54th Street and Fifth Avenue

These days, most of my time is spent in Midtown, specifically around the Museum of Modern Art, where I've started a full-time job. And so, most of my sketching now takes place in that small area of Manhattan. These two buildings, the University Club and the Aeolian Building, are across from each other, on opposite sides of 54th Street and 5th Avenue.

The University Club of New York was founded in 1865 by group of recent Yale college graduates in order to maintain their collegiate association. Its charter stated its goals as being for the "promotion of Literature and Art by establishing and maintaining a Library, Reading Room and Gallery of Art, and by such other means as shall be expedient and proper for such purposes." While founded by Yalies, the Club did have "a determination to suppress in the University Club all college rivalries and to foster only a catholic spirit among the sons of all reputable educational schools." While it was not exclusive to Yale alumni, it certainly was exclusive: Initial dues were a $200 entry fee plus $60 annual dues. Today fees are $1,000-$5,000.

The Club met at various locations, finally settling at the Leonard Jerome mansion at 26th and Madison. However, its membership had ballooned over the decades, and its membership was capped at 1,500 New York residents and 600 non-residents, with nearly 600 people on its waiting list, and the Jerome mansion did not have the space to accommodate. The land at 54th St. and 5th was then occupied by St. Luke's Hospital, and when the hospital announced in 1893 that it would be moving to Morningside Heights and selling the property, the University Club purchased the plot.

The University Club commissioned architects Charles McKim, William Mead and Stanford White - all of whom were members -  to design the new club building. The $1 million building, built in the Italian Renaissance style, opened in 1899. It is six stories tall, but high archways that span two floors give it the appearance of only being three. Seals of eighteen "reputable" universities are mounted to the facade. Competition to secure a space was fierce, and Annapolis created a seal specifically for the purpose. Some of the seals have errors in their depiction, but the Club never saw fit to correct and replace them.

A few years after its opening, Arnold Bennett, a writer for Harper's Magazine, recounted: "One afternoon I was driving up Fifth Avenue in the company of an architectural expert, who, with the incredible elastic good nature of American business men, had abandoned his affairs for half a day in order to go with me on a voyage of discovery, and he asked me, as as to get some basis of understanding or disagreement, what building in New York had pleased me most. I at once said the University Club to my mind a masterpiece. He approved, and a great peace filled our automobile, in which peace we expanded."

It was constructed from Milford granite, a cool pink granite. Over time, the granite became dark with soot. It was cleaned in the mid-1980's, but the original facade had aged to a charcoal gray. I found this color difficult to capture. It really changes over the course of the day, and depending on the weather. The day I worked on it, it had taken on a warm, yellowish cast from the direct midday sunlight.

In addition to promoting arts and literature, the club was a "bachelor house of refuge." Women were not allowed, not just as members, but even as guests, with the exception of a few days set aside for the purpose of showing off to wives. In 1987, the Human Rights Commission filed a gender-discrimination lawsuit, and membership was opened to women.

Now known only by its address, 689 Fifth Ave., this neo-Classical/French Renaissance building was originally known as the Aeolian Building and listed as such by Landmarks Preservation Committee in 2002.

The Aeolian Organ and Music Company was founded in 1887 by William B. Tremaine and manufactured automatic player pianos. Prominent pianists would have their performances recorded onto paper rolls to be played on these machines, the equivalent of a recording contract of their day. In 1912, the company constructed a large concert hall on 42nd St., and in 1926 commissioned architects Warren & Wetmore to design this building as the company's headquarters.

In 1926, during construction, a fire broke out on a wooden scaffolding. New Yorker columnist George S. Chappell wrote, "the recent fire woke up members of the University Club, who had not been roused in years." The building finally opened 1927, with five floors of showrooms and a recital hall seating 150. The Fifth Avenue Association awarded it gold medal for "the most beautiful building in the Fifth Avenue District in 1926."

The 1929 stock market crash and then the advent of radio killed player piano business. Aeolian merged with another company and left building in 1938. In 1930, Elizabeth Arden opened a store in ground floor; remaining there for decades, and the building eventually became popularly known as the Elizabeth Arden building. Another early tenant, shoemaker I. Miller, altered the corner facade. Later, in the 1970s, Gucci occupied space there, and the facade was altered again.




University Club Sources

NY Times: The Perfect Picture of an Urban Club

Daytonian In Manhattan

An extraordinarily detailed history of the University Club of New York

Aeolian Building

NY Times: Streetscapes

Daytonian in Manhattan

The Sherry-Netherland Hotel

The Sherry-Netherland Hotel, at the corner of 5th Ave. and 59th Street. Built in 1927, it is a fancy-schmancy hotel/residence, with rooms renting for $500-$1700/night and units selling for up to $95 million. Though it's a hotel, it only has 54 hotel rooms and suites. Most of it is comprised by 165 co-op apartments, though those owners may then rent out their apartments, like an Airbnb for the 1%.  Past residents included Barbara Streisand, George Burns, Francis Ford Coppola, Diana Ross, and Judge Judy, and David Bowie held court there for a year in 1974.

The building itself is not a NYC landmark, but the clock in front of it is for some reason, and it is part of the Upper East Side Historic District.

The building was built by Louis Sherry, an ice cream magnate, and Lucius Boomer, a hotel operator. Sherry purchased the exclusive New Netherlands Hotel, then demolished it to build his skyscraper. Sherry retained the Netherlands name to maintain its connotations of luxury and elitism, and so named the hotel The Sherry-Netherland. Sherry died in 1926, before the building even opened, but Sherry's Chocolates are still placed on the table in each guest room.

It was designed by the firms of Schultze & Weaver and Buchman & Kahn in a neo-Romanesque and Renaissance style. Completed in 1927, it was the world's tallest apartment building at the time at 38 stories, 560 feet high, and was one of the first in New York City to be built using a steel frame. The neo-Romanesque/Neo-Gothic roofline disguises the water tower. One conspicuous feature is that it lacks the usual hotel lobby bar. Built during Prohibition, it was decided that there was no need to waste the real estate to accommodate a then-illegal activity.

While still under construction, the upper floors suffered a huge fire when a wooden scaffold caught on fire months before it opened. The elevators were not fully functional and the standpipes failed to deliver enough water pressure for firefighters to combat the blaze. The conflagration was visible for miles around, and thousands of people watched until the fire burned itself out. You can see film footage of the fire at this site. Nonetheless, the building was completed and opened on schedule, with apartments renting for $20,000-$30,000 a year.

Photo from NY Times

This company used the fire to pitch their paint!

Two process shots. Initially drawn in pencil, then finished in black ink with pigma micron pens.

The building is filled in with masking fluid before I lay in the sky with watercolor washes. The color on the building is then applied with watercolor pencils.

Historical sources:

NY Times - The Night A Hotel Turned Into A Torch

Storied Hotels

Historic Hotels - Then And Now

BNY OHNY

For real, the last couple of drawings from the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the foreseeable future. I did these, as well as a couple at Woodside Press, during a visit during Open House New York in October.


Building 313, the former Ship Superintendent's Office and Tool room, built 1942. I think it's unused today. The 19th century dahlgren gun I drew sits outside this building.

A barge moored at Dock 72. Probably the biggest change from when I was a Visiting Artist and this subsequent visit was that the giant WeWork building site had been opened. When I was in the Visiting Artist Program, this dock was fenced off for construction. It's now accessible and has a stop for the NYC Ferry service.

A giant buoy on that same ferry. It wasn't until I spent so much time around these docks that I realized how many old tires are used by the maritime industry. Are these tires bought new, or is it a secondary market for old tires?

MOMA View

The view from the Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art. From foreground to back: The University Club, the Peninsula Hotel, Philip Johnson's AT&T Building, and in the back, the super-tall 432 Park Ave.

I've been back to doing some urban sketching again, but my subject matter has changed somewhat. Much more fancy neoclassical buildings, less dilapidated industrial remnants. This is because I've been working full-time at MoMA since June, so most of my time is spent in midtown Manhattan, and much less time to go exploring off-the-beaten-path areas in the far corners of the boroughs.

