Theater is so important to the economy of New York City. Going to a Broadway show is a popular activity with tourists who come here to visit. But one of the reasons I love living in New York is the wide variety of theater that’s available. The smaller, less publicized theaters that make Greenwich Village their home may be off the radar screen for some visitors, but that means I have a better chance of getting a ticket!

Some of my favorite Greenwich Village theaters, in no particular order, are:

A view of the Cherry Lane in 2006, courtesy of http://newyorkdailyphoto.blogspot.com

The Cherry Lane Theatre

Love, love, love the Cherry Lane Theatre. It’s just oozing history, and that little corner of Commerce Street is just about the most picturesque spot you’ll ever find. Recently Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave appeared in his play, The Revisionist.

The Lucille Lortel Theatre

If a building could talk, oh the stories this place could tell. If you haven’t already been there, check out the Playwrights’ Sidewalk in front of the theater.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater http://www.rattlestick.org/

Providing a supportive, nurturing environment for emerging playwrights is nothing short of essential in order for theater to flourish. Friends of mine saw Michael Urie in Buyer and Cellar here recently and loved it. It will be moving to the Barrow Street Theatre next month so I hope to catch it sometime soon.

Barrow Street Theatre

Greenwich House, home of Barrow Street Playhouse, from www.barrowstreettheatre.com

Located in the historic Greenwich House, Barrow Street Theatre presents one top-notch production after another. A few years ago, I saw a performance of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town directed by David Cromer that blew me away. You know the kind of performance that stays with you for days? This was one of those.

Our good friends at Fourth Arts Block deserve a mention as well. Two of their members that are favorites of mine are LaMaMa and New York Theatre Workshop

Jonathan Larson’s Rent began at New York Theatre Workshop in 1996, before moving to Broadway, where it still runs. And LaMaMa began in 1961 by the late great Ellen Stewart in a basement – how can you not love a scrappy beginning like that?

This is by no means a comprehensive list of Greenwich Village theaters. I encourage all of you to get out there and discover these, and find your own as well! And of course while you’re wandering around, stop and get a bite to eat. But that, my friends, is a completely different blog post.

If you want to find out more about GVSHP’s efforts around theaters, click HERE

The former Cafe-Au-Go-Go. Photo via Rock Cellar Magazine.

A recent post by Rock Cellar Magazine entitled “Rock Meccas of NYC: What Are They Now?” had us here at Off the Grid lamenting the loss of such wonderful music venues as the recently closed Kenny’s Castaways and Bleecker Bob’s Record Store. The article’s then and now photographs are a must see.  But the music scene in the Village is not all gloom and doom. There are wonderful music clubs and stores still extant in our neighborhoods.

Left: Academy Records; Right: Bleecker Street Records

Despite the closure of Bleecker Bob’s record store, there are numerous places offering a large vinyl selection, including Bleecker Street Records, Rebel Rebel, and House of Oldies. You can read more about these stores in this former Off the Grid post.

Le Possion Rogue, located in the former Village Gate, is a newer addition to the Village music scene, but one that offers an eclectic variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, pop, and even opera. Open since 2008, the club was presented with a Village Award in 2011 for its contribution to the Village music scene. Read more about this unique club in this former Off the Grid post.

The Village Vanguard has been open in its present location since 1935. Photo via Inverted Garden.

GVSHP recently featured an evening of jazz at the Zinc Bar, a club run by a brother and sister team located in the former Cinderella Club space on West 3^rd Street. Besides jazz, the club also features Brazilian music and even tango. And when you are talking about jazz in the Village, there are a myriad of options, both historic and new. The venerable Village Vanguard, Smalls, and Arthur’s Tavern all have music nightly.

If you still want to take a nostalgia trip, you can always read these past Off the Grid posts on CBGB’s and the Fillmore East.

James McCreery & Co. Dry Goods, 1869. From the New York Bound Bookshop collection in the GVSHP archives.

