MADRON

On view: November 15, 2024 - May 23, 2025

Harry Sternberg was born in 1904, the same year New York City’s Mayor George B. McClellan played temporary train operator for the maiden voyage of the city’s first underground subway line. It was a nickel to ride and a whopping three miles per hour faster than the elevated railway that towered over the streets above. To the monied elite and the anxious store owners trying to attract them, the rise of the subway and the fall of the elevated rail that coincided with it was a cause for glee: no more deafening rattle, no more blocked sunlight, no more soot sullying their fine garments. But to Harry Sternberg, a child of Jewish immigrants who was raised in Lower Manhattan and, later on, Brooklyn, these were the very reasons to adore the place he called home. “It was juicy and alive, noisy, dirty, but so alive,” he mused. “Everybody was fighting and arguing and pushing and yelling and talking at once. Nothing polite about it. But, oh boy, it was alive.”

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