The 1928 16-story Colonial Revival style apartment building at 49-51 Fifth Avenue was the home of highly acclaimed expressionist-turned-representational painter Jane Freilicher. Freilicher, known for her vibrant landscapes and still lifes, was a longtime Village resident who studied at the Village-based Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in the late 1940s. She resided in the East Village on 11th Street and 16 West 11th Street before moving to 49-51 Fifth Avenue in 1965. The artist lived at this address, where she had a greenhouse studio, until her death in 2014. According to Freilicher, interviewed for the “Greenwich Village Stories” collection published by Village Preservation, she could paint views from her studio “in more or less every direction.” “I have painted these views for years, never tiring of them,” Freilicher affirmed.

“Champion Flowers” by Jane Freilicher likely showing the view from her building at 51 Fifth Avenue, 1999 One of the most esteemed female artists of her generation, Freilicher was a significant, unifying presence in the New York School, an informal group developed in the 1950s that included artists Larry Rivers, Grace Hartigan, Alfred Leslie, Robert Goodnough, Mike Goldberg, and Fairfield Porter. Freilicher was especially close to the School’s poets, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Frank O’Hara, with whom she shared deep friendships and a distinctive artistic camaraderie. Each of these individuals wrote about Freilicher and her work, and she in turn painted their portraits, designed their book covers, and corresponded with them regularly. The impact of these relationships on the life and work of Freilicher, Koch, Ashbery, Schuyler, and O’Hara – all renowned artists and writers in their own right – cannot be overstated. While living at 49-51 Fifth Avenue for almost fifty years, Freilicher expanded her portfolio, exhibited across the country, and received a number of major awards including the National Academy of Design Saltus Gold Medal, the Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Hall Museum, and the Academy of Arts and Letters’ highest honor: a Gold Medal in Painting. By the end of her life, her art had been shown in over fifty solo exhibitions and hundreds of group exhibitions, and it is now in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of Art. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

From 1957 to 1959, the celebrated New York School poet Frank O’Hara lived at 90-92 University Place while he was also a curator of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Frank O’Hara He alluded to his home here in his poem “University Place.” O’Hara chose to live at this location because of its proximity to the Cedar Tavern, and because of University Place’s association at the time with the abstract expressionists. O’Hara was deeply involved with the abstract expressionist community through his work at MoMA and as a writer. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The famous Cedar Tavern was the number one hangout for New York School artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline, just to name a few. They gathered here at least every other night to drink, socialize, and discuss art. In fact, it is often said that it was here that Abstract Expressionism was born and bred. The tavern changed locations several times, but in 1945 it moved to 24 University Place, where it experienced its heyday. Pollock and the like were fond of the Cedar for its cheap drinks (15 cents a beer, to be exact) and its unpretentious location on then off-the-beaten-track University Place. Long after its prime, the Cedar Tavern moved to a now-much-altered building at 82 University Place. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Originally built c. 1870 as a residence, 32 East 10th Street was altered for manufacturing usage in 1898. By the mid-1950s, as the surrounding neighborhood transformed into the center of the art world, no. 32 became the home and studio of the New York School abstract expressionist painter Franz Kline. Kline lived here from 1953 to 1957, during which time he produced some of his most noteworthy works. After holding his first one-man show at the Egan Gallery in New York in 1950, in 1954 Kline showcased a one-man show of large paintings at the Institute of Design in Chicago. That same year nine of his paintings were included in the Twelve Americans show at the Museum of Modern Art.

Franz Kline, 1960 Franz Kline (1910-1962) was born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania and moved to New York City in 1938. He started his artistic career as a realist painter, but after meeting Willem de Kooning his style evolved into abstract expressionism. Kline was especially known for his black and white abstractions using house paint, and his style of painting came to be known as what art critic Harold Rosenberg referred to as “action painting.” Later in the 1950s, while living at 32 East 10th Street, Kline began to employ color, as demonstrated in Orange Outline (1955).

