Women of the Studio Building

1859-1860

Anna Mary Freeman (1825–1874) is the building's first woman artist-tenant. Her tenancy is recorded in newspapers rather than the New York City directory, where most of the building's male artist-tenants names appear. In the Studio Building, she produces miniature portraits "of unusual beauty," but her noteworthy New York career ends rather abruptly after she marries a local musician. Her brief tenancy establishes the Studio Building as both a home for ambitious women artists and as a space where few women officially register tenancy for more than two years.

1862-1888

Margaret Winter, a core member of the building's domestic staff, becomes the Studio Building's janitress and cook, often listed with "Wid. Philip" after her name in city directories. Very likely, she was married to Philip Winter, who registered the building as his address from 1859 to 1861. Mrs. Winter provides the Studio Building's overwhelmingly male tenants with affordable meals, which she prepares in the building's basement kitchenette.

1881

Dora Wheeler (1856–1940), daughter of famed interior designer Candace Wheeler (1827-1923), and Rosina Emmet Sherwood (1854–1948), both painters and students of William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), register the Studio Building as their address. Chase, a tenant from 1878 to 1895, begins painting this portrait of Wheeler, his student, the following year, in 1882.

1889

Ellen Bell Miller, also known as Ellen Miller or Ellen Bell Robertson Miller  (1854–1929) registers her address at the Studio Building. In 1895, she co-publishes Wild Flowers of the North-Eastern States (New York: J. P. Putnam Sons, 1895) with Margaret Christine Whiting (1860–1946), in which this illustration of a woodland flower appears. The following year, the two artists co-found the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework, an Arts and Crafts organization in Deerfield, Massachusetts, that produces textiles. Miller goes on to create textile designs and author and illustrate further nature guides, including her Butterfly and Moth Book: Personal Studies and Observations of the More Familiar Species (New York: Charles Scriber’s Sons, 1912).

1890

Carmen Dauset Moreno (1868–1910), known as Carmencita, performs in William Merritt Chase's large studio in April. This special event was arranged by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), who was then painting a portrait of the Spanish dancer. It was organized for Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), the prominent Boston socialite and collector, and among the guests was one of Chase's students, Rosina Emmet Sherwood.

1902

Alice Preble Tucker DeHaas (1859–1920) rents a studio. In the 1890s, she was likely a regular visitor to the Studio Building, as she studied painting with Chase and Mauritz F. Dehaas (1832–1895), a marine landscape painter and a tenant from 1864 to 1895. She and DeHaas marry shortly before his death. After becoming a widow, she continues to paint and exhibit work into the 1910s.

1903

Elizabeth St. John Matthews (1876–1911), a noted sculptor, registers the Studio Building as her address. Matthews attains an international reputation, serving the following year alongside Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) on the international jury of awards for sculpture at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. She specializes in busts and bas reliefs, creating a number of public monuments. In 1908, she receives notice for a  commemorative plaque honoring the first Women's Suffrage convention in 1848. The plaque remains in situ on the exterior wall of the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York.

1914

Brenetta Herrman Crawford (1885–1977), wife of painter and illustrator Earl Stetson Crawford (1877-1966), also a tenant of the Studio Building, registers in 1914. That year she submits a Portrait of Sarah Guernsey Bradley, reproduced in the Catalogue of an Exhibition of work by the National Association of Portrait Painters (New York: National Society of Portrait Painters, 1914). Her husband registers as the association's secretary and treasurer that year, and the organization appears in an annual directory with the Studio Building listed as its address.

1915

Katherine Langhorne Adams (1885–1977) rents a studio. A noted painter, her work is featured in national publications, such as The Literary Digest. One of her paintings, Afternoon—Hudson River, is reproduced on the magazine's May 13, 1922, cover.

