The Zeppelin District's Demisesquicentennial!

The S.S. Armitage prepares to dock near the Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria Von Papen Memorial Zeppelinarium on Evarts Avenue, circa 1933. Note the old Amalgamated Gravy Building on the left.

Friday, March 17 will mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the Zeppelin District in Armitage Heights, and the creation of the country's first dedicated Zeppelin port, the Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria Von Papen Memorial Zeppelinarium!

At the time of its construction, the Von Papen was the largest fully operational dedicated zeppelin port in the United States, and the third largest in the world. It was named (perhaps prematurely) for the contemporary right-wing chancellor of Germany, who actually left office two months after the dedication, and ended up later helping appoint Hitler, and being tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. So in 1941, with the city running a cataclysmic deficit and the nation on the brink of war with Germany, the port was renamed, for the sake of political and financial expediency, the Andreas Wolfgang Von Papen Zeppelinarium, after a minor German poet of the Romantic era -- thus relieving the city of the need to change the building's external signage, stationary and phone book listings. Of course, by 1941, no zeppelins had docked in the port for five years, and none would ever again, so it was a moot point anyway. The Von Papen was largely dismantled as a functioning zeppelin port in 1953 -- indeed, it was the last fully operational dedicated zeppelin port in the world at that time -- and was used as an administrative offices for the port authority and storage for Winter Parade floats throughout the 1950s.

During this time, the Von Papen building was still a landmark in the Zeppelin District, though the site was largely occupied by unemployed itinerant downstate agricultural workers, and notoriously gritty. The building was shuttered in 1962, and stood empty and generally unnoticed throughout the next few decades. Attention was refocused back on the building, however, when in 1982, a group of right-wing academics uncovered reams of unpublished, scandalously homoerotic-themed poems in Andreas Von Papen's private papers. Von Papen was catapulted almost overnight from a minor Romantic poet to a major homosexual literary icon. The name "Von Papen" became synonymous with homosexuality, the once-obscure poet being featured on the covers of literary journals and news magazines all over the world, and hailed as the "Godfather of Queer Poetry" and "The 19th Century's Greatest Gay Writer." The conservative Republican then-mayor of the city, Charles Kirkpatrick Carmichael, immediately demanded the name of the building be changed, despite the fact that the building was largely unoccupied. The resulting furor between gay rights activists, right-wing Christian groups and literary historians was documented beautifully in Kimball F. Burin's 1983 nonfiction work The Butterflies of Fear.

Of course, all of this furor overshadowed the elegant Modernist simplicity of the building and its unique function in aeronautical history. In a compromise that left no one happy, the building was renamed the Armitage Heights Homosexual War Veterans Memorial Zeppelinarium and State Historic Site, and it kept that name until last year. It was acquired through the city in 1985, and used to store transmissions and spare parts for metro transit buses.

In 2005, the site was purchased by wealthy California Internet mogul and amateur zeppelin enthusiast Rockwell Katz, who renamed the site GoSystemsCorp Zeppelinarium, after his profitable dot.com company. He has been refurbishing the site in the intervening years, and just in time for its demisesquicentennial, he promises to dock an actual zeppelin for the first time since 1939!

Of course, I voted against allowing granting Katz a license on the grounds of public safety -- in fact, his proposal is still tied up in the district courts, but if Katz prevails and gets the appropriate licenses and permits in the next week, you may see a sight over our neighborhood that no one has seen for decades: a zeppelin over the skies of Armitage Heights!

Regardless of whether or not that happens, there will be a number of exciting events all weekend!

• A free outdoor performance in Zeppelin Park by The Crunge, the metro's best Led Zeppelin tribute band.
• A record release show by the October Revolutionists at Spike's, at 1206 N. Stanton Avenue. Their new CD a concept album called We Fly On Higher, Ever Higher, which is based on the early history of the zeppelin industry. My assistant Marisha said last month she thought it was the greatest album she'd heard in years!
• A lecture by Kimball Burin on the writing of The Butterflies of Fear, followed by a question-and-answer session, held at the Evarts Avenue Tavern at 3809 E. Evarts Avenue.
• A panel discussion on the legacy of Andreas Von Papen, conducted by the University of Mishipeshu's LGBT Studies program.
• Free Zeppelin-shaped cookies from the Armitage Heights Bakery at 3210 E. Evarts Avenue.
• And of course, tours all day of the new Zeppelin Flats luxury condos, which will occupy half of the space of the GoSystems Zeppelinarium! Visit http://www.zeppelindistrictliving.com/ for more information!

See you there!