“Painting Number 2” by Franz Kline, 1954 One of the key figures in the abstract expressionist movement, Kline was a founding member of “the Club,” an extremely influential collective of New York School painters organized in 1949 and located at 39 East 8th Street, two blocks south of his home. He was also very connected to the 10th Street Gallery Scene, located just east. Like many of the abstract expressionist painters of this period, Kline was also a regular at the nearby Cedar Tavern, located around the corner at 24 University Place near East 9th Street. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The famed New York School abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock spent most of his career in the Village, where he was influenced by the intensity, expanse, and rhythm of the city. He lived and worked in numerous places during his time here, including 240 West 14th Street (his first recorded address in NYC), 46 Carmine Street, 46 East 8th Street, 76 West Houston Street, and 47 Horatio Street. One of his lesser-known homes, when he himself was a still-unknown painter just starting out, was 49 East 10th Street.

“Achelous and Hercules” mural by Thomas Hart Benton, 1947 At the age of 18, Pollock followed his brothers to New York City, and began studying at the Art Students League. In October of 1931, when registering for a mural painting class with Thomas Hart Benton, Pollock listed his address as 49 East 10th Street.

Spectators at the Washington Square Art Show, c. 1950 Around this time, in 1931, Pollock was in desperate need of money, and began to set up his art for sale on a sidewalk near Washington Square Park. Soon he was joined by other Village artists, including Willem de Kooning, Alice Neel, Saul Berman, and Ilya Bolotowski. The informal sidewalk exhibition garnered attention and support, developing into the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit, which still occurs twice a year on the weekends surrounding Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Jackson Pollock Following his time on East 10th Street, Pollock worked on the Work Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1942, which gave him the financial security to live and experiment with his art. By 1947, he had developed his iconic “drip style” for what came to be known as his “action paintings.” Using sticks, trowels, or knives, he would drip and splatter the paint, and sometimes he would simply pour the paint directly from the can. Pollock was to become one of the most well-known and influential artists in the abstract expressionist movement, also called the New York School, which was responsible for moving the center of the art world from Europe to New York City, and specifically Greenwich Village. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The photographer Aaron Siskind (December 4, 1903 – February 8, 1991) lived and had a studio here beginning in the 1930s, above the famed Corner Book Shop. He was closely associated with the abstract expressionist and New York School of writers, who were centered in this area in the post-World War II period, especially his close friends Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline, with whom he also showed at the Charles Egan Gallery.

Aaron Siskind A native of the Lower East Side, Siskind graduated from City College in 1926 and taught in New York’s public school system between 1926 and 1949. He first rose to prominence in the 1930s as a member of the socially-conscious New York Photo League, for which he created his celebrated photo series Harlem Document, “one of the most important visual records of Harlem during the Great Depression,” which contained many photos not published until 1981. Harlem Document was a moving series of portraits as well as scenes of street and home life in Harlem from 1932-1940. Part of a larger project initiated by the Photo League to examine urban neighborhoods, it was funded in part by the Federal Writers Project and included textual documentation of the community and its subjects as well. This was quickly followed by Siskind’s series “The Most Crowded Block in the World” which also focused on African American life and subjects in New York. These two projects collectively provide one of the most extensive and insightful documentations of African American life in New York and specifically in Harlem during this time. In 1936, Siskind founded the League’s Feature Group, which documented New York City, focusing especially on Harlem. Siskind’s other work for the League included projects “The Catholic Worker Movement” and “Dead End: The Bowery.”

Photo by Aaron Siskind, 1948 By World War II Siskind left the League, which disbanded, and moved from a social realist to a more abstract style, wherein his work focused on the details of things, presented as flat surfaces creating a new image independent of the original subject. “For the first time in my life subject matter, as such, had ceased to be of primary importance,” Siskind explained. “Instead I found myself involved in the relationship of these objects, so much so that the pictures turned out to be deeply moving and personal experiences.” His elimination of pictorial space and his concentration on the arrangement of objects within the picture plane were seen by the Abstract Expressionists as a kindred approach to visual representation. Siskind also developed a close association with the artist Robert Rauschenberg, whose studio was located just a few blocks south in Lafayette Street. Siskind taught at Chicago’s Institute of Design and the Illinois Institute of Technology as well as the Rhode Island School of Design, and worked and photographed around the world. Siskind was also a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education in 1963. According to the International Center of Photography, “Siskind’s abstract photographs from the late 1940s and early 1950s were a major force in the development of avant-garde art in America. In rejecting the third dimension, this work belied the notion that photography was tied exclusively to representation. As such, Siskind’s work served as an invaluable link between the American documentary movement of the 1930s and the more introspective photography that emerged in the 1950s and 60s.” Art critic Grace Glueck went even further, saying of Siskind’s work “\[it] crossed the line between photography and painting…\[t]hey influenced today’s recognition of photography as an art equal to that made with brush and canvas.” Siskind’s works are found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., among others. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

