Tuesday, August 17, 2021 – REMEMBER THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE RECENT PAST
TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2021
The
444th Edition
From the Archives
ANTHONY SPRINGER
ARTIST OF
A desolate streetscape looking under the
Manhattan Bridge
FROM EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
A painter’s evocative look at an empty street beside the Manhattan Bridge
August 16, 2021
Anthony Springer was a lawyer-turned-artist who painted the energy and vitality of various downtown New York City neighborhoods until his death in 1995.
A lawyer-turned-artist’s moody Greenwich Village
December 3, 2018
Until recently, I’d never heard of Greenwich Village painter Anthony Springer. But I’ve found myself captivated by his colorful, textural images of a less dense, less luxurious Village and other surrounding neighborhoods.
Born in 1928, Springer, a native New Yorker, worked as a lawyer before deciding to make painting his vocation at the age of 40, according to friend and fellow artist Robert Holden.
Tony was a wonderful, quietly mysterious kind of guy, who played poker all night long, slept until the late morning, and then grabbed his half-box French easel and 16×20 inch stretched linen canvas to go paint the narrow side streets of the Village in the dusty afternoon light, a habit he kept up for 20 years or more,” wrote Holden.
When he died in 1995, Springer left behind “hundreds of his beautiful, moody gray cityscapes,” he wrote. More than two decades or so have passed since Springer’s death, and his evocative work serves as a reminder of the very different pre-2000s Greenwich Village. Springer’s “Meatpacking District,” at top, takes us to the Belgian block intersection of Greenwich and Gansevoort Streets.
When Springer painted it, this was a daytime corner of trucks, garbage carts, and pigeons before it became an pricey restaurant playground. His image of a gas station amid tenements is a reminder that downtown used to actually have gas stations.
Could this be the one Eighth and Greenwich Avenues? “Downtown Street” shows a quiet scene of a narrow side street and empty sidewalks. Maybe Mercer Street, or Greene Street?
The last image, “Townhouses and Naked Trees,” feels appropriate for the current season with winter approaching. Hmm, Tenth Street?
[First and last images: Doyle; second and third images: mutualart] Tags:Anthony Springer Greenwich Village, Anthony Springer Painter, Downtown New York Street 1980s, Greenwich Village 1970s, Greenwich Village Gas Station, Greenwich Village painters, Meatpacking District 1980s
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
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COOK WITH EFFLER FAMILY WHO LIVED
IN BLACKWELL HOUSE AROUND 1914.
SEATED BY KITCHEN AREA
Text by Judith Berdy
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Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
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EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
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