The middle of the 19^th Century saw an influx of wealthy New Yorkers moving north of Washington Square.  To cater to this growing population, lavish new developments began to spring up around Union Square.  Gothic Revival religious institutions such as the James Renwick-designed Grace Church and the Richard Upjohn-designed Church of the Ascension (a 2011 GVSHP Village Award winner) served as local landmarks.  For the more informal daily routines of wealthy women, stately department stores became the trend.  Often known as dry goods stores (to distinguish their goods from those carried in hardware and grocery stores) , these large shopping meccas also served as social gathering places where women could mingle with their peers, have lunch, and, of course, spend money.  The original Macy’s store was located on 14^th Street (which was landmarked in 2011) and the A.T. Stewart store was on East 10^th Street and Broadway.  Another important retail presence was James McCreery & Co.

James McCreery & Co. Dry Goods opened its doors in 1869.  Previously, Mr. James McCreery was employed by Ubsdell, Pierson & Lake, a department store located on Broadway and Grand Streets.  He worked his way up to become a partner in the company.  Upon Lake’s retirement in 1867, the company was renamed James McCreery & Company.  He then commissioned a new store on Broadway and 11^th Street that would come to be known as one of the nation’s most esteemed dry goods stores.  The building was designed by architect John Kellum, known for his work in the new medium of cast-iron. His reputation stemmed in part from his design of the A.T. Stewart Department Store.   The James McCreery & Co. building occupied a large lot fronted by both Broadway and 11^th Street.  Both facades were cast-iron from the foundry of J. B. & W. W. Cornell Ironworks.  The Italianate/French Second Empire style exemplified the extravagant goods housed inside, namely the luxurious silks unavailable elsewhere.

Google Street View of the building today.

Around 1895, McCreery followed the department store trend up to “Ladies’ Mile,” 6th Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets, when he opened his second store on 6^th Avenue and 23^rd Street.  According to CastIronNYC.org, “McCreery sold the [11^th Street] building to the Methodist Book Concern and Missionary Society and leased back space in the lower floors; McCreery repurchased the building in 1889. James McCreery & Co. remained in the building until 1902. By 1910 the original mansard roof had been replaced….and the storefront housed Fleischman’s Restaurant.”  The upper floors were occupied by factories that produced suits, shoes, and leather wares.

In 1971, a fire begun in one of the factories destroyed the interior of the building.  Thanks to the cast-iron construction, though, the façade was left unscathed.  The following year, the building was purchased by the Elghanayan brothers.  As noted by Daytonian in Manhattan, “When their intentions to demolish the remaining shell and erect a high-rise apartment building in its place were announced, the community protested.  Residents rallied along with the Friends of Cast Iron and community groups, appearing before the Board of Appeals. The Board granted variances that made renovating the existing structure to residential use economically feasible.”  This project became an early example of a commercial building converted to residential use.  During the adaptation, the mansard roof was removed and the two setback stories were added.  It was renamed the Cast Iron Building.  There are 144 apartments, none of which are identical.  The building is currently calendared for landmark designation.

Let’s see what good fortune mid-May has brought to us in years gone by…

Judson Memorial Church, with the Campanile and part of the Hall at right

One of the Village’s earliest designated individual landmarks was Judson Memorial Church, Campanile, and Hall, designated May 17, 1966.  This incredible ensemble of buildings at #51-55 cover the entire blockfront of Washington Square South between Thompson and Sullivan Street, with the exception of the NYU Kevorkian Center at the western end of the block at #50 (GVSHP in fact argued that Kevorkian should be included within the South Village Historic District to be considered by the City because, among other reasons, it did such a fine and respectful job of relating to the landmarked Judson Memorial Church and Hall it adjoins).

NYU Kevorkian Center (r.) seamlessly connects with the roofline of Judson Memorial Hall.  The red and yellow brick buildings directly to the east of Kevorkian are all part of the landmarked Judson Memorial Church and Hall complex.

It’s hard to summarize the incredible architectural, social, and cultural significance of this complex of buildings, which is among the most important and most beloved in New York.  You can get a taste by reading the landmark designation report for Judson Church HERE, and for the Hall and Campanile HERE.

Like Judson Memorial Church and Hall, 83 and 85 Sullivan Street (between Spring and Broome Streets) were designated as a pair, in this case on May 15, 1973, so they’ll be celebrating their 40th anniversary as New York City landmarks tomorrow.  While newer as landmarks, 83 and 85 Sullivan Street are considerably older than their turn-of-the-century counterparts on Washington Square South; built in 1819, they are among the oldest extant structures in the South Village.

