The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-01-08
In New York
BY PAUL HARRISON

New York-There's a story in every old building in Manhattan. And Manhattan has lot of old buildings.
 You can select them practically at random. Any one of the offiffice at random. Any one of the office of glamor and the spice of show business and the dust of vanished dreams. Every dingy office has been q citadel of great ambition; every corridor a scene of the min- gling of famed stage and musical names of one generation or an- other.
 7 The dozens of rehearsal halls have resounded-and still do-to the humping of tinny pianos, the howls of directors, and the clat- tering feet of panting chorus girls. Many hit show. assembled on q shoe-string, has been whipped i!Jo shape in one of these ill-ventilai d practice parlors. And in the du zee studios at one time or anot"er have kicked and shuffled the n.b- ble neophytes whose names T. ,r
 were to go up in e:eliar i,glts. "One, two, three, four, five, six
 Hey, you in the blue, this ain't no
 funeral march! One. o, three, four, five, six . Now into a charge break, an then the Max ey Ford Rotten! Try it Stranded Agents
 There's the Strand buildings. the- atrical from cellar to roof, and
 probably the worlds only office
 building in which the elevator boys
 present gifts to the tenants at
 Christmas. Some of them, anyway.
 It's the haven of the wash-ups,
 the last stand of the despairing,
 the springboard of the hopeful. Smallest of the small-time agencies occupy some of the di- vided and subdiyided offices on the upper floors. Many a down-and- out performer has slept in those
 subbyholes. The public telephone
 booths in the lobby are used as offices by the theatrical agents
 who can't afford to rent any space at all.
 Bohemia
 Hop Up to Sixty-fifth street and Broadway and look at the Lincoln Arcade. Seems a pretty dreary and,
 undistinguished old shell. A mort gage recently was foreclosed on 1t. The office directory lists spirit-
 ualist, health faddist, a school of jiu-jitsu. and so on.
 Yet this used to be the city's principal art center. A literary
 Bohemia, too. Two novels - one by owen Johnson have been and the life there.
 Wnnd Cnuon tho rfnnptvf | tells me that he and Rolf Arm
 strong and Ross Santee and Dean Cornwall, Craven, the critic, and q dozen others, whose names you | know had studios on one floor. Rosa Ponselle and her sister were residents, and Neysa McMein, in the days when she thought she ,d be an actress instead of an artist. Sometimes most of the buildings occupants would pool their money | and have parties.
 The sixth and top floor. with ts larger studios, always was and
 still is occupied by prominent
 artists. I talked to two Of tho oldest residents Graham F.
 Cootes, the illustrator. and Albert
 of the American Academy. Once Caught Fire
 Cootes lived next door to How
 ard Chandler Christy in the latter's heydey, when the corridor | always was damned with beauti- 1 full girls clamoring for chance to model for him. George Bellows
 studio was down the hall, and Eu- gene O'Neill used to loaf there q good deal. The first book Cootes
 ever illustrated was written by | O'Neill.
 There were lot of others painters, writers. sculpters. Ted
 Ireland. Alonzo Kimball. Arthur Crisp. H. R. Ballinger. Jo David-
 son. The late great Robert Henri had his art school on the top floor. Charles Henry Nichaus still does his sculpting there. And Lucas was just finishing a huge painting when called on him. Says he'll stay until the building falls down. becaJse the light ia
 better thna anywhere else in the city.
 The building almost did fall down a few years ago, when the ! first three floors were burned out. Most of the studio occupants left then. but they didn't fo far. Christie and several others are right around the corner at the Hotel des Artistes. And more real | celebrities of the arts live in the modern studios along Sixty-sey- l enth street that are to be found | In all of Greenwich Village.