Tuesday, December 6, 2022 – A FAMILIAR STYLE BUILDING BY THE SAME ARCHITECT AS OUR CHAPEL
FROM THE ARCHIVES
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2022
THE 853rd EDITION
John Sloan’s
“Obvious Delight”
with
Jefferson Market Courthouse
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
| As a prolific painter living on Washington Place and working out of a high-floor studio at West Fourth Street, John Sloan had a wonderful window into the heart of the Greenwich Village of the 1910s—its small shops, bohemian haunts, immigrant festivals, and all the life and activity of the elevated trains up and down Sixth Avenue. He also had a view of Jefferson Market Courthouse. Once the site of a fire tower and market that opened in 1832, the Victorian Gothic courthouse with its signature clock tower replaced the original structures at Sixth Avenue and 10th Street in 1877.Like contemporary New Yorkers, he seemed to be enchanted by the Courthouse, which functions today as a New York Public Library branch. He was so entranced by it, Sloan put it in several of his works, either as the main subject or off to the side.[“Jefferson Market, Sixth Avenue,” 1917] |
 [“Sixth Avenue El at Third Street,” 1928]”Sloan obviously delighted in the irregular rooftop patterns and the spires of several other structures beyond, contrasting the soaring tower and the gables of the courthouse with the swift rush of the Sixth Avenue elevated railroad below,” explained William H. Gerdts in his 1994 book, Impressionist New York.His interest wasn’t just in the building’s architectural value. Sloan, a keen observer of what he described as New York City’s “drab, shabby, happy, sad, and human life,” regularly visited the notorious night court there to witness the human drama that appeared before judges—men and women typically brought in for drunkenness, prostitution, and petty crime. |
 [“Jefferson Market Jail, Night,” 1911]”This is much more stirring to me in every way than the great majority of plays. Tragedy-comedy,” he said about the night court, per Gerdts’ book.”Sloan was obviously drawn to the building’s. picturesque mass as well as its physical and symbolic situation with Greenwich Village, and no other New York structure, not even the Flatiron Building, enjoyed such distinctive monumental rendering by him,” wrote Gerdts.“Snowstorm in the Village,” an etching from 1925, shows Jefferson Market Courthouse’s gables and turrets covered in snow and is worth a look here.[Top image: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; second image: Whitney Museum; third image: paintingstar.com] |
VISIT OUR TABLE AT THE POP-UP SALE ON SATURDAY, DEC. 10TH, 546 MAIN STREET
9 A.M. TO 5 P.M.
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/12/13/rihs-lecture-back-number-budd
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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ROOSEVELTSLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
CORNICE OF SMALLPOX HOSPITAL RUIN
NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED FOR THE BETTER SINCE THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN IN 2011
ARON EISENPREISS AND HARA REISER GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
[Top image: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; second image: Whitney Museum; third image: paintingstar.com]
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Copyright © 2022 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
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