Here I am in 1934

Yes...I'm very old. Drawing by Jack.

Sketches of Margaret and Jack 1930's

Drawings of my mother and father by the artist Abe Birnbaum

MERRY CHRISTMAS

An original card by Jack

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

Manasquan Street and her brother Winsor.

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

Woman seated

Town Crier

Cover of 1930's magazine illustrated by Jack

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

I'm so happy to post my mothers art work here, rather than have it sit in a box in a closet.

Ballyhoo Gag Ad 1930's

Ballyhoo did a lot of gag ads. Here is one my father illustrated.

Ballyhoo

Jack had cartoons in this gag magazine in the 1930's

The Abandoned Carousel

One of my favorite lithographs by my father.

Mom and Dad

Margaret's sketch book-France 1926 or 1927

The Trafford Children

Top row: Charles Jr. and cousin Nanny-Bottom row: Margaret, Winsor and Babs

Trafford Family

Mabel and Charles..My Quaker grandparents

Attic at 45 Parker Ave

Tillie

Margaret Emily Trafford-born Manasquan, New Jersey 1899-died New York City 1950. My mother.

My mother was born 60 miles from New York City, but it could have been a million miles away.

My grandfather was a staunch Republican...believed in passing the hat when sickness came to friends and co-workers. Hated the New Deal. He was also a Quaker, complete with thees and thous. He always wore black suits, flowing ties and high buttoned shoes. Rode a bicycle everywhere. The bookshelf in his bedroom had many books about Abraham Lincoln, his hero. He worked for the railroad and then became a printer of pamphlets etc and a notary public.

He died when I was 8 Years old, but I remembered him very well. He gave me printing paper to draw on, played games with me and I remember him traveling to New York one Christmas to deliver a box of gifts from the relatives. I adored him.

My grandmother was nice and made great desserts. She was a bit of a prima donna, and reminded people often that her family in Philadelphia had two horses and marble steps. There were children and grandchildren around. 45 Parker Avenue, home.

My mother was a modern woman. She drove a taxi and played the piano for silent movies and she got to Europe and finally New York City. She wasn't that good an artist in her teens, but got better and better. She also would go back and study anatomy from time to time and French.

When my father met my mother

In his words...

[When I first met her, we were both attending the illustration class at the Art Student’s League. I scarcely paid much attention to her then. She was frowsely dressed, clothes outmoded, too large for her slim figure. Long and disheveled hair. I had a full- time job in an art department and had been taking evening classes at art school. Progressing, for several years, from several years of life classes to illustration and composition. She, I later learned, came from a small town on the Jersey shore. Her parents had planned for her to go to “Normal School” and become a teacher, which were wishes not abnormal for parents at that time. In those times for women, it was either teaching, nursing or shorthand and typing. She, however rebelled and wanted to be an artist. She enrolled in a Philadelphia art school and one of her paintings grabbed a prize in a contest given by a women’s magazine. The reward was a reproduction of her painting as a cover of this magazine plus some cash. With this money and additional sums squirreled away, she was able to come to New York City, where the real art was. Her parents were poor; she was poor. She worked at any art job she could get-anything to be able to stay in New York. She worked at successive women’s magazines and department store art departments, drawing fashions which she hated and knew she wasn’t very good at. But it was enough to sustain her in the city for periods of time and not have to go back to the drabness of her small home town.

Classes ended in May and I did not see her until the following October…And what a change! Her hair was cut in a boyish bob, framing large blue eyes, regular features and highly pink cheeks. I realized she was an extremely handsome woman. Why the transformation? Partly the result of a long summer spent in Europe. It seems that in her hometown she had a close friend, Sara, whose parents were rich. Sara wanted to travel. Rather than having their daughter go off alone, the father paid the way for Margaret to go as a companion.

Margaret and Sara covered most of France that summer, climaxed by a lengthy stay in Paris. Here Margaret met a woman who had started an art school. She studied at this school and also did hundreds of sketches-a fine record of her trip abroad. She also became enamored of the French life style. She studied French, tried reading it and picked up some conversational French. In a way she was becoming a real Francophile.

