Painting the Town -- Museum of the City of New York

This humble mission church at the corner of Dean Street and Classon Avenue in Brooklyn stands in sharp contrast to New York's more imposing religious edifices. With its painted (rather than stained-glass) windows, hand-lettered wooden signs, and storefront location adjacent to a small grocery store, its "mission" to the city's less affluent is clear. The WPA Guide to New York City describes how easily these storefronts were converted for religious use with the installation of rows of benches, a pulpit, and a minimal amount of decoration.¹

The first mission church in New York was established at 130 Liberty Street by the Salvation Army, following the model developed in England for relieving the plight of the poor through a broad array of social services -medical and legal help, homes for children and down-on-their-luck adults, and care for the impoverished elderly. In areas abandoned by established churches following the exodus of their affluent congregants, these neighborhood-oriented institutions, often run by American evangelistic associations, raised and spent funds locally.²

Miklos Suba, trained as an architect in his native Hungary, painted countless views of Brooklyn, where he settled in 1924. This work is part of his 1940s series of paintings depicting local storefront churches and barbershops. The exact rendering of buildings and details -bricks, fire escapes, and even the sign announcing an upcoming gospel program -sometimes caused him to be grouped with the Precisionists. Nevertheless, this Brooklyn corner scene, based on Suba's snapshots of it,³ has a humble and warm quality (reinforced by the figures of children on the street) rarely found in the work of more orthodox Precisionist artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and Charles Demuth.⁴

Notes:

1 The WPA Guide to New York City (1939; reprint, New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 264.

2 Notes from a conversation with Major David Dulgose of the Salvation Army, May 24, 1994, Museum Archives.

3 Suba's snapshots related to this work are in the Museum Archives.

4 Robert Rosenbloom, in "Art: Precisionist Painting," Architectural Details 50, no. 3 (March 1993): 140 -143, describes the Precisionists' "vision of static, limpid perfection" as their response to the twentieth century's "law, order and newly discovered beauty of cubic utilitarian buildings, cylindrical oil tanks and circular wheels within wheels." The spirit of most of Suba's carefully detailed works seems generally more humanistic.


Storefront Mission 1943 Miklos Suba (1880 -1944) Oil on canvas, 14 X 16 Signed lower right: Miklos Suba / 43 Gift of Susanna Suba, 88.45
This humble mission church at the corner of Dean Street and Classon Avenue in Brooklyn stands in sharp contrast to New York's more imposing religious edifices. With its painted (rather than stained-glass) windows, hand-lettered wooden signs, and storefront location adjacent to a small grocery store, its "mission" to the city's less affluent is clear. The WPA Guide to New York City describes how easily these storefronts were converted for religious use with the installation of rows of benches, a pulpit, and a minimal amount of decoration.¹ The first mission church in New York was established at 130 Liberty Street by the Salvation Army, following the model developed in England for relieving the plight of the poor through a broad array of social services -medical and legal help, homes for children and down-on-their-luck adults, and care for the impoverished elderly. In areas abandoned by established churches following the exodus of their affluent congregants, these neighborhood-oriented institutions, often run by American evangelistic associations, raised and spent funds locally.² Miklos Suba, trained as an architect in his native Hungary, painted countless views of Brooklyn, where he settled in 1924. This work is part of his 1940s series of paintings depicting local storefront churches and barbershops. The exact rendering of buildings and details -bricks, fire escapes, and even the sign announcing an upcoming gospel program -sometimes caused him to be grouped with the Precisionists. Nevertheless, this Brooklyn corner scene, based on Suba's snapshots of it,³ has a humble and warm quality (reinforced by the figures of children on the street) rarely found in the work of more orthodox Precisionist artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and Charles Demuth.⁴ Notes: 1 The WPA Guide to New York City (1939; reprint, New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 264. 2 Notes from a conversation with Major David Dulgose of the Salvation Army, May 24, 1994, Museum Archives. 3 Suba's snapshots related to this work are in the Museum Archives. 4 Robert Rosenbloom, in "Art: Precisionist Painting," Architectural Details 50, no. 3 (March 1993): 140 -143, describes the Precisionists' "vision of static, limpid perfection" as their response to the twentieth century's "law, order and newly discovered beauty of cubic utilitarian buildings, cylindrical oil tanks and circular wheels within wheels." The spirit of most of Suba's carefully detailed works seems generally more humanistic.