83 (r.) and 85 Sullivan Street, via flickr Emilio Guerra

In fact, 83 & 85 Sullivan Street were built as part of the very first stage of urban settlement of this part of town, even before the particularly virulent yellow fever and cholera epidemics of 1822 famously sent New Yorkers permanently packing from their downtown homes to the more salubrious, rural climes of Greenwich Village to the north of the city.

While 83 & 85 Sullivan reflect the settlement of modestly successful craftspeople in this area (in this case, carpenters), Judson Church, built at the end of the same century (and at the other end of the South Village) reflects a later stage of the neighborhood’s development, and the dramatic  changes which took place here over the intervening decades.  Judson was built specifically to tend and appeal to impoverished immigrants who had moved into and come to define this neighborhood by the late 19th century, its Italian architecture partly a reflection of the desire to reach immigrants from that country.  By the time Judson was built, many of the houses like 83 and 85 Sullivan Street had been demolished to make way for tenements, altered and “tenementized” with new floors added to accommodate multiple families, or at the very least divided up into multiple units (read more in the 83 Sullivan Street designation report HERE and the 85 Sullivan Street designation report HERE).

116 Sullivan Street was also landmarked on May 15, 1973.  Built just 13 years later in 1832, one block further north, and ostensibly in the same Federal style as 83 and 85 Sullivan Street, 116 Sullivan Street nevertheless reflects a very different stage of the South Village’s development. Compared to 83 and 85, 116 Sullivan is grander in every respect, reflecting the increasing wealth found in New York, and particularly in this area, as the early 19th century progressed.  83 and 85 Sullivan’s modesty and simplicity is replaced by an opulence and elaboration of detail, at least around the doorway, unusual for a Federal style house.  Among the unique features of 116 Sullivan Street’s doorway is the carved wood made to look like drawn curtains surrounding each of the doorway’s sidelights (read more in the 116 Sullivan Street landmark designation report HERE).

116 Sullivan Street, with close up of door details on right.

116 Sullivan Street, like 83 and 85 Sullivan Street, originally had a peaked roof with dormers, which was replaced with a full floor and flat roof in the early 1870′s, as waves of immigrants began to saturate the neighborhood during its post-Civil War stage of development.  Appropriately enough, 116 Sullivan Street’s new cornice is bold and prominent, while 83 and 85′s new additional is modest and restrained.

The three Sullivan Street houses, Judson Memorial Church and Hall, and the seven other individual landmarks in the South Village had for many years been tiny islands of protected historic resources, while their surroundings remained vulnerable to entirely out-of-scale and out-of-character new construction.

Historic Districts are in purple while individual landmarks are noted with blue icons.  The proposed South Village Historic District Phase II lies between Houston Street and Washington Square, roughly bounded by Sixth Avenue and LaGuardia Place.  Phase III is south of Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue and the SoHo Historic District, extending roughly to Watts Street.

The 2010 designation of the first phase of our proposed South Village Historic District captured three of these individual landmarks within a historic district, while the proposed second phase of the district, now set to be voted upon before the end of the year, would capture at least another three (depending upon how the boundaries are ultimately drawn, Judson Church and Hall would be either directly adjacent to or possibly within the new district).  The rest await designation of a third and final phase of our proposed South Village Historic District to protect their contexts.

Landmark designation of the South Village, like the neighborhood’s development, seems to come in stages.

Source: Landmarks Preservation Commission

Today, we’d like to extend a “Happy Fifth ‘Landmark’ Birthday” to the NoHo Historic District Extension, which the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated on May 13, 2008. As you can see in the above historic district map, the extension connects the NoHo Historic District and the NoHo East Historic District.

For the most part, the 56 buildings in the extension front Bond or Great Jones Street, but a number also face the Bowery, East 4th Street, and Lafayette Street. The district also has a connection to Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat – do you know which building can claim ties to these two influential artists?

57 Great Jones Street, photo courtesy of Chris Hedick.

If you guessed 57 Great Jones Street, then you are correct! Andy Warhol owned the building from 1970 to 1990 and leased it to his friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat, in 1983. Basquiat, who used the space as his studio and residence, died of a drug overdose here in 1988 when he was just 27 years old. You can read more about the history of the building in this past Off the Grid post.

