Janet Drawing

Greenwich House

Settlement House:
Neighborhood institution generally in an urban slum area, where trained workers endeavor to improve social conditions, particularly by providing community services and neighborly cooperation.

I don’t know if you would consider Greenwich Village an urban slum area, even then. But it was a lot cheaper to live there than it is now.
The first school I ever went to was Greenwich House (a settlement house) at Barrow Street and 7th Avenue. I attended Nursery and Kindergarten there

You went through the double doors and up some steps, I think. There was a gated area on the right with desks for the staff and some benches. Opposite the front door was the entrance to the theater. I think a teacher came down and collected her charges.
This was the depression, around 1936, so on arrival every day we got a dose of cod liver oil, orange juice and a piece of French bread with a smear of peanut butter.
I don’t remember what we did all day, or half a day. But I do remember naptime on pads with a blanket and the roof playground. I also remember improvisation where we all danced around in little green tunics, led by a teacher with wild black hair tied back with a scarf. Remember it was the days of Isadora.
Since I was very thin, it was decided that I have “Sun baths” now and then. All this was done right there at Greenwich House. I think my mother did a wall border for one of the rooms. I remember a parade of animals near the ceiling.

The worst day I ever had there was my brave day. I must have been around four or five. I told my mother that she could leave me at the door and I’d walk in alone. I panicked just inside the door and ran out, just in time to see my mother’s bus going up 7th avenue.
I was in tears when I got into the building, but the worst was yet to come. They mixed me up with a child that had a doctors appointment that morning and by the time my mother got back I was hysterical. It’s amazing that young as you are, you remember things like that.

Every Christmas we had a pageant in the theater directed by Mrs. Murphy. She would yell and push us around, but I guess we were pretty good. I remember one play we did for a number of years “A Star Has Fallen” I started out as a little angel polishing the stars and graduated to one of the crowd.

The theater was also used by Equity players and I was the daughter Mary in a production of O’Neill’s “Beyond the Horizon” I was given a teddy bear by the cast and I died by the second act. I found the script for my part a while ago and it was all “Yes, daddy” and “No, mommy.”

All this was looked over by Mrs. Simkovitch, who would walk around saying hello to all of us. http://greenwichhouse.org/about-us/history
A wonderful place that launched us all.

Jack's WPA card

Jack claims this was the only time he got a steady paycheck for his art work. Because of the artist's section of the WPA, murals were painted in public places and all sorts of prints were distributed to museums and libraries. Enriching America/