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A North River Recreation Pier by Jerome Myers

Jerome Myers · 1905-01-01

Jerome Myers painted A North River Recreation Pier in 1905, and it hangs today in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Look at the very center of the crowd. A small child in a vivid pink dress stands alone, perfectly still while the adults around her shift and blur. The electric lamp above her casts a warm halo over the whole scene, but she is the anchor Myers wanted you to find.

Myers was born in Virginia and raised across the East Coast, but his adult life belonged to New York's Lower East Side. He believed the streets were his real classroom and made over a thousand drawings of the immigrant families living there. This pier was a free public space, one of the few places working families could find cool air off the Hudson during the tenement summers.

The painting is a document of a single quiet moment inside a crowded city. Myers never idealized what he saw, but his sympathy for the people in his pictures is unmistakable. What do you think that child in pink is looking at?

Details

This is the Lower East Side, around 1905.
This is the Lower East Side, around 1905.
Families escaped the tenement heat here, the Hudson the only open air.
Families escaped the tenement heat here, the Hudson the only open air.
Look past the crowd, in the center.
Look past the crowd, in the center.
The architectural anchor of the scene; warm gas or electric light spills from its arches, marking this as a modern municipal amenity for the urban poor
The architectural anchor of the scene; warm gas or electric light spills from its arches, marking this as a modern municipal amenity for the urban poor
The single brightest passage in the painting; its diagonal sweep against the dark sky creates the dominant compositional thrust and suggests wind off the river
The single brightest passage in the painting; its diagonal sweep against the dark sky creates the dominant compositional thrust and suggests wind off the river
Transcript

He believed his real classroom was the streets of New York. This is the Lower East Side, around 1905. A whole neighborhood, shoulder to shoulder on a free public pier. Families escaped the tenement heat here, the Hudson the only open air. Look past the crowd, in the center. One small child, standing completely still. Jerome Myers drew over a thousand pictures of immigrant children. He said the city was the greatest source of inspiration he ever had.