Books, Arts & Manners: The Art Proletariat

UNION Square used to be the haunt of labor unions (although, as Michael Harrington liked to say, they couldn’t organize the Union Square subway station). Now it is the haunt of the art proletariat.

The evolution of this neighborhood is adumbrated in the history of the neoclassical building that overlooks the square’s northeast corner. It was built in 1928 as the headquarters of Tammany Hall, the practical expression of workingmen’s power. The machine had picked a bad time to make a sumptuous investment, though, and Tammany soon gave way to a local of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (more worker solidarity, less power). Now it houses the New York Film Academy. When the weather gets warm, the art laborers emerge into the park, in teams of three, working tripoded black movie cameras old enough to have been used by their parents. They set up around the plinth of the Abraham Lincoln statue, filming each other, or passersby. I have seen as many as four crews at once, filming in different directions. (If the Kennedy motorcade had passed that way, we wouldn’t have needed a Warren Commission.) Today, reportage; tomorrow, Sundance.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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UNION Square used to be the haunt of labor unions (although, as Michael Harrington liked to say, they couldn’t organize the Union Square subway station). Now it is the haunt of the art proletariat.

The evolution of this neighborhood is adumbrated in the history of the neoclassical building that overlooks the square’s northeast corner. It was built in 1928 as the headquarters of Tammany Hall, the practical expression of workingmen’s power. The machine had picked a bad time to make a sumptuous investment, though, and Tammany soon gave way to a local of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (more worker solidarity, less power). Now it houses the New York Film Academy. When the weather gets warm, the art laborers emerge into the park, in teams of three, working tripoded black movie cameras old enough to have been used by their parents. They set up around the plinth of the Abraham Lincoln statue, filming each other, or passersby. I have seen as many as four crews at once, filming in different directions. (If the Kennedy motorcade had passed that way, we wouldn’t have needed a Warren Commission.) Today, reportage; tomorrow, Sundance.