1917

Four women join the Studio Building's creative cluster as official artist-tenants: Annie Traquair Lang (1885–1918), who studies painting with Chase (he created a likeness of her in 1911, titled Portrait of a Woman in Black); Helen Winslow Durkee (1880–1954), a portrait minituarist, specialist in watercolor on ivory, and another student of Chase; and the obscure Rosamond Coney (dates unknown), a painter who exhibits work at Arlington Galleries in 1917 with Alice Hirsh (1888–1935), the first woman artist to officially register tenancy at the Studio Building for more than five years.

1918

Miriam Alice Gerstle (later Miriam Alice Wornum) (1898–1989), a San Francisco-born painter, illustrator, designer, and novelist, registers her address as 51 West Tenth Street. A student of the California School of Fine Arts and then the Art Students League in New York City (likely in 1918, when she rents space at the Studio Building), Gerstle later studies in Paris. In 1920, she moves to London, and in 1923 she marries the architect George Grey Wornum (1888-1957), with whom she collaborates on his architectural commissions. These include interior designs for the first-class public rooms of the ocean liner RMS Queen Elizabeth, the interior of the Royal Institute of British Architects reading room, and some designs for events celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

1920

In 1920, John Herbert Johnston sells the Studio Building to a group of tenants who form Tenth Street Studios, Incorporated (TSS), transforming the Studio Building into a tenant-owned space.

1920-1921

Among the women tenants involved in purchasing the Studio Building and its annex from J. H. Johnston is Elizabeth Schofield Ivory (1887–1968). She is the wife of commercial illustrator Percy van Eman Ivory (1883-1960), a longtime tenant of the Studio Building. She serves as treasurer for Tenth Street Studios, Inc., and likely helps to form the board that manages the corporation. In the first year of the corporation's rent receipts, a number of women artists are listed, including the restorer Eleanor Whittlesey Kotz (1890–?), daughter of Daniel Kotz, a landscape painter, and the portraitist Leonebel Jacobs, whose 1918 Word War I propaganda poster "Women of America Work for Industry" advertises American food production and the contributions of women to the home front. The poster's title marks the growing presence of and pride in American women of the work force, such as women artists of the Studio Building, who began to enter America's public sphere in substantially greater numbers from the 1910s onward. The poster is distributed nationally two years before the US Congress passes the 19th Amendment, granting American women the right to vote.

1923-1924

At the invitation of Madame Koo, wife of the Chinese Ambassador to Britain and the United States (pictured center, left), Leonebel Jacobs travels to Beijing, where she paints portraits of local court and visiting dignitaries, and other public figures, later reproduced in her booklet, My China (self-published, circa 1960s).

1923-1927

In Beijing, Jacobs develops a reputation and a body of work that impresses Sir Reginal Johnston, English tutor to China's last Emperor. Jacobs becomes the first American woman artist invited to visit the Forbidden City, where she meets Emperor Puyi and his wife, the Empress Wanrong. The emperor asks her to teach his wife how to paint and commissions their portraits. Shortly after their meeting, the emperor and his wife are expelled from the Forbidden City and Jacobs creates their portraits in Tianjin, where the couple goes into exile.  On her way back to the United States, Jacobs exhibits paintings from her life in China at a gallery in Paris in 1926, and again in New York City in 1927, when she takes up residence again at the Tenth Street Studio Building.

1920-1925

Eleanor Whittlesey Kotz (dates unknown), a noted restorer whose name first appears in the TSS rent receipts in 1921, registers the Studio Building as her professional address within the city directory for  1922 and 1925. She indicates her profession as "picture liner" and "restorer." An enterprising professional, in 1923 she writes to the Philadelphia Museum of Art inquiring about future work. Her listed credentials include contributions to the restoration of the Johnson Collection in Philadelphia and private commissions for wealthy New York clientele, such as Percy Rockefeller. In 1926, Mary Whittlesey Kotz (dates unknown), Eleanor's mother, also registers the Studio Building as her address in the Society of Independent Artists exhibition catalogue.

1927

Anne Goldthwaite (1869–1944) rents a studio. Born in Alabama, she studies in both New York and Paris before settling in Manhattan where she leases a studio at 51 West Tenth Street in 1927. Goldthwaite teaches at the Art Students League and produces portrait paintings and miniatures, including miniature watercolors on ivory. Her Avenue of the Allies (5th Avenue), an etching on paper from 1918, is an example of her responses to the city.

1930

Agnes Tait (1894–1981) registers the Studio Building as her address. Tait becomes a well-known Works Progress Administration painter. Her best known work is Skating in Central Park (1934, Smithsonian American Art Museum), a winter scene painted several years after registering at the Studio Building in the city directory.

1933

The 1933 city directory captures a record of four women artists of the Studio Building, among them Dorothy Eisner (1906–1984), a painter working in a Social Realist style and later well-known for her expressionist period in the 1950s and her development of a distinct voice in painterly abstraction in the 1960s. According to private records of Eisner's life, she rents space at the Studio Building in 1929. Anne I (1931), was likely painted at the Studio Building. It depicts Dorothy Eisner's sister, Anne Eisner (1911-1967), also an artist who may have leased space or shared Dorothy's studio at 51 West Tenth Street in the 1930s.

1936-1953

Ethel Parsons Paullin (1888–1971), a noted textile designer, muralist, painter, commercial illustrator, engraver, and widow of the muralist Telford Paullin (1855-1933), becomes a longtime resident of the Studio Building. She receives public notice as one of the Studio Building’s last tenants in local newspapers and registers as both living and working at 51 West Tenth in various annual directories for most years between 1942 and 1953. Paullin is known for her murals especially. During World War II, she paints a series of religious murals for navy ships. She is also listed as a member and leader of the National Society of Mural Painters.

1942

Jessica Patton (1920–2003) registers the Studio Building as her address. A leading fashion model in the 1940s, she appears on covers and in the fashion spreads within publications like Vogue and Glamour. In this intimate portrait at home, she is photographed by her husband, photographer George Barkentin (1921–1993), at a window in one of the upper stories of the Tenth Street Studio Building.

1943-1949

Feodor Rimsky (1898–1976), leases a studio at 51 West Tenth Street in 1943, two years after he arrives as a refugee with his American wife from Spain, escaping both Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied France. Born into an aristocratic Russian family, Rimsky escapes revolution while a student in Europe, and develops a career in exile as a portrait painter and commercial artist living in interwar Berlin, war-era Paris, and war- and postwar-era New York City. At some point between 1943 and 1949, he paints a watercolor sketch of an African American model's face. According to family history, she poses for this sketch at Rimsky's 51 West Tenth Street studio and is one of the models favored by Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chávez (1896-1982), a Peruvian American painter then working primarily on pin-up girl compositions for national men's magazines. Rimsky's portrait captures a striking and thoughtful likeness of her face, filled with quiet dignity, and very much at odds with Vargas's sexualized pinups.

1947-1948

Dollmaker and author Edith Flack Ackley (1887-1970), wife of lithographer Stow Wengenroth (1906-1978), and her daughter, the painter and illustrator Telka Ackley (1919-2005), register the Studio Building as their address. As a young mother, Edith begins to make cloth dolls and in the 1920s becomes a designer of marionettes, a writer and producer of marionette doll performances, and the author of a series of very popular doll-making how-to books. Although mother and daughter only appear registered as official tenants of the Studio Building for two years in the late 1940s, Wengenroth registers 51 West Tenth Street as his address from approximately 1942 to 1953, suggesting that the Ackleys are in residence or affiliated with the Studio Building for much longer than just two years. In the 1930s, Telka becomes an illustrator for her mother's book, creating illustrations for editions of Edith's Dolls To Make For Fun and Profit (1938), Paper Dolls: Their History and How to Make Them (1939), and A Doll Shop Of Your Own (1941). In the early 1940s, the mother-daughter duo also co-publish the picture books Thank You (1942) and Please (1943). Telka remains a working painter, best-known for her depictions of her mother's cloth dolls. In this family photo taken in 1947–48, they appear at two open windows of the Studio Building just to the left of its front door.

