May 23, 2011
Not Comics: Attempt To Flip William Steig’s Skinny House

To be perfectly honest, the home in question is really known as The Millay House, after previous owner Edna St. Vincent Millay. Its best-known resident not Millay is almost certainly the actor Cary Grant. It's also honest to note that the building is notorious not for its ownership provenance but for the fact that it's apparently the skinniest home of its type in New York City. But to see
a former residence of a cartoonist like William Steig go on sale for millions after some simple renovations brings to mind a moment in history when the most famous and influential cartoonists lived in remarkable New York buildings and that this wasn't seen as a massive aberration or traced solely to their ability to cash out on some sort of film- or licensing-related effort. Plus: photos of a deeply weird little house.
It's been a good few weeks for cartoonist home news. Al Hirschfeld's famously adorable-sounding home was sold recently for a similar, multi-million dollar amount. This led to ruminations
like this one, where we witness the final fate of the chair from which Hirschfeld drew cartoons for what seemed like the lifetime of entire civilizations. Maybe "seemed like" is unnecessary, as I'm pretty sure there was still an Ottoman Empire when Hirschfeld sold his first theatrical caricature.
posted 9:00 am PST |
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