Edward Hopper and the Village
Last week the Whitney Museum revealed its 3D cut-out recreation of the noted Edward Hooper painting Nighthawks in the prow of the Flatiron Building. The ‘pop-up’ project highlights the museum’s ongoing exhibition Hopper Drawing, which examines the drawings and creative process of the Greenwich Village-based artist. Hopper moved to New York in 1899, and after some extended trips to Europe, settled into Washington Square in 1913 and remained there throughout his career. Although it’s clear that many of Hopper’s works were inspired by Village locales, he painted from memory and in many cases combined elements from multiple locations, which both serve to create an engaging visual experience, but also give us at GVSHP a headache when trying to figure out the actual building or building elements pictured on his canvas.
A case in point is the diner from Nighthawks. You can read all about tracking down the possible sites of the diner from Nighthawks here (which many had assumed was based on a diner building at Mulry Square).
Another similarly confusing Village-like locale is found in the drug store painting hopper created in 1927.
The ties between Hopper’s well-known painting Early Sunday Morning and 233-237 Bleecker Street in the South Village can be found here.
And luckily, one painting we can definitely find the location of is Hopper’s The Sheridan Theater from 1937. It shows the interior of the Loew’s Sheridan Theater which was situated on the triangle of land at 7th Avenue and West 12th Street, which since the 1970s has housed a garden and handling center for the former St. Vincent’s Hospital, a portion of which will become a New York City AIDS memorial in the future.
Actually the Loew’s Sheridan was located at the convergence of W 11th Street, Greenwich and 7th aves… Not 12th st.