Another unattended carriage

[298 West 11th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Strange but true: at one time it was common practice to leave a baby in an unattended carriage outside an apartment building, a house, a store. And I have the tax photographs to prove it. As recently as 2022, unattended babies in carriages and strollers were still common in Denmark.

Strange to think that the carriages in these tax photographs might hold persons now in their mid-eighties.

[Outside no. 296. Is that a baby, or just some bedding?]

It turns out that this block is right around the corner from Jane Jacobs’s block. When this photograph was taken, the restaurant on the corner (to the right in the photograph) was Dorgene, at 570 Hudson Street. “Quiet and pleasant place to dine,” said The Metropolitan Host in 1938; “intimate pine-panelled restaurant and bar serving American food,” the Host added in 1940. The restaurant was still going in 1961: it makes an appearance in The Death and Life of Great American Cities on page 52. Noel Stock’s The Life of Ezra Pound (1970) notes that James Laughlin, publisher of New Directions, gave several dinner parties at Dorgene for Pound and his companion Olga Rudge when they visited the United States in spring 1969. Here’s a Dorgene matchbook.

Today no. 570 is Anton’s. Nos. 296 and 298 also still stand. Cross Hudson Street and you’re standing in front of the White Horse Tavern. But now we’re getting pretty far from the carriage.

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