arts, Kevin Sheehy
About me: I edited my profile with Thomas Myspace Editor V4.4 (www.strikefile.com/myspace)
The mission of the Noble Maritime Collection is to preserve and interpret the art, writings, and historical maritime artifacts of the distinguished marine artist, John A. Noble; to continue Noble's legacy of celebrating the people and traditions of the working waterfront of New York Harbor; to preserve and interpret the history of Sailors' Snug Harbor in its collections, exhibitions and programs; and to operate a maritime study center inspired by John A. Noble and the mariners of Sailors' Snug Harbor.
GALLERY HOURS
Thursday–Sunday, 1–5 PM
Administrative offices are open
Monday–Friday, 9–5 PM
What you'll find at the Noble Maritime Collection:
Born in Paris in 1913, John A. Noble was the son of the noted American painter, John ("Wichita Bill") Noble. He spent his early years in the studios of his father and his father's contemporaries, innovative artists and writers of the early part of this century. He moved with his family to this country in 1919, a year which had great significance to him and foreshadowed his life's work.
"It was the greatest wooden ship launching year in the history of the world," he often said.
"About 1929 I started my crude drawings and paintings," the artist recalled. "In the wintertime, while still going to school, I was a permanent fixture on the old McCarren line tugs, which had the monopoly on the schooner towing in New York Harbor. This kept them constantly before my eyes. In the summertime, I would go to sea."
A graduate of the Friends Seminary in New York City, Noble returned to France in 1931, where he studied for one year at the University of Grenoble. There he met his wife and lifetime companion, "the lovely, green-eyed" Susan Ames. When he returned to New York, he studied for one year at the National Academy of Design.
From 1928 until 1945, Noble worked as a seaman on schooners and in marine salvage. In 1928, while on a schooner that was towing out down the Kill van Kull, the waterway that separates Staten Island from New Jersey, he saw the old Port Johnston coal docks for the first time. It was a sight, he later asserted, which affected him for life. Port Johnston was "the largest graveyard of wooden sailing vessels in the world." Filled with new but obsolete ships, the great coalport had become a great boneyard. In 1941, Noble began to build his floating studio there, out of parts of vessels he salvaged. From 1946 on, he worked as a full-time artist. Often accompanied by his wife, he set off from his studio in a rowboat to explore the Harbor. These explorations resulted in a unique and exacting record of Harbor history in which its rarely documented characters, industries, and vessels are faithfully recorded.
Although he was raised in artistic circles and quickly gained recognition for his work, Noble always remained intimate with the people of the Harbor. "I'm with factory people, industrial people, the immigrants, the sons of immigrants," he asserted. "It gives life to it." Late in his life, Noble recalled his first compelling views of New York Harbor. "I was crossing the 134th Street Bridge on the Harlem River on a spring day in 1928, and I was so shocked--it changed my life. I was frozen on that bridge, because both east and west of the bridge were sailing vessels. And I thought sailing vessels, you know, were gone... There it was, and I couldn't eat, or anything; I was so excited." By the time of his death in the spring of 1983, shortly after the passing of his beloved Susan, the sailing vessels he loved were all gone, and the maritime industry in the Harbor had diminished significantly.
But Noble's inexorable interest in the sea had not diminished. Although he felt the loss of many kinds of vessels, he was "just as interested in drawing the building of a great modern tanker, the working of a modern dredge, as...in the shifting of topsails." In fact, he wrote, "anywhere men work or build on the water is of interest to me...My life's work is to make a rounded picture of American maritime endeavor of modern times."
For more information on John A. Noble and his life, drop by our museum shop and pick-up a copy of Hulls and Hulks in the Tide of Time: The Life and Work of John A. Noble by Erin Urban.
Contact Us
The Noble Maritime Collection
1000 Richmond Terrace, Building D
Staten Island, New York 10301
Thanks for the add! We actually recently added some Noble lithographs to our collection: "Old & Underway", "Young & Drying Sails", "Whale Creek", "Shifting Topsails", and "Outer Jib"
The music on m'site puts me in mind of moonlit nights, sailin' under tops'ls only, m'crew on deck passin' the rum round. I'm at the helm, one hand gentlin' the wheel, the other arm round the waist of the one I love, the breeze brushin' m'cheek; Someone gets out a fiddle .... ah, bein' a pirate, its a good life. Savvy?
Need a pirate fix? Read Sea Witch and Pirate Code & meet me, Captain Jesamiah Acorne - next in line to become the best-known, best-loved rogue of a fictional pirate! (I'm as good as that Sparrer feller - honest!)
