This week on “‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft”, I have another try at finding his first grand sweeping view of New York City. Specifically the elevated view he saw at night of the New York City sky line.

As readers will recall, Lovecraft’s short New York story “He” opens with this vision of…

Coming for the first time upon the town, I had seen it in the sunset from a bridge, majestic above its waters, its incredible peaks and pyramids rising flower-like and delicate from pools of violet mist to play with the flaming golden clouds and the first stars of evening. Then it had lighted up window by window above the shimmering tides where lanterns nodded and glided and deep horns bayed weird harmonies, and itself become a starry firmament of dream, redolent of faery music, and one with the marvels of Carcassonne and Samarcand and El Dorado and all glorious and half-fabulous cities.

Later, as his deep disillusion set in, the vision became one of…

… Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons” […] “a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon, and devil-lights burning from unnumbered windows.

In his letters Lovecraft records several initial real-life “faery” views of the city, seen with either his friend Loveman or the poet Hart Crane or both. His key early view was from the roof above Hart Crane’s rooms at 110 Columbia Heights (the same rooms that had once been those of the crippled creator of the great Brooklyn Bridge). These gave a fine view both of the famous Bridge, the river and the Lower Manhattan sky-line. The building, a “brownstone” as New Yorkers called them, is now apparently demolished. But his key view was from the roof rather than the windows…

my first sight of the illuminated Manhattan skyline [being] from its roof!”

I looked at Crane’s the exact location in last summer’s ‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft – the view from Columbia Heights. Of the view from his windows, I’ve since found that Crane wrote in a letter…

Just imagine looking out your window directly on the East River with nothing intervening between your view of the Statue of Liberty, way down the harbour, and the marvellous beauty of Brooklyn Bridge close above you on your right! All of the great new skyscrapers of lower Manhattan are marshalled directly across from you, and there is a constant stream of tugs, liners, sail boats, etc in procession before you on the river! It’s really a magnificent place to live.

Charles Graham’s illustrator’s view. Said to be 1896, but the Statue of Liberty is missing?

Judging by Internet searches there appear to have been various early attempts to picture the scene at night, though with limited success in photography due to the limitations of the era. Early masters like Alfred Stieglitz don’t appear to have tried to picture this particular view at night. Or if they did try, then the results are not online. Nor can any suitable b&w ‘nocturne’ lithograph of the view be found.

But some postcard creators, and their expert over-painters, did try.

But first some orientation. I’d say my arrow, seen on this Oilette card, about indicates the direction of view from Crane’s place.

Here we see the view of the towers of Lower Manhattan sketched in profile in the 1930s, after the Empire State building had arisen in 1930-31.

And a 1930s side view in fine photography.

Now a 1933 night dock-side view of Lower Manhattan. Close to what Lovecraft saw, but from too low an angle and probably too built-up compared to the 1920s. Those were the days before bamboozling bureaucrats and nay-sayers, when it might only take a year to build a New York City skyscraper. Some things about the skyline would have changed by 1933.

Here we see two early attempts at elevated-view over-painted night pictures, possibly from the 1900s-1910s. The sky line was then much lower. Crude pictures by the standards of our time, but not by theirs. And you have to admire the expertise of the over-painters who could turn day into night.

Some vintage night cards show the bridge itself at night, or pedestrians crossing it on the elevated ‘seagull level’ footway. Presumably the footway is what Lovecraft alludes to in the opening of “He”, when he writes… “I had seen it [the city sky line] in the sunset from a bridge”.

But painters rather than photographers did far better at depicting something of Lovecraft’s initial “faery” view of the towers from the bridge, as in this sunset view from the end of the bridge by T.F. Simon in 1927. This comes somewhat close I think, to the opening lines of “He”.

A fine picture, but I’m still hoping to find a really good ‘Lower Manhattan from Columbia Heights’ early/mid 1920s photographic view at night.

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Incidentally, I found a “night over-paint” of the view down Fulton Street. A key Lovecraft stamping-ground is in the first part of the road that runs into the upper-left of the card.

This week on my regular ‘picture postals’ post, a short tour of the Brown University repository in which I point out few of the more remarkable ‘picture postals’ from Lovecraft. These and many more can be found, free online at the Repository.

First, one that’s not actually in the Lovecraft collection, but is in the Repository. It shows a view of the Wickle gates I’ve never seen before, a view which puts them in visual context with the Brown clock tower in the corner of the campus. The gates were just a stone’s throw from Lovecraft’s last home at 66 College St., and he could see the clock tower through the trees. I’d never realised that one would have such a ‘Roman’ feel here, due to the columned building in the background. Something Lovecraft would surely have appreciated.

An early one from 1923, showing that the “old man” head was not modelled (with a bit of help by human wedge and sledgehammer) on the older Lovecraft.

Three additions to my recent post on Lovecraft in Dunedin, Florida.

Another evocative card from Florida, which is said to have physically gone missing from the collection. Though the scan remains.

The Woolworth Tower, New York City. If I remember rightly this was the tallest of the towers when Lovecraft first visited the city. One of his first acts was to ascend to the top and survey the city. He later thought fondly of Mr. Woolworth, who became very rich by providing people with reliable items at affordable prices in his stores.

In New York Lovecraft would pick up cards from the many museums. Here we see the phases of prehistoric man reconstructed from skulls. I don’t want to spend an hour reading up on the history of early anthropology, so I’ll just say that I seem to recall that ‘Piltdown Man’ was later discredited. And that the implied direct evolution of man from Neanderthal is also discredited, though we probably picked up some Neanderthal genes. I could be wrong on that though, since the scientific understanding may have changed again. Suffice it to say that much has changed since Lovecraft’s time.

Also a card showing “King Senusert III as a Sphinx” from Ancient Egypt, which appears to have been enclosed with a letter, to an unknown correspondent who was about to visit NYC.

The interior of Julius’ bar, NYC. Lovecraft stayed in a room above this bar for several weeks in 1935. It was later a famous gay bar in the 1950s-70s, though its status in 1935 is unknown.

The Japanese gardens at Maymont. Lovecraft went into raptures about these, thinking them even better than the similar Japanese garden in Brooklyn.

A view up College Hill. At his last home Lovecraft lived just in front of the distant white building with the long white windows — the John Hay Library at Brown, where his papers are now a prize collection.

Here we see a similar view, not in the Brown collection. It’s possible that Lovecraft’s house can be glimpsed, in a little courtyard garden back of the street-facing houses.

The Akley house, one of the inspirations for “The Whisperer in Darkness”.

On the Mississippi. Lovecraft travelled as far west as the Mississippi, and even crossed over for a short time.

The old Spite House, at his beloved Marblehead.

The re-created Pioneer Village at Salem.

Many more can be found, often alongside writing by Lovecraft, at the Brown University repository. High-res versions can also be found (look for the .JP2 files).