Pieces of Hoboken History

Drawings of an iconic statue at Stevens Institute of Technology were given as gifts from the graduating class to speakers at the commencement ceremony last Thursday.

Made with strokes of chalk and charcoal, the pieces depicting the Torch Bearers, a cast aluminum statue of a man passing a torch to another man riding a horse, were done by local artist Raymond Smith, who is better known for his “Greetings from Hoboken” logo.

Smith is not a Hoboken native, but he has shaped much of the city’s visual history. His logo is seen on postcards, T-shirts, and coffee mugs sold all over town. He’s also responsible for two 9/11 memorials, a painting he named “Comfort and Hope” and the Hoboken Children’s Memorial Flag that hangs at the Board of Education.

Smith said he started drawing as a kindergartener. His mother and grandmother were his biggest supporters, but when he was 12, his Aunt Margaret became his very first client. She asked him to reproduce two works by Currier and Ives, a printing company known for its lithographs, and she paid him for it. “I got like $15 each or something, which was huge for me,” said Smith.

After high school, Smith wanted to go to art school, but he didn’t have the funds to do it. So, to start earning his way there, he took a job at a metal processing plant. “They would extract the chemicals from the metals, package those, and sell them,” said Smith. “It was really messy.” Though Smith made a lot of money, he didn’t make it to art school. “Once I started getting these nice paychecks, I got my own apartment, I started drinking beer and having a good time, having girls over and stuff,” he said. “I was totally missing that I wasn’t saving money to go to art school.”

When his friends came back home after a year at college, Smith realized he needed to make some other move toward his future. He quit his job at the plant and went through the phone book calling art studios in Chicago, and that’s how he landed his next job. “I went in there and pretended I knew a lot of stuff that I didn’t,” said Smith. He started at Moonink Inc. as an apprentice cutting boards but was soon promoted to junior art director. Smith went on to have a lucrative career as an illustrator. He’s done work for many well-known brands like Perrier, United Airlines, the New York Mets, and Playboy Magazine.

In 1985, Smith moved to Hoboken for work in New York City. “I came here to challenge myself,” he said. And looking back, he’s glad he did. “The things I ended up doing here I probably wouldn’t have done if I had remained in Chicago,” said Smith.

The artist said he started his “Greetings to Hoboken” logo in the 1990s but didn’t finish it until the city’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2005. His inspiration, he said, was not Bruce Springsteen’s famous album cover but a genre of postcards that were popular between the 1930s and 1960s. Countless towns across the country had their own logos printed on postcards, said Smith, but Hoboken had not been one of them. “They had never done that around here before,” said Smith. His logo includes historic buildings like City Hall on Washington Street and the Hudson School on Park Avenue.

Smith said he wanted to complete his Hoboken logo, despite that people don’t send many postcards anymore. “I prefer somebody buy my postcards and mail them,” said Smith, “instead of just sticking them on the refrigerator, although I think that’s where most of them end up.”

His 9/11 painting “Comfort and Hope” depicts the Friday after the attacks, when several Hoboken residents gathered at Pier A for a candlelight vigil. At the same time, a hospital ship slowly crept up the Hudson River, and Smith said it was a moment he wanted to capture on canvas. The painting includes Hoboken survivors, as well as Smith’s wife and two kids. “If you’re an artist, you don’t always know why you are compelled to do something,” said Smith. But the attacks had a tremendous impact on him, he said.

He said the creation of the Hoboken Children’s Memorial Flag was inspired by a similar flag a local blogger received from children in Georgia after their teacher read the blogger’s entry about the attacks. Though the original flag was painted on a bedsheet, Smith planned to have his made on a 5’ by 9’ canvas, and local children who lost parents or guardians in the attacks added their handprints.

The drawings of the Torch Bearers have a special meaning for the community and the artist. The statue, by American artist Anna Hyatt Huntington, is one of three in the world and has adorned the Stevens lawn since the 1960s. “It’s really an iconic symbol on campus,” said Kenneth Nilsen, the dean of student life. It signifies the passing of knowledge, he said, and that’s what happens at Stevens.

The day of graduation was rainy, and Smith said he had been so concerned with protecting his drawings from the weather that he didn’t realize his art had finally found the ideal audience until he saw his work resting against the chair of one of the speakers. “That’s the kind of audience I want to have for my work,” said Smith. “I don’t want to appeal to the common denominator really.”