MACDOUGAL ALLEY
From MacDougal Street between West 8th Street and Washington Square North
MARCH 20, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 81
In 1833, MacDougal Alley was set up as a
private carriage way for houses on Washington Square North and East 8th
Street. As horses disappeared from New York's streets, the renovated
stables and carriage houses attracted artists and high-society bohemians,
such as sculptor and collector Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.
Abbott's photograph of MacDougal Alley,
taken on the same sunny day as her view of the Fifth
Avenue houses around the corner, was more austere than most
contemporary illustrations of this picturesque Village site. Strong
sunlight shaped the composition, with the foreground shaded by the back of
the Richmond Hill Apartments (right), the sunny middle distance broken up
by the shadows of the alley's south side buildings, and the north side's
facades clearly delineated. At the rear were outbuildings of the
Rhinelander mansion (1839), and rising over the alley was the Art Deco One
Fifth Avenue (1928).
Today MacDougal Alley is green, with
several trees in the rear blocking the intrusive 2 Fifth Avenue, a mammoth
1955 apartment house that replaced the Rhinelander mansion. An iron gate
blocks the entrance to this private drive, which is no longer affordable
to artists.
|