Road work

Excavator parked on Prospect Ave. I always enjoy drawing construction machines. They have all the intricate gears and hoses and doo-dads that I love to draw, even as I wonder what they actually do. But they also often have surprisingly elegant shapes in them, like the curve of the arm on this machine.

Woodside Press

Open House NYC is an annual event where buildings and sites in the city that are usually not accessible to the public are opened up to visitors. Last year, it coincided with the end of my time as a Visiting Artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Although I'd had access to the Yard for months, I hadn't actually been inside many of the businesses. So I spent much of that day drawing inside Kings County Distillery and Brooklyn Roasting Company. At the very end of the day, I was wandering through Building 2, visiting various shops and studios, when I came across a room full of old printing presses. It was Woodside Press. All the old machines looked so cool, but it was the very end of the day and there was no more time to draw anything, and I wasn't able to make it back before the residency ended. So when Open House rolled around this year, I made a return trip to the Yard and made it a point of dropping by to sketch. It is a traditional letterpress printing studio that produces business cards, posters, stationary, etc., and does book-binding. They sometimes host tours and workshops.

These are just two of the presses they own. They are Chandler & Price platen letterpresses, dating back to the mid to late 1940's. This post from another printmaker, Tiny Dog Press, has a good step-by-step demonstration of how these presses work.

Chandler & Price founded in 1884 in Cleveland by Harrison T. Chandler, an Illinois banker, and William H. Price, son of a builder of printing presses. The company came to dominate the market through the 1960's, when offset duplicating led to the decline to the letterpress. The company went out of business in 1964, but its machines are still in use by printmakers today.

Below are two process pictures for the above drawing. First, down in 2H pencil. This was done very fast, and rougher and looser than I usually do, because of time. Then, finished in ink, mostly with Micron pens. I relied heavily on photo reference I'd taken for some of the machine details. Then applied the color with watercolor and Derwent Inktense pencils.

History of Chandler & Price: C & P - Pressman's Favorite

The last batch of Navy Yard drawings

Here's the last batch of drawings I did during my time with the Visiting Artist Program at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I spent nine months, from April through December, of 2018 at the Yard, drawing every corner I could get to. There were four other terrific people in the group: Filmmaker Mark Street, artists Niki Lederer and Amy Lemaire, and poet Gerald Wagoner. Over these nine months, I produced 96 finished drawings. I have done series of studies of a place or theme, but this was, by far, the longest sustained project I've done. It's taken me almost another year to get everything scanned and posted. I tried to batch them by location or theme or subject, but this last bunch is just in the category "Miscellaneous."

At the start, I did not have a specific agenda; my plan was to just draw everything. As time went on, I found myself focusing most on the smaller remnants of the Yard's past - unused structures, discarded equipment, old street furniture, rusted machinery, century-old canons, and the like. These objects were almost like characters, silent observers of the bustling activity around them. I also thought of this phrase "industrial palimpsest" to describe my focus. "Palimpsest" refers to manuscripts, scrolls, or paper which has been reused; the original writing having been erased, but traces of which are still visible beneath the new text. This is the fascinating thing about a place like the Brooklyn Navy Yard; it is full of active businesses, many of whom are quite high-tech and modern, but everywhere you look are remnants of an industrial past, from the 1940's and sometimes even much further back, pushing through the modern veneer.

First Ave. doesn't exist anymore. It's shown on a 1904 map, but by the 1943 map it is gone, a large building which I think is now the NYPD Tow Pound in its space. I guess they just never got around to taking down this sign. In the background is the Sand Street Gatehouse.

Building 20, originally the Machine Shop and Auto Repair shop.

A security booth. I don't remember why this caught my eye at the time. Sometimes something strikes me visually, and later I can't see what that was. One interesting note is that I visited the Navy Yard again a few weeks ago, and that green fence and concrete barrier are gone. It's now open to the entrance to the gigantic WeWork building on Dock 72.

Giant satellite dish for Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network, outside Building 292. HITN is the largest Spanish-language network in the United States.