From 1952 to 1959, the 1844-45 Greek Revival house at 88 East 10th Street was the home and studio of Dutch-American painter Willem de Kooning, one of the most significant of the abstract expressionists who redefined the international art world and pulled its center to East 10th Street. Part of the New York School, de Kooning lived and worked here during some of his most important years as an artist. At this time, he and his contemporaries helped create the famed “Tenth Street Galleries” on East 10th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues.

Willem de Kooning on 88 East 10th Street Stoop with Novelist Noel Clad, April 5, 1959. Photo © Estate of Fred W. McDarrah These highly influential abstract expressionists found the area anti-picturesque – an ideal setting for their anti-romantic painting – and their presence here precipitated a larger movement of artists from Greenwich Village to the more affordable East Village. 88 East 10th Street was also the first place where de Kooning combined his working studio with his residence – a trend for artists in the mid-20th century which came to transform nearby neighborhoods like SoHo and NoHo, of which this was an early example.

“Woman 1” by Williem de Kooning, 1950-1952 While at this studio, de Kooning completed many of his major works, including those featuring New York City’s downtown and de Kooning’s surroundings on East 10th Street. In his first years at No. 88, de Kooning turned his attention to his Woman series, featured in March of 1953 at the Sidney Janis Gallery in the “Willem de Kooning: Paintings on the Theme of Woman” exhibit. The Museum of Modern Art bought “Woman I,” and Blanchette Rockefeller, the wife of John D. Rockefeller III, bought “Woman II.” In the fall of 1954 through the next year and a half, de Kooning transitioned to painting what Thomas Hess, editor and art critic of the time for ArtNews, referred to as “abstract urban landscape” and what art critic Harold Rosenberg called the “no environment” of the East 10th Street artist enclave.

88-82 East 10th Street (l. to r.). Among the visible businesses are the New York Hotel Employment Agency, The Stryke Gallery, 84 Gallery, and the J\&J Polishing and Plating Co., August 23, 1963. Photo © Estate of Fred W. McDarrah Though de Kooning found a new, larger studio space by 1958 or early 1959 at 831 Broadway, he continued to work in his East 10th Street studio while a renovation of the new space occurred, and rented out No. 88 until 1963. Today, very few of the structures housing the former galleries and artists’ studios central to this abstract expressionist school of the 1940s and 1950s remain from this period. 88 East 10th Street, by contrast, is nearly intact to its appearance during de Kooning’s time. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The March Gallery opened at 48 Third Avenue in March, 1957 and stayed here until 1960. This was one of the “Tenth Street Galleries” that filled the short block between Third and Fourth Avenues. In the 1940s and 1950s, these galleries transformed the area into the epicenter of the New York, American, and international art world.

Elaine de Kooning, 1980 Artists Boris Lurie, Sam Goodman, and Stanley Fisher co-founded the NO!art movement, a radical avant-garde anti-art-establishment movement, with exhibitions at the March Gallery. The controversial movement called for socially and politically involved art that resisted and combated the forces of the market. It opposed the trend of the commercialization of art, including popular movements of the era including abstract expressionism and Pop Art. Lurie also often related his work to his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.

“Portrait of Fairfield Porter” by Elaine de Kooning, 1953 Elaine de Kooning was another member of this and other small, emerging downtown galleries. As a woman artist in the male-dominated New York School, many of the better-established uptown gallery owners were ambivalent about her work. However, in the downtown scene, her paintings were deeply appreciated, and her membership contributed to the rise of the galleries of which she was a part. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .