Sky & Telescope - January 2023 - 36

Celestial Sleuthing
The next year Stieglitz had a small corner room at the Anderson
Galleries. There were three large windows. As you entered you
saw my first " New York " between two windows . . . My large
" New York " was sold the first afternoon. No one ever objected
to my painting New York after that.
(Georgia O'Keeffe, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1976: text accompanying
catalogues 17 and 18)
Illuminating Clues
The foreground of New York Street with Moon features an
ornate lamppost of the type known as a Bishop's Crook, so
named because the shape resembles the staff carried by highranking
clerics. Ornamental curlicues and filigree fill in the
curve at the top of the crook.
These fixtures began appearing on New York City streets
around 1900 and were common by the 1920s. An internet
search for " Bishop's Crook lamppost " will bring up numerous
historical Manhattan photographs, locations of surviving
examples, and websites devoted to these nostalgic reminders
of a bygone time. An excellent and somewhat surprising place
to see them is Universal Studios Florida in Orlando. Several
blocks of the studio backlot recreate New York streets from
the 1920s, with Bishop's Crook lights installed throughout
this part of the park.
Georgia O'Keeffe herself, in the passage above, gave the
location as " a night scene of 47th Street. " Not unreasonably,
uINSPIRING SPIRE This postcard from
1905 shows the lofty, 275-foot (84-meter)
spire of the Collegiate Church of Saint
Nicholas, on the northwest corner of 48th
Street and Fifth Avenue. This same spire
appears in the background of New York
Street with Moon.
uuMIDTOWN LANDMARKS The location
of New York Street with Moon appears
on this map segment from the Bromley
Land Book of the Borough of Manhattan
for 1927. Georgia O'Keeffe stood near the
intersection of 48th Street and Vanderbilt
Avenue. Her view from this position
(indicated with a blue arrow) near the Hotel
Chatham (highlighted), looked generally
west along East 48th Street, with the spire
of the Collegiate Church of Saint Nicholas
(also highlighted) in the distance, on the
north side of the street.
uuuSCENE SETTING The setting of New
York Street with Moon can be recognized
in this vintage postcard. The view looks
generally to the west along 48th Street. In
the foreground, a Bishop's Crook lamppost
stands at the street corner by the Hotel
Chatham. The tall spire of the Collegiate
Church of Saint Nicholas is visible in the
distance, on the north side of the street.
36 JANUARY 2023 * SKY & TELESCOPE
CHATHAM
LAMPPOST This
photograph from a Hotel
Chatham brochure shows
the same Bishop's Crook
lamppost depicted by
Georgia O'Keeffe in the
foreground of her New
York Street with Moon.
The marquee over the
hotel entrance on the
left wasn't present in
the 1920s.
given the artist's statement, the unanimous consensus of
later authors accepted that the canvas showed 47th Street.
In her O'Keeffe biography, Drohojowska-Philp described this
as a work " in which highrises from Forty-seventh Street are
silhouetted against a dusky sky; clouds embrace the moon. "
Alicia Inez Guzmán's 2017 monograph mentioned a " vantage
point between 46th and 47th Street. With an upward gazing
view, we see the vertical red-hued buildings cut sharply into a
turquoise sky . . . the moon peeking out of the clouds " (Georgia
O'Keeffe at Home, p. 65). The catalog for a recent exhibition
at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, Germany,
likewise asserted that " Georgia O'Keeffe created New York
Street with Moon in 1925 . . . from a location on 47th Street "
(Ashley E. Lazevnick, Es war einmal in Amerika, 2018, p. 488;
translated from the German). The online collection of the
COLLECTION OF DON OLSON (4)
Sky & Telescope - January 2023

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