Hudson Park Library

This is Fleet Week -- When the Navy drops anchor and unleashes thousands of sailors on the streets of New York City so I thought it appropriate to write about a famous neighborhood artist Paul Cadmus. Cadmus lived at 5 St. Lukes Place for about 25 years from the Thirties through the Fifties. He painted The Fleet's In soon after moving to St. Lukes Place, depicting sailors in Central Park enjoying themselves. The Navy was not amused.

An interesting history of the painting can be found here.

Art and literature often intersect and so it did at Number 5. Cadmus became great friends with E. M. Forster and when Forster would visit the States he would stay with Cadmus. By that time Forster's greatest books were behind him, but he may have become a happier and more self-accepting man. The Village offered a sanctuary for gay men in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, and Cadmus' life and art were OUT, even back then, twenty to thirty years before Stonewall.

1969: The Year of Gay Liberation will be on view during the month of June in the Stephen A Schwarzman Building (the library with the Lions out front). Stonewall happened just a few blocks from Hudson Park, so after visiting that historic place, be sure to stop by.

People are surprised that the Hudson Park Library is not landmarked nor is it in a historic district.

The line of townhouses just across the street are most definitely landmarked. Afterall, one of New York's most famous mayors lived there.

But, no, Hudson Park has not been so designated.

True, the building is 103 years old and was designed by Carrere and Hastings, the architects of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (aka the library with the Lions out front). It is a Carnegie Library, one of dozens in the city, so called because it was funded by Andrew Carnegie. Shouldn't it be landmarked? Or, at least, in a historic district?

Well, now, progress is being made in designating Hudson Park's neighborhood a historic district -- The South Village Historic District. Check out this map and send in your comments. Do you ever use "South Village" as a name for this neighborhood? What do you call it? I've heard West Soho.

View South Village Historic District in a larger map
(Personally, I say that Hudson Park is in the Village or the West Village but this historic district goes well south of the West Village.)