This row of low-profile one and two story tenement houses in the West Village was on the street where my friend “Huey” lived, and I stopped for a while one day in 1959, to record that street in charcoal-pencil on a small piece of fawn pastel paper. Printed to the original size, this print fits perfectly in a 5″x7″ frame. Unframed and unmounted, these prints are available at $25 each, which is the wholesale price. Matting & framing are extra and we do matting and framing for resale at very competitive prices.
This dark and dreary night was permanently recorded in my small pastel sketchbook, and it was just as lonely and deserted as it looks. In the city today, you’d never find this level of quiet and absence of automobiles and people.
This tiny two-story East Village Art Gallery was originally rented by Martha Jackson, but she moved to 3rd Street before the end of the first year’s lease. It was taken over by Arnie Blumenthal, who maintained it as the “8th St. Gallery” until his retirement in 1964. The original was made in 1959 in my small Village Sketchbook.
This was the corner of MacDougal & 3rd in the Spring of 1959, when I did this small pastel in my Village Sketchbook, trying to capture the dark and lonely mood of the empty street. You wouldn’t find this street empty anymore, day or night. Manhattan crawls with human flesh 24/7/365.
I don’t remember the name of the club, and it changed several times in a decade anyway; the club was distinguished as the place where Susan Reed sang and played Irish harp back in the day. The taxi awning was a must-have in those more elegant times.
I bussed tables at the Candlelight Restaurant in Brooklyn Heights until the morning I arrived at a thoroughly shot-up crime scene — a syndicate boss had been rubbed out. My next job was as a stock clerk at a sporting goods store in Eastside Manhattan, easier and cheaper to get to than the Brooklyn Heights gig, and a LOT safer, too.
This was a corner I had to walk past every day, but seldom at night, when I lived at the Gramercy Hotel in midtown Manhattan, while my apartment was being painted and the cockroaches and rats were being exterminated for the tenth time that week — New Yorkers get used to it after a while.
The gallery was open for art jewelry sales and in the back you could take classes on jewelry crafting from Ed Weiner, known for his modernist approach to silver and copper and sometimes gold, and his innovative stone mountings, which were the talk of the town at that time.
The Gaslight Cafe was one of the clubs where I worked my standup comedy routines, sharing the stage with Hugh Romney, Holy Modal Rounders, New Lost City Ramblers and many more.
This was the entrance to Ed Stephenson’s house. I did the pastel in 1959, but had gone there back in 1953-56 during school years — our moms had an arrangement where a small group of kids would eat dinner at a different house every night Monday through Friday, thus allowing the moms four nights off a week.
This tiny gallery did more business than any of the uptown galleries including Leo Castelli and Pace, and I saw more great art deals go down here than anywhere else, including Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses.
Lee Wing was a family friend, who owned several restaurants including “China Boy” on East 14th Street on the corner of Avenue B. We often ate there with them at their back table near the kitchen.
The Village Playhouse was my favorite comedy venue in the West Village, located just a few doors North of Rienzi’s and Cafe Feenjon, also known as the Fat Black Pussycat.
Wanamaker’s Department Store housed the television studios of one of the earliest tv broadcasters, and several important early programs were televised from there, including Captain Video and Magic Cottage.
The Great Blizzards of 1946 and 1947 are memorable and the vision of the snow piled up as high as the second story of the nearby buildings is etched in my memory. I was six years old, and my Dad Horace had to carry me across the street — all the snow was higher than I was tall.
That’s what’s available at the moment. I’ll post more as the printing-grade scans become available.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby