Mark Rothko #11

Rothko’s former studio at 222 Bowery. Rothko used this space as his studio from 1957 to 1962.

"....
222 Bowery was originally built in 1884 in a Romanesque Revival–style of architecture. The building was the first YMCA to open in New York City (a tour of the building today shows a coal chute and a basement indoor swimming pool in the original design). In fact, Rothko’s second-floor studio still has the original showers from the YMCA era and metal cages protecting the ceiling light fixtures, as were seen in older gymnasiums. In 1940 (eight years after the YMCA vacated the building) French painter Fernand Léger moved in. The artist had fled Europe during World War II, and it was in New York that he encountered a newfound perspective on color. “I was struck by the neon advertisements flashing all over Broadway,” he wrote. “You are there, you talk to someone, and all of a sudden he turns blue. Then the color fades—another one comes and turns him red or yellow.”

After Léger, and later Rothko’s, stint in the building (the latter eventually moved his studio to another location in 1962), the space turned from one that was exclusively housing artists to one occupied by poets and writers.
...."
(bron: Architectural Digest, foto's: Adrian Wilson)