This is Fleet Week -- When the Navy drops anchor and unleashes thousands of sailors on the streets of New York City so I thought it appropriate to write about a famous neighborhood artist Paul Cadmus. Cadmus lived at 5 St. Lukes Place for about 25 years from the Thirties through the Fifties. He painted The Fleet's In soon after moving to St. Lukes Place, depicting sailors in Central Park enjoying themselves. The Navy was not amused.

An interesting history of the painting can be found here.

Art and literature often intersect and so it did at Number 5. Cadmus became great friends with E. M. Forster and when Forster would visit the States he would stay with Cadmus. By that time Forster's greatest books were behind him, but he may have become a happier and more self-accepting man. The Village offered a sanctuary for gay men in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, and Cadmus' life and art were OUT, even back then, twenty to thirty years before Stonewall.

1969: The Year of Gay Liberation will be on view during the month of June in the Stephen A Schwarzman Building (the library with the Lions out front). Stonewall happened just a few blocks from Hudson Park, so after visiting that historic place, be sure to stop by.