Business of the Month: Dryden Gallery & Custom Framing, 40 East 12th Street

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They say that there is nothing either good or bad that proper framing cannot make better. By that measure, our April 2025 Business of the Month, Dryden Gallery & Custom Framing at 40 East 12th Street, between University Place and Broadway, has made a valuable contribution indeed to the lives of its customers. For over five decades, this neighborhood shop has helped enrich the homes of everyone from art collectors to post-collegiate bachelors ready to embellish the negative space beyond their 98-inch flat-screen TVs. Along the way, Dryden has become one of those cherished community hubs where neighbors just stop by, even when they have nothing in need of framing.

Mary Dryden hailed from North Carolina and had been working for the foreign service. Don Dryden came from Brooklyn and had a head for business. They dabbled in art collecting with modest ambition and occasional regrets (they once purchased a 12-piece Warhol portfolio for $250 and sold it, alas, too soon). In 1970, the Drydens decided to open a framing shop, because it was, after all, the 1970s, a time to lead with your gut. Within four years, however, their gut led them back to Mary’s hometown, where they set up a beautiful, well-lit gallery, with art hanging from its walls. Not long after it opened, someone wandered in and asked what the store was going to be, whereupon the Drydens beat a hasty retreat back to the Village, South of Union Square.

Dryden’s original and decades-long location was at 129 4th Avenue. At the time, this corridor was lined with bookstores, the rents were cheap, and people seemed to be moving to the neighborhood. There were also plenty of artists around. The bulk of the business at the store, however, consisted of retail, the sale of posters—a product that was just beginning to take off—to actual lithographs from the early decades of the 20th century. As a result, the primary tasks at the gallery involved framing inventory and putting it on display. The custom work came only later. And yet, even as a retail operation, Dryden succeeded, even despite the gradual appearance of competitors on seemingly every other block.

Current owner Marc Ashmore, who began working at Dryden in 1983, gives all credit for the store’s longevity to the founders, pointing to Don’s generous habit of treating customers as visitors rather than as parties to a business transaction. But Marc saves his most heartfelt encomium for Mary:

Everyone loved her. She was the sweetest person and so gracious. I think that’s honestly the reason any business has legs. It’s the people. One to one. I still get people who don’t know that she passed [in 2022], and we start talking, and I start [crying] like a fool.

In 2010, the building at 129 4th Avenue sold, and the new owner tripled Dryden’s rent. After a citywide search for a new location, the store ended up just two blocks away. By that point, the business had almost completely transformed itself from a framed artwork retailer to custom framing provider. It was Mary who saw which way the business winds were blowing and insisted on devoting most of the gallery’s display space to frame samples.

As it happens, this transition played to the store’s strengths. Marc, an artist who learned from his master carpenter and mechanic father how to work with his hands, proved adept at finding solutions for even the most unorthodox framing jobs. And Don and Mary, who always had a gift for chatting with customers and getting them to linger, used this skill to help navigate through a million framing possibilities and arrive at well-suited alternatives. Marc, who, by his own admission, is grumpier than Don and Mary (“albeit funny at it”), nonetheless continues the Dryers’ approach and thrives in making the process rewarding for customers. Part of that, he explains, is about simplifying the otherwise overwhelming selection:

I can take a look and know six or so things that can be done. It goes back to conversation. Space. How much space? What in your heart of hearts do you want it to look like? And sometimes they have some ideas…  And I say, “no.” People get crazy ideas! And sometimes they want to use these colors, and I tell them that this might be fun right here and you might like it for a while; but…. Try to keep it simple. We’ve done some crazy, extravagant frame jobs. But that takes a brave person!

It turns out, though, that New York is full of nothing if not brave people (to say nothing of collectors and travelers). And they’re what keeps work at Dryden exciting. Over the years, the gallery has, for instance, framed summer camp tug-of-war rope knots, marathon sneakers, and a letter from Ben Franklin to John Jay, to say nothing of work by just about every major artist in the American School.

As Dryden turns 55, we asked Marc what he enjoys about running a framing operation after all these years. His answer captured a paradox at the heart of our neighborhood’s appeal. 

It’s fun in New York, because it’s not your typical artwork. But it’s like Mayberry. It’s a neighborhood. Sometimes I’ll sit out front, take a break, and watch people go by, and friends stop by, and people talk and somebody walks by and goes, “I have something to frame” and you’ll sit and talk for a second. It’s kind of a simple, relaxed, kind of comfortable thing to do, you know, good conversations with old customers and meeting new people. See, you’re always meeting new people, and you’re always seeing the old ones.

For over half a century of helping us to better display on our walls presentations of our tastes, our lives, and ourselves, we are thrilled to name Dryden Gallery & Custom Framing our April, 2025 Village Preservation Business of the Month.

*Marc and Mark are both the English equivalent of the name Marco, which, as a common noun, in Spanish means frame. Coincidence? Perhaps.

What special small business would you like to see featured next? Just click here to nominate our next one. Thank you! #shoplocalnyc

Here is a map of all our Businesses of the Month: