Ashcan school painter Everett Shinn gravitated toward New York’s underdogs: the lonely, the lost, the dreamers, and those who appear to be battered by life’s elements.
This food vendor pushing his flimsy wood cart during the holiday season appears to fall into the latter category. Painted in 1904, “Fourteenth Street at Christmas Time” gives us a blustery, snowy street crowded with Christmas tree buyers and other shoppers beside the lights from store window displays.
Our vendor, however, stands away from everyone, his body crouched to avoid the frightful weather. His cart glows with the warmth of hot food cooking…but he has no buyers.
Tags: Christmas in New York City 1904, Everett Shinn Ashcan School, Everett Shinn Fourteenth Street at Christmastime; Everett Shinn Christmas NYC, Everett Shinn New York City, New York in 1904
Ephemeral New York 
December 14, 2020 at 2:52 am |
And I’ll bet the icy wind was blowing from the North.
December 14, 2020 at 3:09 am |
Who has the better “street meat”, back then or now?
December 14, 2020 at 5:16 am |
[…] Source: FS – NYC Real Estate A food vendor’s Christmas on 14th Street in 1904 […]
December 14, 2020 at 7:56 am |
and once again, nothing has changed
December 14, 2020 at 12:17 pm |
Did street vendors have to get a permit to sell, and if so, are there records of these permit applications? Rumor has it that my great grandfather and great uncle had a cart, possibly in Washington Square, probably at the end of the 19th century. I would like to find out more about this and to see if it is true.
December 14, 2020 at 1:17 pm |
I really don’t know if vendor/peddler permits were required. Considering how many there were back then, I imagine it would be very difficult to regulate street sellers. You might want to try inquiring at the Tenement Museum or the New-York Historical Society, or the NYPL.
December 14, 2020 at 1:20 pm
Thanks for your help. I’ll contact them .
December 14, 2020 at 1:06 pm |
I’d love some of those famous NYC “cart chestnuts” right about now….
December 14, 2020 at 1:18 pm |
I thought those might be chestnuts and was trying to find out how much a bag would sell for back in 1904. Hard way to make a living I’m sure.
December 14, 2020 at 3:21 pm |
My childhood memory still has vague remnants of the scent of roasting chestnuts from carts – but like so many other idiosyncratic vendors they’ve nearly vanished. It’s all halal and hotdog carts now. I miss the Hispanic ladies of my W’msburg youth who made the best grilled kebobs (with the hunk of Italian bread-crust skewered atop!). Anticuchos, would probably be the precise term – they were great, drizzled with a spicy, tangy sauce.
December 15, 2020 at 12:16 am |
I think that man is not stationary. He looks to be pushing the cart through heavy snow..
January 25, 2021 at 1:38 am |
[…] it to Everett Shinn, social realist Ashcan artist, to paint an eviction scene that gives viewers much more than just a portrait of a family thrown […]
February 8, 2021 at 2:45 am |
[…] Glenn O. Coleman’s career as a celebrated Gotham illustrator and painter was a short one. Born in Ohio in 1887, he grew up in Indiana and arrived in Manhattan in 1905 to attend the New York School of Art, studying under Robert Henri and Everett Shinn. […]