Tuesday, January 21, 2025 – ALL CREATURES HUMAN AND FOUL CHALLENGE THE SNOW

By admin

You Can PracticallyFeel the Biting Wind

and Snow in this Raw 1911 New York

Winter Street Scene

TUESDAY,  JANUARY 21, 2025

ISSUE #1373
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK

DYLAN BROWN

January 20, 2025

There’s a lot of white in this depiction of a blustery winter day in the New York City of 1911: white snow on the street, stoops, and light poles; white-gray skies filling with factory smoke (or smoke from ship smokestacks?) across a grayish river.

Then there’s the violent white brushstrokes of howling wind against the red brick buildings. The wind is painted so viscerally, you can almost feel the icy snow and biting cold (and sympathize with the woman shielding her face in her coat, holding on to her hat).

“City Snow Scene” is an early work of Stuart Davis, a Pennsylvania native born in 1892 who is much better known as a Modernist painter. As a 17-year-old launching a career in New York, he fell under the thrall of early 20th century Ashcan artists and their gritty depictions of urban life.

The painting was auctioned by in 2012 by Christie’s, which had this to say about it: “Through bravura brushwork and a simplified muted palette, Davis succeeds in rendering a dreary winter’s day in lower Manhattan.”

“With a generous application of whites, Davis works up the surfaces to portray the texture of the snow which is juxtaposed with the more carefully applied reds he employs to develop the architecture in the background,” per Christie’s website.

“Broad, heavily applied strokes of black are the only device Davis employs to represent the pedestrians with the exception of a few simple touches of orange that delineate the faces of the primary figures in the foreground.”

It’s how a New York City winter used to be—and is once again in winter 2025.

DYLAN BROWN SPOTTED ROSIE ENJOYING A STROLL IN THE SNOW

PHOTO OF THE DAY

The caption actually states that we’re on East 79th Street between Avenues A and B—a reminder that both avenues originally extended all the way through the Upper East Side. Avenue A is York, and Avenue B is East End Avenue, which starts at 79th Street.

What’s this little boy doing on the rock-strewn ground of a stoneworks business beside the East River—close enough to what was then called Blackwell’s Island that the octagon tower of the lunatic asylum is within view? The caption says he’s drinking water from a spring.

An actual spring on the north side of East 79th Street? It’s hard to believe, but in fact Manhattan used to have plenty of springs. Some remain buried underground, only appearing during building construction, per this New York Times article. Today, you can still find springs in Central Park.

It should be noted that the photographer, James Reuel Smith, made a name for himself at the turn of the last century taking photos of springs and wells in northern Manhattan and the Bronx, documenting these vanishing waterways and the people who still drank from them. A book of his photos was published posthumously in 1935.

Who is this boy, with his heavy cap and delicate lace-up boots? I’m guessing he’s part of a family that moved uptown to the new tenement rows of Yorkville, where working-class and poor parents, mostly immigrants, toiled in factories, breweries, and on the waterfront.

The East Side Settlement House would be built on East 76th Street in 1903, offering activities and educational support for kids as well as their parents. But for now, an undeveloped stretch of land near the East River apparently made do as a play space, at least for this boy.

East 79th Street looks pretty rough in this photo. But within a decade or so, undeveloped areas like this would soon be cleaned up and turned into housing lots. What would become of this boy? With no way to know for sure, we’ll have to assume that he grew up and made his way.

CREDITS

:New York City Street Scene 1911, Noew York City Winter 1911, Paintings of New York City in Snow, Stuart Davis Ashcan Paintings NYC, Stuart Davis City Snow Scene, Stuart Davis NYC Street Scenes, Winter Landscapes NYC Snow| 
 Boy Drinking From Spring Upper East Side 1898, Charles Huber & Son Stone Works NYC, East 79th Street in 1898, James Reuel Smith Springs and Wells Photos, Springs in New York City 1890s, Upper East S

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