Another fine example of Romanesque architecture, 222 Bowery at Prince Street, has an interesting artistic heritage but a dreadful black mark earned just three years after it was built in 1884, about the same time as our ClockTower.
It was built as a YMCA and offered classes including penmanship, bookkeeping and architectural drawing.
Fernand Leger fled the German occupation of France in 1940 and took a studio for a couple years at 222 Bowery. Another painter, Mark Rothko, took studio space there in the late 1950's. And the beat poet and writer William S. Burroughs lived in a rear studio known as ''the bunker'' from the 1970's until his death in 1997.
That’s all good.
But in 1887 a young, award-winning draftsman named Wiltshire Payne applied for a membership to take further study in a mechanical-drawing course, a subject in which he had already received a bronze medal elsewhere.
From the New York Times, December 17, 2000:
“The institute... refused Payne's request for admission, saying that the existing membership in the Bowery building was so prejudiced that many would resign, jeopardizing the good work already in progress.”
It was left to the young man to withdrawal his application and “understand” the situation he had created for the institute, and so he did.
Wiltshire Payne was black.
No comments:
Post a Comment