This Martin Lewis etching captures the slick sidewalks and belching smoke on a gray and dreary stretch of the East 30s.
“The Thirty-fourth Street Armory at Park Avenue, now demolished, is shown in the print at right,” states Paul McCarron in The Prints of Martin Lewis. “It was a few blocks from Lewis’s studio at 145 East Thirty-Fourth Street.”
It’s the same armory depicted in Quarter of Nine, Saturday’s Children, a Martin Lewis etching from 1929.
What became of the chateau-like structure on the corner?
Tags: 34th Street Armory NYC, Martin Lewis etching, Martin Lewis prints, Murray Hill in the 1920s, Murray Hill street, New York artists, New York street, rain on Murray Hill, Rain on Murray Hill Martin Lewis
November 19, 2012 at 9:32 am |
When I was a kid in the 1950s my father dragged me in to a revival meeting that was going on in the Armory, it was something out of the film ‘Elmer Gantry,’ the revivalists singing and chanting. I do recall how hot and sticky it was, hundreds of people fanning themselves with no AC, that going outside was a certain relief, whew!
Many years later I roamed that empty field the Armory was on, humming a few bars of that old revivalist song, ‘Faith, Hope and Charity,’ feeling very sad. But over what, the Armory which had disappeared into nothingness or the promise of the past which proved itself to be a big fat nothing anyway?
I wish I was on that Armory empty lot again, remembering…
November 19, 2012 at 1:14 pm |
The cute corner building became a highrise, as usual in this ugly city of NY.
November 19, 2012 at 4:18 pm |
As always, right?
November 19, 2012 at 6:55 pm |
I guess every building shown in this picture has since been demolished, except perhaps for the tall commercial building in the horizon. My guess is that it’s the Murray Hill Medical Group building over by the Midtown Tunnel access street.
November 20, 2012 at 8:28 pm |
http://library.gc.cuny.edu/34th_st/archive/files/httplibrarygccunyedu34th_stimages34052ac_623710d090.jpg
Here’s a great photo of the Armory. Does anyone know why it was torn down?