I got to know her quite well that fall. The process of getting acquainted was full of surprises. She had a good ear for music being brought up in a musical household. Her mother, originally from Philadelphia, had studied opera there and had never quite gotten over the experience. The house in New Jersey resounded with soprano trills arpeggio piano. Margaret, herself, had a sure but small voice, always on key. She played the piano “by ear” in a masterful way. She was one of those people who could pick up a tune at once, and immediately embellish it with chords. I envied her that talent. I had seriously studied the piano for some years, played the classics and was a good sight reader, but alas, my ear had been sadly neglected. I discovered she had a swell sense of humor and also was an excellent mimic. Her theatrical flair turned up in later years in small theater groups, in acting and set design. Wonder of wonders! She could also manipulate the ukelele, the favorite instrument of that generation, complete with voice and true chords]

The Markovici papers

The Markovici Family

Standing: Mike, Aaron, Rebecca and Louis

Seated: Al, Sally and Jack (he had the same expression when he was old)

Union Square in the 30's

I Love New York

Though my father was poor growing up, he always told me that NYC was a great place to be, even without money. He learned to play piano at an early age. (I don't know how my grandparents managed that) His parents were all for education and he and his brothers were all for being as American as possible. Coney Island, baseball, Central Park and movies were the big deal.

Sometimes after school he would deliver flowers and get a few pennies. The movie admittance fee was a nickel...so if you had two cents, you waited around to see if some kid would come along with three cents. If you had three cents you were king.

His family consisted of mother and father, sister Sally, Louis, Mike, my father and Al (the youngest..born in America) The boys did well and ended up as a psychiatrist, business man and musician and Sally married a guy with some dough. Only my father chose a lowly profession, ART. For years, he told me, his brothers tried to persuade him to go into some business.

By the time he went to high school he decided that he would be an accountant. The school was Commerce High, whose big claim to fame was that Lou Gherig had gone there. The art teacher taught a little bit of cartooning and Jack was hooked.

Coming to America

[At the beginning of this century, my father, a cooper by trade, in search of a better job opportunities left Romania for England. With him were his wife, son and daughter. Two more sons were born in London; I was the youngest. Soon after, the family decided that America was much more “golden” than England and embarked on an old tub for Ellis Island. It was an agonizing trip according to my sister who is nine years older than I am. She remembers crowding, sleeping on open decks, heavy storms and seasickness. I was only two and spared the memory. As we immigrated from port to port, inventive immigration officials tacked on new endings to our name. Originally Marcovici in Romania, it became Markovitch in England and finally Markowitz at Ellis Island.

Ours was a typical entrance into the New World. For example the immigrant “greenhorn” has a fellow countryman living in the city as a real established New Yorker (perhaps for two months) who knew the ropes. The friend finds the greenhorn an apartment and helps him move in. Ours was on Allen Street, a narrow thoroughfare, always noisy and eternally dark, dominated by the elevated railroad (the el) Fortunately our tenement was six stories high. To escape the gloom we mounted the stairs to the light and sun on the roof. Typically tenement dweller adopted al fresco living where fire escape and roof became naturally air-conditioned sleeping quarters.

Luckily there was a glut of empty apartments in the city and one could move at will. Leases were no problem, there were none. We moved every year hoping to better ourselves, thus we progressed from a toilet in the backyard, to one on each floor, to one in the apartment. Bathing facilities were makeshift, the most luxurious being the kitchen washtub.

Our next move was to a gloomy bunch of rooms on Norfolk Street, again on the East Side. My few recollections of the place were a story about a grocery boy, who rather than go up and down stairs would jump from one window to a window in an adjoining building. Finally toppling, he was saved by the many clothes lines hung across the alley.

East Sixth Street was a move uptown but still in the slums. We now lived in a three-story brick house with a shared toilet on each floor, and wonders of wonders, the toilet had a window. These were the usual cramped quarters for a family of seven, which we’d now become. I addition we occasionally put up a cousin who had just come from the old country.]

This is what my father (Jack) wrote about his early memories of New York City.

Rebecca and Aaron

My father's name was Jack Markow. He was born in London in 1905 and died in Manasquan , New Jersey in 1986. He was a cartoonist, painter, lithographer, writer and teacher. He was also a mean billiard and poker player.
The sketches are of his parents, my Romanian grandparents.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

This is a blog about growing up with artist parents in New York City. It will start in the 1930's and go up to the time I was about twenty years old.

I want to mainly show my parent's art work...my father, who is pretty well known and my mother who isn't known at all. Since I was around, it also includes me.

Here is a lithograph of my fathers to get me started.