1942-1949

Overlapping with Wengenroth and the Ackleys is painter and Christmas card illustrator Erica von Krager (1890-1975). She is particularly known for her Christmas cards and other illustrations from the 1940s and 1950s.

1948, 1953

Joan Hurst (dates unknown), a modernist jewelry maker, registers the Studio Building as her address. Along with Jill Kingsbury, she creates abstract jewelry designs, usually in silver and set with semiprecious stones. A series of Hurst & Kingsbury pieces are exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art's Modern Jewelry Design exhibition in 1946-1947.

1951-1952

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992), part of a group of young modernist artists participating in Greenwich Village's vibrant postwar scene, registers the Studio Building as her address in the 1951-1952 Annual Exhibition Record of the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Whitney, founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942), is an institution devoted to American art that is warmly supportive of women artists and housed on Eighth Street, several blocks away from the Studio Building. In 1951, Mitchell also participates in the Ninth Street Show held several blocks away at 60 East Ninth Street, a landmark event in the history of Abstract Expressionism, the first globally influential style of American painting. She shows this untitled painting from 1950 and shares this landmark moment with another modernist and Tenth Street Studio Building neighbor, Philip Guston (1913-1980), also exhibiting at the Ninth Street Show.

1951-1953

In 1952, Paul Brach (1924–2007), husband of Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015), a pioneer of feminist art, registers the Studio Building as his address. According to histories of their lives and early careers in New York, the couple leases space in the Studio Building between 1951 and 1953. 

1953

Zillah Taylor (dates unknown) registers her address in the city directory as 51 West Tenth Street. According to oral history interviews and family memories, she works as a front office attendant and collects rents by visiting tenants living or working in the various studios. A photo from the early 1950s captures her and the size of the Studio Building's front door.

1920-1956

In 1953, Marjorie Barkentin (1891-1974), restorer, artist’s model, and playwright, registers the Studio Building as her address in an annual directory for the first time. She is part of three generations of the Barkentin family who live at the Studio Building. She and her restorer husband William move into the building in 1920; their photographer son, George Barkentin and his fashion model wife, Jessica Patton, move into the building in the early 1940s, and their granddaughters, Perii and Pamela Barkentin, live and play in the building as toddlers and young children. According to family history, local newspapers, and family photos, William and Marjorie were the last occupants of the Studio Building's large two-story studio on the first floor, formerly one of the first galleries in New York City devoted to contemporary art and later the bric-a-brac–filled studio of William Merritt Chase and the sculpture studio of Alexander Stirling Calder. Marjorie is best-known for writing the off-broadway play, Ulysses in Nighttown (1958).

1952-1956

With intent to construct a new building, an investor purchases a majority share of Tenth Street Studios, Incorporated from original shareholders or their descendants. This action forces the sale of the Studio Building and its annex to a real estate developer. Artist-tenants and others attempt to save it from demolition but are unsuccessful. The Tenth Street Studio Building and its annex are demolished in 1956, a decade before the US Congress passes the first major historic preservation law.

1966

In the afterlife of the Tenth Street Studio Building, there are many examples of its ongoing legacy. Among them is George Barkentin (1921-1993), one of its last tenants, who collaborates with his younger daughter Pamela Barkentin (b. 1944), on a series of striking fashion photographs that call to mind the history of American and global art. A photograph for Mademoiselle, taken in 1966, captures Pamela posing in a silk dress against the backdrop of the Piazza San Marco in Venice. The photograph is taken approximately ten years after the Studio Building was demolished and in the same year that the US Congress passes the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. This law creates the National Register of Historic Places and a legal mechanism for preventing the demolition and further loss of historically significant structures like the Tenth Street Studio Building.

Return to Panorama Article:

 "From Center to Periphery: The Lifespan of New York City's Tenth Street Studio Building and the Canon of American Art."