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11.06.2010.
Leonardo O. Amaral
Roerich Museum Spain
www.shambala-roerich.comAwaking the Latent Energies
oft the Master Building from New YorkA skyscraper consecrated entirely to the figure of the painter Nicholas Roerich, as well as to the arts and to the Peace. North America, and in particular New York, guard somehow the Fire Agni, the Flame of the Living Ethics. The freedoms, the beauty, the art and the universal culture are represented in the Statue of the Liberty.
What nobody knows is that this fire of fulfilments took a very special form in the Master Building. And to know more, we got in touch with Mildred Speiser, who is a historian and tenant of the Building. She told us a series of peculiarities about it. Five years ago they had celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the Master Building. In the celebration there were persons who were in the Academy of the United Arts and in the Roerich Institute. And now, in the 80th Anniversary, Mrs. Mildred makes us participants of a series of histories related to the Building. Also there are the writer Ruth Drayer, Dora, Petri and Inigo with us.
This building - Mildred said to us - with 27 floors was a dream made reality. It was constructed in the site where there was a small building that lodged the first paintings of the teacher Nicholas Roerich. His proprietor, Mr. Louis Horch, decided to construct and finance another bigger one. The building, style Art Deco, was carefully designed. The Museum was constructed principally to exhibit the paintings of Nicholas Roerich, turning into the first museum of the world dedicated to a living artist. That's why the building is called "The Master", and a commemorative plaque in black marble with the Symbol of the Peace and the Culture testifies it at the corner of the same one, which looks onto to the landscaped area of the river.
It was the first building in New York with corner windows, forming an angle, which enabled to have a panoramic sight and a big light in the interior from the principal rooms. The first three floors were lodging the Roerich Museum with extraordinary collections proceeding from the Expedition Roerich to the Central Asia, between 1925 and 1928.
The public, who was coming, had a principal dining room and other private for the tenants from the building with a moderate price in the menus. In the others two floors, there was a small theatre joined the School of Architecture, interior decoration, painting, sculpture, music and ballet. The tenants from the Cultural Center Residence Hotel Roerich Institute could come to the totality of the events that there were happening and affiliate in free form to the Society of Friends from the Roerich Museum. Painted inside with a violet white colour, the Master Building had the intimacy of a private and sure housing, turning into the first community from the modern world in the line of a real Ashram. Its objective was to encourage the Art, the Beauty and the Peace.
Louis Horch himself, author of the Master Building, suffered the consequences of the Stock Market Crash. In the year 1936, everything got complicated. Soon the Second World War would come.
Chintamani, the Treasure of the World, the Black Stone that came from the celestial region of Orion. "I bring the Chalice, inside there is a Treasure: the Gift of Orion". Kings and emperors from China knew it well: Tamerlan, Saladin, Akbar from India, and before the King Salomon. All of them received its magnetic impulse, its evolutionary impulse and invisible rays that guided and made the civilizations. It's the big Guide. It comes and goes away without waiting for it. It protects the pure hearts and fills with sorrow to not virtuous. It's the Lapis Exillis Dicitur Origo Mundi (Small Stone Origin of the World).
And Nicholas Roerich and his family were the last ones to receive it. Later, the Stone returned to his stronghold, in the Himalayas, even beyond afterlife. And here it was transformed in the Peace and Culture Banner of Nicholas Roerich, and before in the Master Building from New York. A community of artists, teachers and students with a common ideal: the Beauty, the refinement of the Spirit and the Peace.
It's necessary to say a singularity of this Building: his final finish in the summit; it has the form of a mountain made of metal. At the foot of the same one, there is a small space, for which one can gain access hrough a trapdoor in the floor. From this little terrace, where there is little space for the persons, you can contemplate a fabulous view of the city, and in particular the big river. Soon I knew a secret about this place. According to his most intimate disciples, the Roerichs were meeting here to meditate and to enter in connection with their Teacher. Like dowser, I perceived an ascending energy from the interior of the plaque placed in the exterior of the street, and like a champagne bottle, this energy climbs and spills in the summit. This must be produced, because in the interior from the building there is a capsule of the time with beautiful objects that Roerich brought from Asia in the previous years.
As the lightning rod attracts the lightning, this place attracts something very subtle. Then a painting by Nicholas Roerich came to my mind, painted some years later and titled "The Refuge of Buddha". To come to the Teacher, it was necessary to raise a few small and narrow stairs. Here also. From the top of a very vertical and rectilinear mountain with different steps, Lord Buddha was going down and He was offering his chalice to the pilgrim who was coming up to Him. I felt exactly the same at the top of this Master Building. For this reason, we did a small silence …
Does this or a set of things produce that the Master Building has the quality of an extraordinary energy of life? If you walk along its beautiful park and sit down front of the Master Building, near the river, you will feel its beneficial influence.
From the Museum Peace Banner Nicholas Roerich in Spain, for all of you.
Gratitude:
Mildred Speiser
Ruth Drayer,
Dora, Petri and Inigo
Daniel Entin
NY Roerich Museum
Master Building
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