In our weekly engagement calendar of New York City-related art from the Metropolitan Museum, this week is devoted to Stuart Davis' 1930 "Jefferson Market, New York." I've long known that the pretty Jefferson Market you see today, housing a library and abutting an opulent community garden, is different from its aspect in the past, when it was a police station and prison, and the current site of the garden was the fearsome Women's House of Detention. And Sixth Avenue was dominated by an elevated trainline! The Women's House of Detention was built a year after Davis' painting, but Jefferson Market already looks part of a much more crowded cityscape. All the pictures I've seen of the "El" are from above or the side; I hadn't considered that Sixth Avenue will have been at least partly covered by metal girders, a twilit tunnel even on a sunny day. And of course the Women's House of Detention wasn't the only new building going up near Jefferson Market in 1930...!Thursday, October 05, 2017
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In our weekly engagement calendar of New York City-related art from the Metropolitan Museum, this week is devoted to Stuart Davis' 1930 "Jefferson Market, New York." I've long known that the pretty Jefferson Market you see today, housing a library and abutting an opulent community garden, is different from its aspect in the past, when it was a police station and prison, and the current site of the garden was the fearsome Women's House of Detention. And Sixth Avenue was dominated by an elevated trainline! The Women's House of Detention was built a year after Davis' painting, but Jefferson Market already looks part of a much more crowded cityscape. All the pictures I've seen of the "El" are from above or the side; I hadn't considered that Sixth Avenue will have been at least partly covered by metal girders, a twilit tunnel even on a sunny day. And of course the Women's House of Detention wasn't the only new building going up near Jefferson Market in 1930...!