So we went to New York City on February 23, 2023. The Whitney Museum’s exhibit of Edward Hopper’s New York was coming to a close and we had planned way back last September to make sure we got to NYC to enjoy it.
Before Covid hit, we used to take a bus from Bethlehem, PA to NYC since it was easier than driving in and dealing with parking garages. This is especially true because my wife and I like to walk around the city and parking the car in two or three different garages makes absolutely no sense, as any NYC resident or visitor will tell you. The bus would just leave us on our own, the way I like it, to explore and get around, then return to Port Authority whenever our visit was exhausted.
And then we checked the bus schedule. What we did not know is how Covid decimated the bus lines too. Ever since Covid chased employees into working from home and no longer commuting five days a week, public transportation took a huge hit. When we looked at the schedule, there were only two choices: 5 am or 7am and similar choices for the return trip home. What? No way were we gonna arrive that early then figure out what to do until our 1 pm time slot for the Whitney. Had we known, we would have taken a 7 am bus and planned on a 10 am arrival. But now we were locked into a 1 pm slot. So reluctantly, we decided to drive into Manhattan.
Don’t get me wrong, I love driving into NYC and I know the city since I lived there for three years down in Greenwich Village and worked in Manhattan for 20 years. So the city did not intimidate me. What did intimidate me was the aforementioned parking garage challenge and the fact that I had recently suffered an injury to my Achilles heel. I knew walking long distances would be a problem.
And we had made plans with another couple to meet for a drink at a trendy downtown bar and then leave for our dinner reservation at MeMe Mediterranean on Hudson St. So a bit more walking. But I decided I would tough it out. It was gonna be a great day, right?
It started out with us getting through the Holland Tunnel and zipping pretty quickly to the parking garage we had picked out, near the Whitney. And as we pulled up a huge man (maybe it was a bear?) began waving his arms as I began to pull in to the ramp. The garage was full and he quickly retreated before I could force a response. I watched in disbelief as the car in front of us sank down the ramp into the inner sanctum of the belly of some massive block of old buildings hiding one of New York’s parking garages. Full? Oh shit, why couldn’t we have just taken the damn bus?, I yelled in frustration. My wife got defensive but I explained it wasn’t her, I just could not believe this was happening and our NYC “adventure” was just beginning. I love New York as the song used to say?!? To her credit, my wife quickly looked up a second garage and we raced off in the direction our GPS was sending us. Fortunately, we drove right in and got a parking space deep in the belly of a different set of old buildings, what once was part of the Meat Packing District. We got our parking ticket and I marveled at the parking garage built deep into lower Manhattan’s bedrock. Huge thick columns of steel supports wrapped in cement were holding up these buildings and I just wanted to escape before the whole thing collapsed over us.
We found the exit and got our bearings. Then we headed to Hector’s for lunch, an old-fashioned eatery known to serve pretty good lunch fare. They did – the omelette special I got was fantastic and my wife enjoyed her bagel and cream cheese. Then it was off to the Whitney.
The crowd was enormous; you would think we were all going off to see the Mona Lisa in a new light. But I was glad. There’s nothing better than a New York crowd: enthusiastic, knowledgeable, blue collar and white collar combined, the buzz is always electric. Know-it-alls interspersed among the curious. It’s all good.
The elevators were enormous and there were several side-by-side. These were designed to move a trainload of people! The Whitney is actually a museum relocated from the East side down to its new location on Gansevoort St. It’s a new building, constructed to fit in with the long, low, squat buildings of the early 20th century. So architecturally, it is designed to blend in – but it doesn’t really. It stands out just enough as a beautiful building, slightly modern but after a while, you realize it really does blend in with its environment. Somehow, they created a blend that is old and new at the same time, a tribute to its neighborhood.
When we got up to the 8th floor, we signed up for a guided tour which was tremendous. Our guide pointed out just enough ironies and knowledge of specific paintings by Edward_Hopper.
There were over 1,000 pieces displayed including sketches, studies and paintings. But our guide, touching on a few insights, enabled us to understand themes Hopper was portraying: the alienation expressed by a wide slice of the city’s population in one of the most heavily populated cities. The dichotomy is obvious, for how could one be so alienated in a city with that many people surrounding you? But our guide showed us the many people in the paintings who were alone or others who were seeking solitude to get away from all the noise of city life.
After the guided tour ended, we wandered throughout the gallery and revisited several paintings. I asked one of the guides who were there to help determine where Hopper’s most famous painting was:
Nighthawks (1942)
Unfortunately the guide told me the Art Institute of Chicago was doing a display that included Hopper’s most famous painting and since they are the “home museum” for the painting, it was not available to be loaned to the Whitney during the Hopper retrospective. I was surprised but not disappointed since we were really there to experience the balance of his work.
It was interesting to see everything and I am so glad we went. But somehow, nothing had quite the power that Nighthawks has. The three people sitting at the lunch counter along with the waiter behind the counter dressed all in white, it just has a je ne sai quois. It moves you, it stops you. The other Hoppers intrigue you a bit. But many of his other major works are just buildings, shadows and colors. Moods and tones. I came away appreciating his work and got a kick out of the fact that when we lived near Washington Square, our apartment was only a few blocks away from the house Hopper and his wife Josephine lived in from 1908 to 1967. An area we used to hang out when we were younger, much younger, where we would hang out during weekends and a park where my wife used to take our firstborn child, Kate, for walks in the stroller around Washington Square Park.
It was time to meet up with Rachel and Rodrigo and we ran into them waiting outside the bar. Rachel is an old high school friend of my wife and she and her husband, Rodrigo, took the subway from Brooklyn where they now live to meet us. We headed inside and got caught up, enjoyed stories and laughs and memories – and also a great cocktail. And then we headed to MeMe’s for dinner.
Fantastic Greek food. More conversation getting caught up on each other’s kids. It was getting late, so we got the check and parted ways. We headed back to our garage where the car was. Did you know you can use your phone’s GPS to walk around the city and locate the garage where you parked? We went back into the belly of the garage and presented the ticket: $72. Not really a surprise for parking these days in NYC. It was well worth it. We beat a hasty retreat, made record time getting home and enjoyed a glass of wine to relax the nerves after a 2 ½ hour drive home, back to PA.
I love New York, I really do. I am 69 now and NYC is a young person’s town. Even Edward Hopper knew it was getting tougher for him and Josephine as they had to walk up several flights of stairs every day. No elevators in their building in Washington Square. And he was 84 when he died. During the exhibit, I learned he was involved in a battle , writing letters to a young Robert Moses, complaining of plans to “modernize” his beloved neighborhood. There were many more social changes reshaping NYC and America up to his death in 1967 and beyond.
He saw a lot in his lifetime, starting in 1882. He was a fighter, but chose not to paint about fighting or violence. Instead he painted about people’s struggles, their inward struggles, their inner lives, capturing his subjects brooding in an open window – as his point of view was usually from the outside looking in from the street or a passing subway car. And in doing so, he also captured a certain beauty of New York City. Its enormous size reduced to focusing on one or two people struggling to get by. He doesn’t paint pretty pictures but boy, are they pretty to look at – and to remember they reflect a time in America that is not all that long ago.
Chris Ebel
3/21/2023
Photo credit: @Thinkstock