Joseph Cornell’s house

[37-08 Utopia Parkway, Flushing, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I’ve read somewhere that Joseph Cornell was grateful to have met someone who had met Claude Debussy. I suppose I can say that I’m grateful to have met someone who had met Joseph Cornell. That would be John Ashbery, who corresponded with Cornell, spoke with him by telephone any number of times, and visited him once at home (no date given) in the company of another (unnamed) poet. From Ashbery’s foreword to Joseph Cornell’s Theater of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters, and Files, ed. Mary Ann Caws (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993):

We sat for a long time in the kitchen, which was devoid of any of the treasures we had imagined the house to be full of, drinking Lipton’s tea and trying to do justice to the plate of leaden pastries on the table (Cornell explained that he preferred these “heavy-duty pastries,” as he called them, the old-style cafeteria kind, to the newer, fancier ones).

Cornell’s penchant for sweets and his habit (Depression-inspired?) of using a single teabag for multiple guests (and more than one round of tea) is attested by other visitors to Utopia Parkway.

Cornell, his brother Robert, and their mother Helen moved to the house on Utopia Parkway in 1929. Cornell spent the rest of his life there. The basement was his workspace. The garage housed additional materials for his art. (But look for the sign next to the front door: the garage was for rent when this photograph was taken.) The house stands.

More about no. 37-08 and its best-known occupant:

~ The art historian Phyllis Tuchman’s account of a visit to no. 37-08: “Enchanted Wanderer: A Writer Returns to a Lost Afternoon with Joseph Cornell” (Hauser & Wirth).

~ Eliza Barry Callahan’s account of trying to make it into no. 37-08, many years after Cornell’s death (The Paris Review).

~ Sarah Lea and Jasper Sharp’s account of “The House on Utopia Parkway” (Gagosian Quarterly ).

~ A Gagosian installation: The House on Utopia Parkway, Wes Anderson’s re-creation of Cornell’s basement workspace.

Related reading
A handful of Joseph Cornell posts : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[I’m also grateful to have met John Ashbery.]