42-44 Great Jones Street. Source: Landmarks Preservation Commission, photo by Carl Forster.

The firehouse at left is another gem on Great Jones Street. The oversized brackets at the cornice are quite eye-catching as you walk down the street, not to mention the dramatic arch at the center of the facade. Built in 1898-99, the firehouse was designed by Ernest Flagg and W. B. Chambers (Flagg designed the former St. Mark’s Rectory that we are housed in at the Neighborhood Preservation Center around this same time!).

Another notable inclusion in the extension is 27 East 4th Street at the northern tip of the district, which over the past year has been the subject of intense public review after a proposal for a new building was submitted to the LPC. The current one-story garage is directly adjacent to the Merchant’s House Museum, an incredibly significant 1832 Greek Revival row house that was given individual landmark status in 1965. You can read more about this new building proposal on our Landmarks Applications Webpage.

Be sure to explore more of the district on our Resources page by clicking on the link for “Historic Districts” and then for the “NoHo Historic District Extension.” There’s also a collection of building photos at the end of the report.

While you’re at it, you can read GVSHP’s testimony to the LPC regarding our support for the district on our NoHo page.

Anthony Campanelli, with his daughter, accepts a Village Award with GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman.

After 60 years, Joe’s Dairy, a small South Village institution specializing in fresh mozzarella (plain, salted, and smoked) will close up their retail store. Community gossip, which is confirmed by Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, says the retail store will only be open through today and tomorrow.  Joe’s Dairy was a Village Award winner in 2009, feted for “creating the best homemade mozzarella in New York City, produced fresh every day in its quintessential South Village store.”  Reports that Joe’s will continue wholesale sales is a small balm to us here at Off the Grid, who will truly miss this village treasure.

Anthony Campanelli pulls and shapes the mozzarella.

We will certainly miss this small business, opened in 1953 (just around the corner from its current location on Sullivan and Houston Streets) by original owner Joe Aiello. Since 1977, this neighborhood institution has been owned by Anthony Campanelli. Anthony, who worked at the store part-time while in high school, purchased the store from Joe. The retail store sells Italian basics such as olives, stuffed peppers, dried pasta, olive oil, canned tomatoes, and thirty-two varieties of cheese. But the piles of boxes labeled whole milk mozzarella curd stacked throughout the store reveal Joe’s true success secret: creamy mozzarella—smoked, salted, or plain—made fresh everyday.

The exterior of Joe’s Dairy retail shop.

The staff at Joe’s Dairy includes Anthony’s brother Vincent, their father Frank and Uncle Nick, family friend Rose Marie Pianoforte who works the front counter, and the boys in the back who all pull the mutz, by hand, out of 185-degree water. Up until now, Joe’s has made and sold over 1,000 pounds of fresh mozzarella every day, to regulars who’ve been coming here since the days when it was owned by Joe Aiello, tour goers on the trail of the Village’s best food shops, and to a long list of New York City restaurants.

Our best wishes to Anthony and the Campanelli family. We hope for the continued success of your wholesale business.

Village Gate, Bleecker Street (photo courtesy of Sharon d’Lugoff)

Let me take you back, way, way back, to the 1980’s. The city was in a kind of crisis mode. It seemed that there was at least one homeless person living on every block. Crime was rampant. Most everyone I knew had a story about being mugged or burglarized or both. You could own a bicycle, but not for long. If you knew the right people, you could buy a stolen bicycle cheap. A subway token (a subway what?) cost 75¢. The Yankees weren’t so good, but the Mets were gaining momentum. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment was listed in the $700 – $800 range. If you were looking for an apartment, your best bet was to get the Village Voice late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning and scour the classified ads. After circling the possibilities, you would set out to the addresses for the open house, where there were already dozens of people waiting. Then you would enter single file, do a “once-through” and leave thinking, “What a dump.”

Carmine Street, South Village 1982

My co-workers told me how lucky I was to find a one-bedroom in the Village for under $500. I knew they were right, of course, because I also saw what was in the classifieds, but somehow I didn’t feel so lucky because paying that rent gobbled up most of my disposable income. But I did like the neighborhood; I liked the variety of good, cheap, ethnic food; I liked the big windows that allowed for sunlight and fresh air and unobstructed views. And I liked the good access to the subway, at West 4^th Street and at Houston Street.

