MCNY Blog: New York Stories
Iconic photos of a changing city, and commentary on our Collections & Exhibitions from the crew at MCNY.org
A Fine Line: The Art of the Clothesline
Living in New York City, one becomes accustomed to the grey area between public and private space. Intimate details are exposed through the most mundane daily tasks. Laundry is one of those inevitable rituals that most New Yorkers have to perform in public. Before laundromats, the clothesline was an intrinsic component of the urban landscape. It is impossible to imagine the archetypal tenement building complete without several strands of white linen connecting each structure.
Sid Grossman (1915-1955), Vacant Lot between Buildings at 148th St., 1939. Museum of the City of New York. 43.131.9.7
Thompson Street Clotheslines. Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis (1849-1914). ca. 1895, Museum of the City of New York. 90.13.2.213.
Overlapping in a complex network, each line of garments reads as a household census noting: age, family size, and social status. Bed sheets, undergarments, and women’s hosiery on thin strings allude to bodies not present. Starched white shirts dangle neck-down on tiny tightropes stories high above a precipice of filth-black alleys. A warm summer breeze could bring each garment to life with the weightlessness of guardian angels overlooking the city.
Photographer unknown. Minetta Alley. ca. 1900. Museum of the City of New York. X2010.11.2570.
“…they [clotheslines] were useful in many ways besides drying laundry: for running messages and cups of sugar from one apartment to another, or–stretched diagonally down to the ground–for conveying groceries to the elderly infirm or growlers of beer up to the corner saloon. They were characteristic of a life stretched by necessity, out of interiors of apartments as far as possible into the public space beyond.” -Luc Sante 1
Andrew Herman. Hanging laundry. 1940. Museum of the City of New York. 43.131.8.40.
Chicago Albumen Works
Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis (1849-1914). Typical Tenement Fire escape, serving as an extension of the “flat”– Allen Street. ca. 1890. Museum of the City of New York. 90.13.4.206.
Jessie Tarbox Beals. Greenwich Village Alley with Modern Art Lines. 1905-1920, Museum of the City of New York. 95.74.12
It was inevitable that the City’s great documenters would utilize the presence of the clotheslines as a visual element in depictions of poor and working class neighborhoods. It often added physicality to the frame, serving as a system of measurement of overwhelming heights. Each diagonal line became a symbol of the chaos and intersection of lives and cultures within an imposed vertical grid. The clothing was a recurring character of universal need. The photographer could either promote order or disquiet through composition. At times the wash-line appears uninvited, as unavoidable as a passing vehicle in the corner of the camera frame.
Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). Court of the First Model Tenements in New York City. March 16, 1936. Museum of the City of New York. 40.140.48.
“…Abbott documented this space as a communal laundry line: ropes with pulleys led from apartments to five-story poles imbedded in concrete. Abbott made two exposures, with the laundry and poles forming different abstract configurations. She later recalled that winter day the laundry frozen stiff and the children huddled together, too cold to move (McQuaid, 375).” -Bonnie Yochelson 2
John Albok (1894-1982). John Albok’s backyard, view of clothesline strung between windows in brick courtyard, 1392 Madison Ave. ca. 1933. Museum of the City of New York. 82.68.64.
Charles Von Urban. 505-511 Greenwich Street. 1932. Museum of the City of New York. 33.173.130.
Arnold Eagle, Wooden Rear Tenements–Children Playing in Dirt. 1935. Museum of the City of New York. 43.131.11.310.
Samuel H. (Samuel Herman) Gottscho (1875-1971). Tudor City from 39th Street. c. 1930-1933. Museum of the City of New York. 39.20.24.
Line drying has largely disappeared from New York as so many traditions of the lower classes in the name of social progress. Industrialized laundries with delivery and drop off were introduced as a convenience service to the middle class at the turn-of-the-century. Electric dryers were developed in the 1930s, but did not become marketable until the late 40s and early 50s. Soon, New Yorkers began to haul their laundry (as most do now) in swollen bags down the narrow passages and steep stairwells of their buildings through the street to laundromats lined with self-service machines and coin dispensers.
