New York in 2020 feels like Edward Hopper’s city

The exterior city is what unsettles you first. Streets and sidewalks are quiet, lifeless. You see other people going in and out of shops or walking the dog, yet whenever you decide to get some air, six feet away from the occasional passerby, you feel like you’re the only person in all of New York.

(“Morning Sun,” 1952)

Then there’s the interior isolation. So much time spent in your own home (or newly transformed home office) kicks up a sense of alienation from the city that always energized you.

(“Office in a Small City,” 1953)

Who understood more about the disconnection and dehumanization bred by modern life in New York City than Edward Hopper?

(“Approaching a City,” 1946)

It’s the theme of so many of his urbanscapes: the lone man in his office, walled in behind glass and concrete; a train tunnel looking like a abyss. Depictions of roads and trains feel frozen and dehumanized.

(“From Williamsburg Bridge,” 1928)

Okay, maybe it’s not quite that eerie and still in New York City right now, at least not every moment. We have the other members of our households to break the isolation, and time with screens can make us feel connected again.

But in these days of social distancing and self-isolation, it’s pretty normal feel in your bones what Edward Hopper captured—especially in these four paintings.

Where in the city is this row of brick buildings?

When Washington Square North resident Edward Hopper finished this strangely haunting painting of simple low-rise buildings in 1930, it was recorded in his ledger as “Seventh Avenue Shops.”

But could this really be on Seventh Avenue? Not according to a 2007 report from the Greenwich Village Historical Society, which explains that the distinctive cornices, barber shop pole, fire hydrant, and morning shadows place the inspiration not on Seventh Avenue but at 231-235 Bleecker Street, just west of Carmine Street.

Adding to the mystery is that Hopper later changed the name of the painting to “Early Sunday Morning,” which it’s still known by today.

[Photo comparison published in New York magazine, courtesy of the Whitney Museum of Art, John Carbonella]

Many of Hopper’s other works—deceptively simple, solitary, often people-free city corners and streets—have been traced to specific locations that still stand.

Maybe Hopper did draw his inspiration from this slice of Bleecker Street, or perhaps it’s a composite of details from several buildings.

Jeremiah at Vanishing New York has an intriguing take on the “Early Sunday Morning,” as well as a fascinating look at where Hopper’s “Nighthawks” might have been.

Where exactly is this 1913 corner saloon?

Edward Hopper’s simply titled “Corner Saloon,” from 1913, depicts the kind of regular city bar on an ordinary street corner that makes it almost impossible to figure out exactly where it was located.

The smokestacks give a hint: probably by a river.

And a caption from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website states that it’s the same corner Hopper sketched in 1921’s “Night Shadows” (right).

It’s an “actual location in New York . . . It is a downtown street near the riverfront, marked by a simple brick building with a painted sign,” the Met says. But where?