Curtiss 1A "Gulfhawk"

Smithsonian National Air and Spcae Museum, Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Va., October 29, 2009.

According to the museum website:

The Curtiss Hawk 1A Gulfhawk is a one-of-a-kind airplane built by the Curtiss Airplane & Motor Company, Garden City, Long Island and flown by Al Williams, a Pulitzer Trophy and Schneider Cup record setting pilot and former chief test pilot for the U.S. Navy, and famous aerobatic pilot. Williams called the Gulfhawk the finest aerobatic military ship ever built.

Department of Commerce records indicate that the original aircraft began life as Curtiss Hawk demonstrator NR636E, serial number 1, specially outfitted for long distance flight. It was Curtiss Navy F6C-4 with the split undercarrriage of the Army P-1 Hawk, a Conqueror engine and extra fuel tanks fitted to the side of the forward fuselage as in Curtiss Hellidvers. Initially the airplane had a tailskid rather than a tail wheel. In the interest of increasing control capability, the larger stabilizers and elevators from the P-1/F6C-1 Hawks were used, along with a substantial increase of the vertical fin and rudder chord.

After a crash, the aircraft was rebuilt with a Wright Cyclone engine and designated a Hawk 1-A with serial number NR982V. Williams took delivery of the airplane at Garden City in August 1930, soon after his retirement from the Navy. He had the aircraft painted with a Chinese red fuselage and struts and the wings and tail were finished in silver. At one point the main wheels also had a star on them. He replaced the engine with the Bliss (American built) English Bristol Jupiter 9 cylinder radial that developed 550 hp, an engine similar to the Pratt 7 Whitney Wasp used by the F6C-4. The engine was uncowled and the entire airplane was fabric covered.

Al Williams had a law degree, but he preferred flying. He started his civilian aviation career as a free-lance airshow pilot flying aerobatic routines that skirted the edges of the airplane's performance envelope. As a conclusion to his show, he would dive on a small shack and drop military practice bombs to detonate black powder charges. Williams later acknowledged his hidden agenda was to promote military aviation to the public during the inter-war years when aviation budgets were quite low. He performed to overflow crowds at the 1930 National Air Races in Chicago and in the Nationals in Cleveland in 1931 where his sponsor was SOHIO Oil.

In early 1931, Williams experienced engine failure at an airshow in Charlotte, North Carolina, during an inverted falling leaf maneuver and miraculously was able to recover sufficiently to pancake the airplane onto an empty embankment in the parking area. The airplane sustained so much damage that it required a complete rebuild that transformed it into its most famous configuration and scheme. The Bristol Jupiter engine was replaced with a nine-cylinder 700 hp Wright Cyclone radial engine and a smooth short-chord Townend ring cowl. The fuselage was rebuilt using the existing truss structure that was then covered over with the faired aluminum skin that is still on the present airplane. In 1933 he negotiated a deal with the Gulf Oil Company to start an aviation department with himself as manager. The aircraft was repainted with the now famous Gulfhawk orange, white and blue sunburst paint scheme. He flew the airplane on the show circuit under Gulf sponsorship through 1936 when he replaced it with the Grumman Gulfhawk II, also in NASM's collection. Williams also wrote a syndicated column for Scripps Howard newspapers, continually advocating the future of air power and the need for strong military air forces. He and his Curtiss airplane became the idol of youngsters and he co-founded an organization known as Junior Aviators to promote interest in aviation.

The aircraft disappeared from view until Frank Tallman received a tip from his brother, a stockbroker in New York City, that it was at Aviation Trade School in Manhattan. Tallman approached Williams about purchasing the aircraft and Williams agreed to let Tallman move it to temporary storage in his brother's barn in New Jersey before trucking it to Riverside, California. A four-year restoration project began to replace the engine, rudder, rudder pedals, elevators, instruments, and throttle quadrant. Most of the fabric covering was gone and the fuselage was so heavily dented that almost all of the skin panels had to be replaced. A surplus SNJ/AT-6 trainer was used to provide many of the missing items including its 600 hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine and the controllable pitch Hamilton Standard propeller. The present day long-chord bump cowling was also installed at that time.

