New York City
McSorley's Old Ale House, NYC. pastel 18x24
Atlas, NYC pastel 22x30
I have many memories of New York City. I have been travelling to New York City since I was a kid. We visited often as my mother had cousins living there. When my grandmother came to the US from Russia in the 1920s she lived with her family on the lower east side on Monroe Street. As young woman she worked as a seamstress in a building not far from the Shirt Waist Factory, and saw the fire. She was married at City Hall in 1929. My mother was sent to NYC during the polio epidemic in Toronto and could remember spending time with her teenage cousins out on wrought iron balconies on the Lower East Side. My parents went to NYC on their honeymoon.
For a period of time Charlotte and I used to go twice a year, we visited museums and galleries, went to the opera, had lunch or drinks at Bemelmans Bar and the Four Seasons, went to Katz’s deli, the Oyster Bar at Grand Central, did the galleries in Soho, went to Chinatown, Little Italy, Strand Books and bought art supplies at the wonderfully ancient Central Supply, ate huge plates of BBQ at Virgils, saw Blossom Dearie perform at Danny’s Skylight Room, and Woody Allen at the Carlyle. We love the place!
Paramount Building, Times Square pastel 22x30
Katz's Deli NYC, charcoal 22x30
I took each of our kids to NYC after they graduated from high school, and we did all the tourist things, Times Square, Rockefeller Centre, the Empire State Building, a musical on Broadway, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island where their great grandmother landed. When I took Julian on his trip it was only months after 9/11, all the memorials were still up around the city, ‘missing’ notices pinned to fences, the site a ruin. I felt like my city had been attacked, with many storefronts in lower Manhattan still covered in dust, but people were so happy to see us visiting.
Charlotte and I had an ‘aha’ moment when we finally found my grandparents marriage certificate in the basement of the City Archives near the Brooklyn Bridge which we walked across every time we went. Charlotte often travelled with ice skates to skate at Bryant Park, the rink in Rockefeller Plaza, and at Central Park.
There are so many memories because we went so often. In later years staying with cottage friends who live near Union Square, their neighbourhood became ours. City Bakery for breakfasts, grocery shopping in the Union Square markets, Trader Joe’s Wine Shop. I was attracted to everything, the history, new and old discoveries. I loved walking the streets taking photographs day and night, and sketching.
I had large exhibits of NYC images in 2005 and 2012. All of the images can be viewed on my website.