Delphine Seyrig, Duncan Youngerman, Lenore Tawney, Gerry Matthews, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Dolores Matthews, and Agnes Martin in Jeannette Park at Coenties Slip, 1958. Seyrig, an actress, was married to Jack Youngerman, who took the picture.
Many artists settled, at staggered intervals, in a three-block area around Coenties Slip, a street on Manhattan’s lower tip. While New York’s status as a maritime trading hub lured fleets of boats, it was the skeletal remains of that activity, by then sharply diminished, that drew artists to Coenties Slip. In place of industry, they found vast and vacant loft spaces, cheap to rent (around $45 a month), in which they could both work and live (illegally, owing to zoning laws).
Photo: Jack Youngerman via artnews