Frank Tallman test flew the restored Gulfhawk in 1962 and used it in airshows for many years. Interestingly, the FAA inspector who signed off on a repair in July 1962 was another famous movie pilot, Art Scholl. When not flying, the plane was exhibited in the Tallman

Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island

This two-and-one-half-story, five-bay, clapboard-covered house is the most impressive mid-nineteenth-century residence surviving in Richmondtown, the historic governmental center of Staten Island. Built around 1857 for Daniel Lake Stephens, a prosperous "gentleman," the house is located on the largest residential building lot in the village of Richmondtown and has frontages on Richmond Road, Center Street, and St. Patrick's Place. Symmetrical in design, the house has identical facades on Center Street and Richmond Road.

Its transitional design incorporates Greek Revival and Italianate elements and features projecting columned porches and molded entrance surrounds with narrow sidelights and transoms. Large tripartite windows emphasize the center bay at the second story and all the windows have decorative surrounds. The building is capped by a continuous bracketed cornice and a distinctive cross-gabled roof with shallow pediments pierced by lunette windows.

After Daniel Lake Stephens' death in 1866, the house was occupied by several members of the Stephens family, notably Judge Stephen D. Stephens, Jr., a successful lawyer who served as the Richmond County Judge and Surrogate for three decades. In 1886 it was acquired by James E. Prier, a butcher. The Prier family owned the house until 1926 and again between 1931 and 1946. Since 1991, the house has been owned by the City of New York and now houses the administrative offices of Historic Richmond Town.

The Development of Richmondtown'

Richmond County, encompassing all of Staten Island, was established in 1683 as one of the twelve original counties of New York, with Stony Brook, now Egbertville, its official county seat. Previously, the residents of Staten Island had relied on the Court of Sessions at Gravesend, Brooklyn, for the administration of laws, while the center of political activity on the island was at Oude Dorp, near the present South Beach.

In 1711, the county government built a prison in the tiny village of Coccles Town. This was considered a superior location for conducting governmental business due to its location at the island's geographical center, near the converging of roads leading to all parts of the island and at the head of the navigable Fresh Kills. In 1729, Coccles Town was officially chosen to be the new county seat and was renamed Richmondtown. A new county court house was constructed there that year.

British troops occupied Richmondtown during the Revolutionary War, establishing quarters in many of the village's buildings, burning the court house and other buildings upon their departure. Little development occurred during the next thirty years; however, a second county courthouse was constructed on Arthur Kill Road in 1793.

Richmondtown began to grow around 1800 and was incorporated as a village within the Town of Southfield in 1823. By 1828 the First County Clerk's and Surrogate's Office was constructed to the east of the jail. The hotel, Richmond County Hall, was built around 1829 and soon became a popular gathering place for political and social events. The town's first public school opened about 1830.

Sensing the development potential of the town, Henry I. Seaman, a New York merchant who was secretary of the company that operated the plank road (later Richmond Avenue), purchased ninety acres of farmland to the east of the town center in 1836. Seaman had the land laid out into two new streets, Center Street and Court Place, and 25' by 100' building lots.

A large plot on Center Street opposite Court Place was set aside for the construction of a new courthouse (the Third County Courthouse, now the Historic Richmond Town Visitors Center, built 1837, a designated New York City Landmark). Seaman also built several houses, known as "Seaman Cottages," and sold two corner lots to Austin Burke and Stephen D. Stephens, Sr., a cousin of Daniel Lake Stephens, who constructed
their own residences

. Due to the financial panic of 1837 Seaman was forced to sell his Richmondtown property, which eventually passed to Harmon Cropsey in 1854.4 During the 1840s, the village continued to expand, in part because of the construction of a new stone bridge over Fresh Kills Creek at the junction of Richmond Road and Arthur Kills Road.

The Washington Hotel was also built around 1840, on a site just north of the stone bridge, and around 1845 Isaac Marsh began construction of a carriage manufactory opposite the hotel. The Second County Clerk's and Surrogate's Office and a jail were constructed in 1848 and 1860, respectively. By the mid-nineteenth century, Richmondtown's position as the political and social center of the island was secure. The Stephens-Prier House, the Parsonage (1855) and the Edwards-Barton House (1869) are the most significant residential survivors of this expansive and prosperous period of the village's development.

The Stephens Family and the Early History of the Steph