My old High School was in a run down neighborhood through which I would walk everyday on the way to school. In one of the innumerable blocks of a neighborhood called, “The Cornhill,” lived an old woman, who had apparently lost her mind. She lived in a little house by herself. It was one of those city houses in which the porch comes right down onto the sidewalk. Her madness, which was quite obvious, expressed itself in an obsession with cleanliness. She was constantly sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house. When she wasn’t sweeping the sidewalk, she would sit by her window keeping a malevolent eye on the street, and if anyone were to dare to walk upon her sidewalk she would rush outside shouting a stream of abuse at the unsuspecting person, and then promptly sweep clean the sidewalk again. I say “unsuspecting” because anyone who knew of the old woman and her obsession stayed clear of her patch of sidewalk.
Not always however, we had our incorrigible hoodlums and troublemakers who would go and deliberately stand on her sidewalk and even flick ashes from their cigarettes onto the pavement. When something like this would happen she would immediately call the police. Then she would stand on her porch, shaking with rage, but saying nothing, waiting for the police to arrive. The police always treated her with the utmost courtesy, and the boys would shuffle away a minute or so before they arrived so as not to have to speak with them. No one actually disliked this old woman. She wasn’t “the crazy old lady.” She was, “Our crazy old lady.”
That neighborhood is very much changed now. The High School was boarded up fifteen years ago, and a great many houses are boarded up also, or they are for sale by the city. Nevertheless whenever I go back home I wander around those streets without fail. The last time I was there was in June. I passed the crazy woman’s house. I walked on her sidewalk. It is very easy to understand, I think, that nothing would have given me more pleasure than to have her rush outside again and admonish me for walking on her sidewalk. I don’t exactly understand why this is so.
There aren’t too many neighborhoods however that I feel that proprietary attachment to. A feeling that any change there concerns you personally. One such neighborhood is the Upper East side, from 79th street to about 98th Street. At one time I was represented by a gallery on 79th street and for about six years I would make day trips to the city to bring the gallery my paintings. Once I made my delivery I had a few hours to spend before going back home, so I would wander around the Upper East Side. In time I felt that I was “my “ neighborhood. If a fashionable clothing shop were to close and be replaced by a fashionable cheese shop I felt personally affronted. If the St. Nicholas Cathedral were to have it’s domes gilded I would think it a mistake, and prefer the old copper patina. This sense of attachment extends right down to the pavement and it’s cracks, but I don’t know why that is.
In this drawing from the top left:
1. The Guggenheim
2. Red slate roof on a town house, directly across the street from the entrance to the Met.
3. Faces on chimneys on the opposite corner from the Guggenheim
4. East 94th Street from No. 7 - 17
5. The Old Armory
6. Onion domes of St. Nickolas’ Cathedral on East 96th Street
7. An ornamental urn on top of a pedestal on Fifth Avenue
8. The corner of East 92th Street
9. View from the window of Yura and Company Coffee Shop at East 92 and Madison
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