One day, sitting up on the roof (which we weren’t supposed to do), I was joined by one of my neighbors, who had lived in the building most of her life. She told me stories of what it was like growing up in the South Village in the 1950’s and 60’s. There was only one doorbell for the whole 5-story tenement building. If you heard the doorbell ring, and you were expecting someone, you had to walk downstairs to open the door. The old dumbwaiter shaft had been removed, but some apartments still used a “water closet” toilet (or “commode” as they called it) in the stairwell outside the apartment.

The building had gaslight fixtures instead of electricity until 1950. That was the year that some of the tenants asked the landlady to call ConEd and have the building “wired”. She refused, so the tenants offered to pay, so she relented. The reason they wanted electricity was that they wanted televisions.

The rent back then was $65 a month. But they didn’t have to pay rent in July and August. That’s because all the families would rent a summer bungalow upstate, and the landlords knew they couldn’t afford both the bungalow and their apartment rent. The landlords thought that if they tried to collect rent in the summer, the families would move out!

The weekend of the 4^th of July, the families would take the train upstate to their vacation bungalows. They only brought a few clothes, towels, and linens, and the kids brought their bicycles. The fathers would come back to the Village apartment and stay there during the week, and on weekends they would join the women and children upstate.

Even up until the 1970’s the owners would charge lower rent on the higher floors, and higher rent on the lower floors, as an incentive to fill the “undesirable” walk-up apartments.  After the 1970’s there were few buildings owned by individual owners, as management companies began to take over.

When I heard these stories, I pictured it all happening in black & white. I couldn’t imagine a New York City where a landlord gave any tenant any kind of break at all, much less 2 months free rent. I couldn’t imagine a landlord who was afraid that tenants would move out. My experience was that landlords love it when tenants move out, so they can increase the rent!

When I tell these stories now, in the days of $2000 – $3000 rents, it doesn’t seem possible that rents were EVER that low.

To read more about the current status of the South Village, click here.

From the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation report. Photo by Carl Forster.

How time flies – five years ago last March, the former East Eleventh Street Baths between Avenues A and B became an official New York City Landmark. I remember it very well; I wrote the designation report, after all!

Last year, I featured this building on Off the Grid as one of my favorite things. The Indiana limestone and intricate stone carving are quite breathtaking and demonstrate the high-quality craftsmanship of well over a century ago. This historic block, directly north of Tompkins Square Park, also includes buildings in the East 10th Street Historic District, which was designated on January 17, 2012 (my very first day at GVSHP, actually).

Last time, I focused on the surviving design details as well as the use of the site as a public bath for the neighborhood’s poor immigrants. Today, I thought we’d look at what’s changed.

While conducting research for this building, I visited what is now referred to as the Public Design Commission located in City Hall. (I encourage you to schedule a visit to look through PDC’s Archives, which includes files on city-owned properties.) A real treat was looking at the original architectural drawings from 1903. This is something you don’t always come across in building research!

I don’t have all of those drawings on hand to share here today, but the above photograph from 1934 (click photo for source) reveals what I saw in those 1903 drawings. As you can see, the biggest change can be found at the three archways. The 1934 photo shows two wood revolving doors on the outer arches – one to the men’s waiting room and baths and the other to the women’s side (it might be difficult to tell here, but the original drawings show that “MEN” and “WOMEN” were marked on their respective entries above the revolving doors). A decorative wood window providing light to an office was located at the central archway.

The first floor plan at left also shows what visitors once experienced after entering the building. The revolving doors led to completely separate waiting rooms; doors from here took bathers to “rain baths,” as they were commonly first known. This particular bathhouse officially opened on December 18, 1905 and offered 94 showers (67 for men, 27 for women) and seven bathtubs (two for men, five for women) on the first and second floors.

Another bathhouse in our neighborhoods can be found on Carmine Street in the South Village, which is now the Tony DaPolito Recreation Center.

c. 1985 Department of Finance tax photo. Click for source.

Soon after the 1934 photo was taken, changes were on the horizon. Drawings from 1943 revealed that the metal grille transoms, which originally visually united all three archways, were to be replaced with glass block, and the wood doors were to be replaced with aluminum ones.