Byron Company (New York, N.Y.) Carolyn Laundry, 111 East 128th St., Interior, Box of Laundry. 1929. Museum of the City of New York. 93.1.1.6828.
Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999). Laundry in Greenwich Village [Women in the laundromat.] 1948. Museum of the City of New York. X2011.4.10875.9E
1 Sante, Luc, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Macmillan, 2003.
2 Yochelson, Bonnie, Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, The Museum of The City of New York, The New Press, New York, 1997.
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15 comments on “A Fine Line: The Art of the Clothesline”
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MCNY Blog: New York Stories 
Absolutely loved this post, I stayed in New York and it felt quite strange to lug my laundry down the street especially when my clothesline in Australia had been a rope between 2 gumtrees at one stage. Thanks for the memories Cheers Sue
Great post. It spurred me to count the many clotheslines I could see from my bedroom window in Brooklyn this weekend–six!
I am a huge fan of hanging laundry. In my years in NYC I lugged my wet wash in bags up to the roof, where I would hang it in the shadows of the Empire State Building. This was in the 1980s, not so long ago. My neighbors in Chelsea had lines from their apartments. Whenever I travel, I notice laundry lines. Tuscany was full of them this August. And, today, the Berkshires, it is a great drying day! xo Suzi
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Singalong with my “Love On The Clothesline” tune.
http://voxerth.net/on-the-clothesline/
baby likes fresh air and periwinkle skies
so I dry them knickers and skirts on a clothesline
baby smiles on laundry day, mighty fine
cuz I hang my love on the line
it takes several power plants to dry america’s clothes,
polluting air, land, water close to our homes
clothes dryer monsters electric and gas
they’re a pain in the planet’s biomass
baby likes pleased trees and turquoise hills
so I dry our socks and undies on the windowsill
baby hugs on laundry day, mighty fine
cuz I put my love on the twine…
The link to this article was sent to us in response to the photo I posted on my husband’s Facebook of a row of white towels on our clothesline. We live in the suburbs so we can hang our clothes on a clothesline to our heart’s desire, except in the winter, of course. We will try our darnest to be even more fiercely artistic with our clothesline. Our greater motivation is harnessing the sun’s energy, setting an example for the younger generations.
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Hello!
I work for an upcoming TV series. As part of the series we are filming “slices of life” from around New York City. For one of the pieces, we are looking for people currently using a clothesline to feature on the show! Email maria@tnyprods.tv for details!
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My mother who lived in the Bronx in the early 1930’s and 40’s said a man used to go around hanging clothes lines. He would climb the tall poles, they had rungs coming out either side, and hang the lines. He would call out to the people living in the tenements and they would call back to him if they wanted a line hung. She said they had a specific “song” that they called out, but she doesn’t remember what they said. I’m wondering if anyone else has this memory of if they know what the man hanging the line would call out.
My husband lived on 181st St betw Vyse and Daly in the Bronx. He lived in a 4th floor walkup. During the great snowstorm of 1947, he remembers the lines being stacked high with knife-edge thin piles of snow
I grew up on East 89th Street and still remember the old guy walking the back yards and shouting, “Line up”.
A walk down memory lane about the clothesline lifestyle. Loved this so much. I grew up in a Third Avenue tenement. The front room faced the El train and the dining room faced the back yard filled with debris. No one was able to enter it. Our clothesline hooked on the windows/wall of the famous El Morocco. One day it the line snapped and my grandmother and I had to go inside to have one of the daytime workers fix it. I was 8years old and I every night I listened to the Latin band play music to entertain the rich and famous. The zebra print cushions visible only by a few low lights gave me an eerie feeling. No people, no music, no laughter only the sound of our feet. We spoke in a whisper as if we didn’t want to disturb anything. The strangest things was standing at the window and seeing my home. It looked so small. The curtains moving in the wind looked do fresh and clean. It made me proud, as I spoke out to the handyman, ‘that’s my house.’ It was only a cloth line, but to me it was a connection between the real and fantasy. I miss that tenement and clothesline. Diane Leon
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