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From the porch of the two-story clapboard house located at 82 North
Broadway, Nyack, New York, you have a clear view down the slope of Second
Avenue to the bank of the Hudson River and the opposite shore -- the view
that young Edward Hopper saw every day from his upstairs window when he
was growing up before the turn of the century.
The house had been built in 1858 by the boy's maternal grandfather. Edward's
father, Garrett Hopper, moved into the house after marrying the owner's
daughter Elizabeth in 1878. Both Edward and his sister Marion were born
in the house --- she in 1880 and he in 1882. Marion lived in the house,
unmarried, until her death in 1965. Although Edward left Nyack in 1910 to
live in Manhattan, he held title to the house until he died in 1967. No
other family has owned it.
The Hopper family was solidly American middle class. Garrett Hopper owned
a dry goods store, where women bought material for making clothes before
the days of ready -to-wear. The Hoppers were prosperous emough for Edward
to make three trips to Paris in the decade after his graduation from Nyack
High School (then on Liberty Street).
Although he grew up to be a cultivated, well-read man, Edward Hopper always
reflected his upbringing as the son of a small businessman upstate. Although
something like half the business blocks we see were built in the first decade
of Hopper's life and well over a hundred houses now here were already standing,
the town had a far different character when Edward Hopper was going to school.
From the time of the Civil War until 1893, Nyack was a fast-growing center
of transportation and manufacturing. Population had nearly doubled to 4,500
from 1860 to 1880 and climbed by another 40% from 1880 to 1890. Nyack was
both a rail terminal, with 30 passenger trains a day in the late 1880's,
and a port for steamboats and a cross-Hudson ferry.
The town boasted three shipyards, six shoe factories, four cigar factories,
a church organ factory, and on the block across Broadway from the Hopper
family house there was a piano factory three stories high! After the financial
panic of 1893 and a brief but harsh depression with no "safety nets"
for those who lost their jobs or their bank deposits, growth came to a halt
and many factories closed for good.
Nyack survived as a picturesque river town where not much happened. One
local industry that continued well into the 20th century was boat-building,
which had a strong appeal for young Hopper. After school, he spent many
hours around the docks at the foot of Main Street and at a boatyard where
Gedney Street joins Ackerman Place (a few blocks north of Hopper House).
The boy built his own boat to prove he could do it and thought seriously
of becoming a marine architect. Some of his earliest drawings were of boating
on the Hudson, and a love of boats and the water was reflected in paintings
and watercolors through much of his career.
As soon as he graduated from Nyack High School in 1899, Edward Hopper started
commuting to art classes in New York City. He also gave art classes of his
own at the house in Nyack on Saturdays. After three trips to Paris from
1906 to 1910, he moved to Manhattan and did not live in Nyack again.
Living first in a room on East 59th Street, he moved in 1913 to a 74-step
walk-up apartment and studio at No. 3 Washington Square North, where he
lived for the rest of his life until his death in 1967. With him for the
last 42 years was his wife Jo, who was an artist in her own right. The former
Josephine Nivison committed her life to Hopper's career and served as the
model in many of his paintings. They had no children.
In the summers, Edward and Jo Hopper sometimes drove across the country
but usually visited New England. From 1930 to 1966, they stayed in a house
and studio that they had built in South Truro on Cape Cod. On the way to
the Cape, they would stop in Nyack to visit Marion and pick up their car.
Marion, Edward and Jo Hopper all died within a few years of each other,
and all are buried in a family plot in Nyack's Oak Hill Cemetery, across
from Nyack Hospital on Route 9W. The graves are high on a hill overlooking
the Hudson.
Today the house looks almost exactly as it did in 1912. The house would
have been torn down were it not for the efforts of neighbors determined
to save it. In 1970, five years after Marion's death and three years after
Edward's, it was dilapidated and boarded up, with an overgrown wisteria
that hid the front porch and reached along an overhead wire to the opposite
side of Broadway.
With the support of many people in Nyack, a committee was formed and was
incorporated in 1971 as the Edward Hopper Landmark Preservation Foundation,
a not-for-profit organization, dedicated to the preservation and restoration
of Hopper's birthplace and boyhood home. Trustees and members contributed
their time and expertise to the painstaking and exhausting task of restoring
the aging house. An exhibit and an auction were held to stimulate interest
and to raise funds. Local businesses contributed goods and services. A bank
assisted with financing. The Nyack Rotary Club helped to transform the backyard
into an attractive garden, and the Village of Nyack provided a platform
for outdoor concerts.
As you enter the house today, the rooms on the left are in the original
part of the house, built in 1858 in the Federal style. The room to the right
of the front door is in the part of the house added in 1882. The interior
and exterior of this part of the house are in the style loosely called "Queen
Anne," with a ceiling of polished wood and a tiled fireplace.
The room to the right at the back of the house, once used as a kitchen,
has been designated the Edward Hopper Room and is devoted to exhibits about
the artist's life and career. Posters, books, postcards and other Hopper
materials are available for purchase in this room.
Today Hopper House is a community cultural center and exhibit space, providing
an attractive, well-lighted ground floor gallery.
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