Month: September 2024

This summer, I got to see (but not visit inside — we were there outside museum hours) the Edward Hopper Museum and Study Center in Nyack, New York. When we first arrived, I thought this grey home called 90 North was part of the museum, but rather it’s an artist space where people can rent space — a “boutique office space for mission-oriented businesses, creatives, and entrepreneurs” situation.

The museum is this home next door, pictured below, built in 1858 by John Dewint Smith, Edward Hopper’s maternal grandfather.  Edward was born here in 1882 and lived in the home until 1906 when he moved to New York to pursue an art career.

This home is just a block from the Hudson River. Nyack is only 20 miles from New York City.

In 1913, he moved to 3 Washington Square North in NYC and that space is now NYU Silver, where they keep the Edward Hopper Studio preserved: “The easel he painted on, the stand for his models, the press for his etchings. The original stove, refrigerator, and gas burner oven are all untouched. ”

He loved his Washington Square address so much that he insisted on leaving the hospital so he could die there, at home.

Above, the ~1867 home which was to Edward known as Miss Dickey’s School. He and sibling Marion attended here.

There are other places in Nyack to see on the Hopper museum’s walking tour; I liked seeing the building that inspired Hopper’s 1948 painting, Seven A.M.

It’s this left corner with the window that’s depicted in the painting.

2011 was the “Year of Edward Hopper” and the museum put on an exhibit titled ‘Edward Hopper, Prelude: The Nyack Years’ concentrating on those paintings, drawings, watercolors and memorabilia from Hopper’s time in the town. The museum recieved works loaned from the Whitney and the Arthayer R. Sanborn Hopper Collection Trust.

Here’s a  1959 interview with Hopper.

Some Hopper paintings I’ve photographed — some in exhibition, some permanent collection:

Hotel Lobby at Newfields, 2022

New York, New Haven and Hartford at Newfields, 2022

An etching, Night Shadows, at the University of Mississippi Museum in 2020

New York Office at Montgomery Musuem of Fine Arts in 2021

Two on the Aisle at the Toledo Museum of Art in 2021

High Noon at the Dayton Art Institute, 2022

The Burger Bar in Bristol has been around since 1942, but back then, called the Snack King. They mention on their site that they’re the last place Hank Williams Sr was seen alive (he didn’t want anything to eat, but his driver stopped in). They’re still doing things old-school with the hamburgers and look on the interior.

I didn’t catch it at night, but this user on Flickr has it lit up in neon.

In 2021, we got to see this original McDonald’s sign at the Henry Ford Museum of Amerian Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan:

There was a great one in Huntsville, Alabama that was taken down in 2008. It is now at the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati:

 

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Had the chance to visit Bristol TN / VA again this summer, and really enjoyed Cheap Thrills Records and the gentleman running it who was so very kind to us

and HollerHouse, which was just about to open the last time I was there in 2022.

This summer, I didn’t get a chance to see a show or say hi, but in 2022 was lucky enough to somehow very, very sweetly get a my own tour of the 1931 art deco Paramount Theatre, and I haven’t yet posted it here on DFK. A couple of these pics are from before and since that ’22 tour of the interior:

Classic Recording Studio
Bristol TN, 2024.