The Burton School 1940's

In New York City there is a famous Children's Profesional School for performing kids.  In the 1940's a small competitor existed called the Burton School.

I had just finished my first year of high school at Friend's Seminary and hated every minute of it. I wound up there I think because my mother was a Quaker and we got half price off.  A very good school, but not for me.  My whole life was ballet and there was a two thirty class I wanted to take at the Fokine Ballet School.

For my Sophomore year my mother dug up this private children's professional school that was $25 a month.  Boy, was I in Heaven. 

The school was in a suite at the Belvidere Hotel across from the old Madison Square Garden.  There were tables scattered around for each class and when I arrived some of the students had locked the French teacher in the stairwell.  The Science class was in the cloakroom.  I remember there were two boys in my class Benny and Eddie, but I can't remember who else.  It was very small.  I was there from 9AM to 2PM and took four courses, English, Math, French and History and maybe Science.  Anyway, I could make my two thirty ballet class.

The school was run by a rather shady couple.  He taught a few of the classes and I swear she wore the same maroon suit for a year.  The lobby of the hotel was full of whoever was playing at the stadium.  So there were midgets, clowns and dancing girls.  Soon we were to move on to the Nightclub.

The nightclub was on 53rd and 7th avenue.  Glass doors and a red carpeted staircase that led to the main room.  Some of the new teachers had built partitions to form class rooms, but the dance floor had been removed and we were left with a splintered under floor.  There were two bathrooms and a kitchen.  I think the shady couple were sleeping in one of the bathrooms.  Anyway the school expanded.  More pupils and stage mothers.  Then the shady couple disappeared and the school was about to close until Morey Amsterdam, the comic stepped in and got some backers. His son was a student.  Some of the students I remember from then were Rita Moreno, who was doing Spanish voice overs, like our schoolmate Eddie.  The beautiful  Svetlana V\Beriosova, who later became a ballerina at The Royal Ballet Co. and Patsy Crowley, who ended up as the lead in the TV series "Don't Pick the Daises"  At the time she was a 10 year old pain in the neck. Very dramatic. And then there was the arrival of Ben and Matt. and my best friend Nancy Chandler became a student.

Ben and Matt also brought a few sort of minor mafia guys in to invest in the school.  Gino (he may no

t have been so minor) Viro and Louis.......more later......resd up

Picture of classmates  Me, Nancy, Anna and Reena

Dick Bagley

Portrait of my friend Dick Bagley by Alice Neel.

Dick and Jeannie Bagley were my village friends for years. He was a film maker and Jeannie was a film editor.  When we went to Princeton to work for On Film we took a bunch of our friends with us so we had a built in gang for work and parties.  I worked in the art dept. with Rune and also was in some of the films.  Jeannie worked with Bill Buckley editing and Dick directed.  More about On Film later.

Dick was a very heavy drinker...White Horse crowd and The Riviera.  He was warned but could not stop so he died fairly young.  Jeannie quit editing and went back to accounting.  She visited me when I had the New Jersey house quite often.  More on Jeannie later also.

Photos of Bobbye

Bobbye Philippi in New Caanan

A word more about the Phillippi's.  Their daughter Robin died this year - 2016.  She was 76 years old.  She had lived on the Orcas islands for many years and was part of their art community.  Her sister Elsa lives in Northampton, MA and is 74...Boy does time fly.

Think of this family all the time and what wonderful friends they were, better to me than I was ever to them.  They knew my sister and father and thought my dancing was wonderful.  What more could I ask for?

Here are a couple of cards Robin sent me (as Robin DiGeorgio)

1950

One spring afternoon I was stopped on Perry Street by a slightly buck-toothed man, who introduced himself as George Phillippi. He said his family had sub-let the 2^nd floor at 67 Perry for the summer and he believed that my family lived on the 4^th floor. At this time he was a struggling commercial artist, working free lance for peanuts. He had a wife Bobbye and two daughters Robin (10 yrs old) and Elsa (8 yrs) They were to remain my friends until Bobbye's death in the 1990's. Probably much better friends to me than I was to them.

Every week George made a batch of spaghetti sauce and that's what they ate all week...sometimes my father joined them. Bobbye and I would play Jo Stafford records and read her daughters comic books, especially the love story ones. When their sublet was up they stayed on. They were my pit stop after a night out before I made the climb upstairs. At one of our all house costume parties George sewed me into a 1920's dress. The party’s were the Phillippi apartment, us and Bobbie Sickelianos on the 5^th floor.