The above photo from c. 1985 shows that cinder blocks and roll-down gates were installed for garage use. This likely happened in the early 1960s after the public bath ceased to operate here in 1958. As you can see, the building was in need of a little TLC…

The Bathhouse Studios website.

Today, the metal gates at the archways seem to give a nod to the original revolving doors with its circle-in-a-rectangle design scheme (could that be intentional or a nice little coincidence?). The revitalization of this former bathhouse is due in large part to the wonderful efforts of noted photographer Eddie Adams and his wife Alyssa who bought the building in 1994. After Eddie’s death, Alyssa continues to operate the Bathhouse Studios, as it’s now known, as “one of the premiere photo rental spaces in New York City.”

Tomorrow, GVSHP, the Historic Districts Council (HDC), the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative (LESPI), and the East Village Community Coalition (EVCC) are thrilled to be co-sponsoring an event here. We will be celebrating two of our greatest East Village victories in 2012: the designation of the East 10th Street Historic District and the larger East Village/Lower East Side Historic District. You can learn more about these two districts on our Resources page.

Yesterday’s benefit house tour was a tremendous success.  The weather was crisp, clear, and beautiful, the homes spectacular, and the reception at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise’s gallery at 620 Greenwich Street, with wine from Mark Trujillo, was a lot of fun.  Thank you to everyone who supported the benefit, our intrepid Benefit Committee (especially co-chairs Cassie Glover and Leslie Mason), and the more than 160 volunteers who made it possible, as well as GVSHP’s incredibly hard-working staff who pulled it off without a hitch, especially Sheryl Woodruff and Drew Durniak.

While we’re all recovering, I thought we’d just post a few preliminary snapshots of yesterday’s tour and reception — look for more on our Flickr page soon!

Entrance to house on tour

Entrance to house on tour

Entrance to house on tour

Entrance to house on tour

Original architectural detail on stoop on house on tour

Entrance to house on tour

Entrance to house on tour

Reception at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Reception at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Artwork at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Bruce and Naomi Usher; Naomi and Studio Usher designed the invitation, program, and materials for the benefit

GVSHP’s Leslie Mason (l.) and Kate Bostock-Shefferman at the reception

Photo courtesy of Ephemeral New York (click photo for source.)

Slow down! I urge you to spend a moment there. Read the sign posted on the fence. Step off the sidewalk and into the Golden Swan Garden, a small refuge of flowers and trees, on the site of the long-gone Golden Swan Café. Such an elegant and demure name, but don’t be fooled. The Golden Swan was known by its regular clientele as the Hell Hole.

The building that formerly stood on this site was built sometime in the mid-1800’s, and demolished in 1928 (for the construction of the Sixth Avenue subway underneath.) For most of its life it housed this saloon, once operated by a colorful character named Thomas Wallace, a former boxer. Regular clients at the Hell Hole included playwright Eugene O’Neill, a member of the nearby Provincetown Playhouse, and painter John Sloan.

O’Neill based characters in his play, The Iceman Cometh, on the people he encountered at the Hell Hole, including Harry Hope, based on Thomas Wallace. And Sloan made an etching depicting the interior space of this tavern, as well as a painting, The City from Greenwich Village, that includes the exterior of the building, and the also-long-gone elevated train.

“The Hell Hole” by John Sloan, linked from The Bowery Boys (click for source)

When you step into the Golden Swan Garden, located just outside the Greenwich Village Historic District, try to imagine those good old days when cheap rents and numerous neighborhood dives attracted so many creative types – writers, painters, and musicians – who changed, even revolutionized their respective fields, and influenced everyone who followed them.  Try to imagine the rumble of the overhead el; the noisy, crowded, doubtless smoke-filled scene just teeming with that kind of on-edge excitement. Try to imagine life in New York, life in Greenwich Village in the early 1900’s. I think this is something that most of us have in our minds the way television and films present it to us. But when I step into the Golden Swan Garden, I feel the ghosts of that time; I imagine that dark, dank space and that creative energy in abundance. I lament what we have lost, but I am thankful for the masterpieces of Sloan, O’Neill, and others, that endure and take us back to their time.