A Photo From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1920

Here’s a bittersweet photo from the pages of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, published January 11, 1920, showing proud papa Don Marquis and his two young children. Daughter Barbara, on Don’s knee, is just 16 months old, and Bobby, standing, is 4 years old.

The photo appeared on a feature page of the Eagle that Sunday under the headline “Brooklyn Kiddies Smile at the Camera-Man.” Among other celebrities smiling for the camera that day was former President Theodore Roosevelt, holding his Brooklyn granddaughter Edith Derby.

Don was a famous columnist by 1920, and the Eagle — where he had worked for a year before moving to the New York Evening Sun in 1911 — took pleasure in tracking his career and also his exploits as a Brooklyn resident. (More on that in a few days.)

The bittersweet aspect to this photo comes from events looming in the future. Bobby, always a sickly child, would die barely a year later, on February 15, 1921. Barbara also suffered from a frail constitution and died of pneumonia on October 24, 1931, at the age of 13.

Absent from this photo is Don’s wife and the children’s mother, Reina Marquis. Her story only adds to the impending gloom. On the evening of Dec. 2, 1923, just a few weeks after she and Don and Barbara returned from a three-month trip to Paris and London, Reina became violently ill and died within an hour from myocarditis, an inflammation of heart muscle.

Don, who would live to also see his second wife die, somehow endured these tragedies while wearing the mantle of a funny man. One can only imagine the heartache that lived inside.

Archy’s Dream Realized: A Tribute in Gold

How many public buildings in the United States pay homage to a lowly cockroach? Just one: the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Public Library’s Central Library at Grand Army Plaza. There, atop a majestic, 50-foot-high entryway, Don Marquis’s Archy is cast in bronze and coated in gilt, standing tall (well, as much as a cockroach can) beneath Mehitabel the cat.

Archy, who always dreamed of public acclaim yet endured a life in lowercase letters, must indeed be proud.

Archy and Mehitabel occupy one of fifteen panels that make a massive screen above the library’s front doors. Cockroach and cat are in the the top row, front and center, near other famous characters from America’s literary past such as Tom Sawyer, Rip Van Winkle, Moby Dick and Poe’s raven.

Brooklyn was proud to call itself home to Marquis during his most creative years. He lived there, with only a brief interruption, from 1910 to 1921, before moving his family to Forest Hills in nearby Queens (and later Manhattan). Marquis died three years before the Central Library opened in February 1941, but he was still fondly remembered and “archy and mehitabel” was still selling strong — and would continue to for another 20 years.

The bronze screen was designed by sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones and the massive pylons on either side by Carl Paul Jennewin. The Central Library, shaped to look like an open book, was designed by the architectural firm Githens & Keally and built of Indiana limestone in the Modern Classical style.

For more on the Central Library and a full description of all 15 panels in the bronze screen, visit the Brooklyn Public Library’s web site at www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/central.

(Credits: Accompanying photos were found on Flickr.com and used according to their Creative Commons licenses. Wally Gobetz shot the photos of the Central Library entryway and the cropped close-up of Archy and Mehitabel’s panel. Thanks!)