the last book I ever read (The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever, excerpt six)

from The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever by Prudence Peiffer:

Manhattan in the 1950s was the height of Abstract Expressionism’s reception and renown, putting the New York School on the world map, and in particular the enclave clustered around the Tenth Street Studios, stretching between Eighth and Twelfth Streets and First and Sixth Avenues in the Village, and the Club on Eighth Street, where painters would come to drink cans of Ballantine and pass bottles of whiskey and talk shop. This community, like Coenties Slip, was born from economic necessity: munitions factories during World War II, the buildings had been recently vacated and were cheap.

Kelly’s friend who he had met in Paris, the expressionist painter Fred Mitchell, had found him a loft space at 109 Broad Street in the financial district, around the corner from Mitchell’s own. Mitchell, who called him “Ellsworthy,” was Kelly’s only real contact in New York.