Although his home was rural Vermont, Norman Rockwell knew of the integrated urban neighborhoods that were flourishing in 1940s America. Long before interstates, Levittown and the “white flight,” working-class neighborhoods in Troy , New York and Los Angeles, California, attracted the famous illustrator. He drew sketches and took photographs of his dwellings and people, and these sketches provided the backdrop for two of Rockwell’s most memorable Saturday Evening Post covers, homecoming soldier (1945) and road block (1949). And true to their urban theme, both illustrations include African Americans.
Troy, known as “The Collar City,” was the home of Arrow Shirts, whose “Arrow Collar Man” was made famous by ads created by Rockwell’s mentor and friend, JC Leyendecker. Troy was a booming industrial city, making four million necklaces a week during the 1920s. Another source of industrial fame for the city was its blacksmith shop, manufactures that, by the mid-19th century, were second only to those in Pennsylvania. .
From his Vermont home, Norman Rockwell traveled frequently through Troy on his way to Albany, New York, where he took the train to New York City. When the artist decided to create a Post cover to commemorate the return of World War II veterans to their hometowns, he decided to turn that hometown into working-class Troy, New York.
homecoming soldier appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 25, 1945. Among the people who cheerfully (or coyly, in the case of his young girlfriend) welcome him home, the young soldier is not only Norman Rockwell himself ( standing in a doorway of the tenement house), but also two children hanging recklessly from a tree they have climbed, wildly waving a welcome. One of the two children is black.
In 1945, the children went out to play. No “helicopter parents,” no playdates. Black and white kids had fun and fought together on the streets of America. Think “Our Gang”. Elsie Wagner Fenic, in her moving memory White girl in Harlem, provides a lovely look at this time. Fenic, a second-generation Polish-American, can still jump a pretty bad double dutch, thanks to the fact that she spent her first nineteen years enjoying the street games of 1940s New York City with black and Latino friends.
Norman Rockwell brought together black and white playmates in homecoming soldiernot to make a declaration of civil rights, but because, on the streets of Troy, New York in 1945, they really were there.
Another urban setting for Norman Rockwell was Los Angeles, California.
During the winter of 1948-49, while vacationing with his in-laws in Los Angeles, Rockwell visited Mrs. Merrill, a widow and owner of a women’s boarding house. He wanted to borrow the whole house from her.
Located in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, 719 South Rampart Boulevard was a three-story tenement flanked by similar structures and the “Pacific Telephone and Telegraph” building, the workplace of many of Mrs. Merrill’s guests. . Rockwell sought Ms. Merrill’s permission to hold a photo shoot in front of her building. Capturing the street and some of its residents as models, she would later use these photos to create one of her famous Saturday Evening Post covers. Goal Ms. Merril said no. Apparently, even in 1949, not everyone loved Norman Rockwell.
The energetic middle-aged landlady felt that the famous artist did not adequately “highlight” his female models in his paintings. However, Rockwell persisted in her request and Merrill finally relented: for the payment of $50.00.
The camera crew showed up at South Rampart while one of the members of Mrs. Merrill’s tenants, Antonia Piasecki, was doing her laundry. In a letter to the Norman Rockwell Museum, she writes, “Mr. Rockwell asked me for fancy underwear for the clothing line. I gave him nylon stockings, black lace-trimmed panties, and a bra that he hung up himself…”
A moving truck arrived, complete with California plates and two moving truck drivers. Many photos were taken. the result was road blockthe character-filled illustration that appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on July 9, 1949.
Norman Rockwell put himself in the painting: he is the violin teacher looking out the window of what was actually Mrs. Piasecki’s bedroom. Mrs. Piasecki also became a model for Rockwell: she is the young woman who looks out the window below Rockwell. The red-haired lady standing at the basement door? That’s the rockwell-turned-resistance model, Mrs. Merril. Models for other figures in the painting have also been identified: Joseph Magnani, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a friend of Rockwell’s, is the artist hanging from a window in a building across the street, accompanied by a barely dressed young woman. Peter Rockwell, the artist’s youngest son, is the speckled boy with the violin just below them. But Ms. Piasecki doesn’t recall “all those kids being around (at the scene of the shooting) at the time.”
“All those kids” is probably Mrs. Piasecki’s polite code for the two little black boys posing at the bottom of the scene. They stand solemnly with their backs to the viewer, studying the dead end created when the big red truck meets a small white dog.
Norman Rockwell apparently did not encounter any black children on South Rampart Street that day. But given his understanding of similar neighborhoods like Troy, New York, he knew they were out there somewhere. So the intrepid artist went out and found them.
***
They are touching in elegance, innocence and simplicity. Two black children, a girl and an older boy, in rear profile. The black-and-white photo in the Norman Rockwell Museum archives shows the boy’s shirt neatly pressed, the girl’s braids impeccably arranged. They are both standing with their hands behind their backs, looking at an invisible horizon.
The names of these two small models are unknown. Nothing is written on the back of the photo. Rockwell’s meticulously kept receipts do not reveal who was paid to pose for this shot. The location of the photograph, although it appears to have been taken in Los Angeles, is also not known with certainty.
But this is known: in 1949, Norman Rockwell went out on purpose and found two black children to model for him so he could place their figures in his illustration. Rockwell knew they were supposed to be in the picture.
The house at 719 South Rampart Boulevard has disappeared. Where the building once stood is now a parking lot. In the 1950s, integrated neighborhoods began to disappear from the United States. Consequently, people of color also disappeared from Norman Rockwell’s 1950 paintings.