Reginald Marsh was a true street artist—painting colorful, exaggerated images of New York City’s commuters, lovers, barflies, sailors, bargain shoppers, Coney Island thrill seekers, and Bowery bums, mostly through the 1920s and 1940s.
His depictions of the urban masses—inspired by his study of the Great Masters of the Renaissance during a trip to Europe in 1925—conveyed the energy and excitement (and sometimes despair) of early 20th century life in Gotham.
Marsh tended to focus on crowds and not individuals, which is why one notable painting in particular seems out of step. “H. Dummeyer Bar & Grill” is the title of this undated work, likely from the 1930s or 1940s. It features a lone man leaning against a fire alarm box outside a corner saloon.
There’s a John Sloan kind of solitude to the painting, which isn’t all that surprising considering that Sloan was Marsh’s instructor when Marsh took classes at the Art Students League on West 57th Street. (Below photo, Marsh sketching on 14th Street in 1941)
The saloon in the painting seems dreary, festooned with fraying American flags. The drab figure holding his overcoat could be a neighborhood local or a friend of Marsh’s—or perhaps one of the forgotten men dwelling in forgotten sections of the Depression-era city.
Uncovering the identity of the man seems like a fruitless endeavor. But what about the saloon? Discovering where H. Dummeyer Bar & Grill once served growlers of beer to thirsty workingmen extends a firmer sense of place to the painting.
Luckily Dummeyer is an uncommon name. A 1904 Sun article featured a saloon keeper named Henry Dummeyer whose establishment was located at 281 Cherry Street, between Rutgers and Jefferson Streets.
(The article explained that Dummeyer, along with other local bar owners, complained to police that three crooks posing as detectives demanded protection money from them—an interesting slice of life kind of story of its own.)
Other articles reference an H. Dummeyer who in 1893 lost a large black dog on Cherry and Jefferson Streets, and an H. Dummeyer whose liquor store at 281 Cherry Street was burglarized a year later.
When these articles appeared, this block on Cherry Street would have been part of a densely packed tenement neighborhood, close to the “lung block” between Cherry, Catherine, Market, and Monroe Streets—so named for its high concentration of residents living with tuberculosis, according to the Tenement House Commission in 1903.
A saloon like the one in Marsh’s painting would not be out of place on Cherry Street near the East River waterfront in the early decades of the 20th century.
What I’d really like is a photo of Dummeyer’s, an image that offers a clearer sense of the real-life saloon and street corner in Marsh’s painting. The third photo in this post shows the intersection of Cherry Street looking east to Rutgers Street , and there’s a corner store that looks like a possible contender.
Unfortunately, the storefront in the photo, from 1937, has an obvious difference—there’s no fire escape on the upper floors of the building, as Marsh’s painting shows.
Could this corner storefront from 1933, seen in the fourth photo in this post, be Dummeyer’s? The American flag bunting lines up with Marsh’s depiction, as does the facade of the building and the fire escape.
Unfortunately, though the fire hydrant on the sidewalk matches up, there’s no fire alarm call box. The photo, from the New York Public Library, also has the location as Cherry and Catherine Streets.
So I turned to the circa-1940 tax photo collection, part of the archives from the NYC Department of Records & Information Services. After looking for a photo to correspond to 281 Cherry Street, this image, seen in the fifth photo in this post, appears—an abandoned storefront that doesn’t exactly line up with Marsh’s.
Finally, by searching for Jefferson Street, a faded image of a matching corner saloon appeared (above). The fire escape, fire hydrant, fire call box—they all line up as Marsh’s painting depicts them. The photo itself is cloudy, making it hard to read the name on the window. (Click the image for a closer view.)
But I’m pretty certain it’s Dummeyer’s. True, he may have thrown in the towel and sold his building in 1911, the year one newspaper ran a small announcement of the sale of 277-281 Cherry Street.
But since Marsh put the saloon name in the title of his painting, it appears that Dummeyer made it through Prohibition (perhaps by transforming into a restaurant, hence the “grill” in the name) and soldiered on into the 1930s or 1940s. By that time, many of Cherry Street’s rundown tenements and commercial spaces were targeted for demolition under the city’s slum clearance initiative.
Today, this corner is home to two residential towers and a parking lot overlooking South Street. The neighborhood has been rechristened “Two Bridges.” The gritty saloon corner of Marsh’s Lower East Side exists only in faded photos, art museums, and the imagination.
[Top image: MOMA; second photo: Everett/Shutterstock.com via britannica.com; third photo: NYPL Digital Collections; fourth photo: NYPL Digital Collections; fifth photo: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; sixth photo: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]
Ephemeral New York 