When my sister died in 1951, I was sitting in their apartment and Bobbye drove me out to my Uncle Mikes to be with my father. Bobbye was my best friend. We always stuck by each other...never disapproving of the others actions. We could go years without seeing one another and go right back friendly as ever.

Eventually they moved up to the theater district somewhere and then Bobbye's mother died and they moved to New Caanan, Ct. I spent a lot of time there as romances and marriages crashed around me. They put up with lots of tears.

Every Sunday George would buy two copies of the New York Times so we could each have a crossword puzzle. I would sit on Bobbye's bed while George worked at a table and we watched wrestling matches and 77 Sunset Strip. By this time George was sharing an art studio on Madison Avenue with two other commercial artists and his career was picking up. He took the commuter train to the city ever day in his gray suit and button down shirt, then I fell in love again and didn't see them for a while.

The next time we connected they were living on 6^th ave and Waverly Place and I was working at a paper goods place on Hudson Street and I was pregnant. They insisted that I live with them and when they moved to 76^th and Broadway I went with them. George bought me ice cream sodas and gave me $10. a week allowance...one of his kids? He also took me to the hospital, where I had my son. The father paid for the hospital but when I hemorrhaged the following week George paid for it. I lived with them until my son was 6 months old.

I got married for a second time and only saw the Phillippi once in a while...they moved to a loft on Spring st in So-Ho. George now had long hair, a beard and hippy clothes and was the head of the commercial art dept at an art school similar to Visual arts, but I can't remember the name...think it closed long ago. When George died Bobbye moved to Holyoke Ma and I was in Boston so I visited her a lot....she died in the 1990's. Her Daughter Elsa adopted her three cats and Robin took her car and drove it back to Washington State where she lived.   

67 PERRY STREET

I am going to write about my years living at 67 Perry Street.  We moved to the 4th floor when I was about 10 years old and lived there until I was 21.  Many things happened to our lives.  People passed in and out and we had parties that included the whole of our building and part of 69 Perry as well.  I went to PS41,PS3, Friend's Seminary,  The Burton School. Ballet Arts, Vilzak Scholer and The Fokine Ballet School.  Our ballet gang danced at CCNY in productions that needed dancers and the CCNY drama department rehearsed plays in the front room of our apartment.

Here are the twin buildings 69 and 67 Perry street, between 4th and Bleecker

We lived on the fourth floor, had 6 rooms and paid $60 a month.

.

Margaret's sketch book

Margaret Emily Trafford 1899-1950

My mother was only 50 years old when she died.  For the last four years of her life she had been a patient at a TB hospital in Jamaica, Queens, NYC.

She was born in1899 at the turn of the century so she was always as old as the year she was in.  She came from a staunch Repulican Quaker family in a small New Jersey town...60 miles from New York.  She always wanted to be an artist, and went to what they called then Normal School to be an art teacher.  She managed to travel to Europe in the late twenties with a wealthy friend as a companion and who paid her expenses.

This trip began to change her life.  She entered a cover contest run by "House Beautiful" magazine and won. I have the cover framed on my wall. She took what ever prize money there was and her savings and went to NYC...got a small room and went to the Art Student's League where she met my father, a Jewish Democrat. Quite a change, though my grandparents had no problem with their marraige relatives on both sides did.

My mother always worked at her art, going back to take art classes from time to time.  She made me paper dolls, read to me and was lots of fun.  She loved theater and became involved with theater groups in NY, New Jersey and Provincetown, MA doing sets, painting tapestries even borrowing furniture from our place to use as sets.

In her last years in the hospital she studied Chinese, did hundreds of drawings. and anatomy charts for doctors.

The year after she died they started to come out with the cure for TB...Too late for her.

I often wonder what she woul have done if she had only lived to 70...twenty extra years.  Woman artists were more recognized, she might have painted more and I would have known her as an adult.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Vintage Jack Greeting Card.

POKER PLAYERS - Woodcut by Jack (30's or 40's)

Jack...Artist Unknown

Margaret-Nice Face, Funny Face

Jack's Clay Card Player

Jack's pictures of Rockport, MA-1942

Two things I remember about Rockport was milk ice cones (the war was on, no ice cream) and all the rocks outside our cottage. I actually have home movies of this time...amazing they are still in good shape.

There was only one summer in Rockport and then the artists moved on to Provincetown, MA...my favorite. We went there for four summers.

Rockport, MA

When I was 10 years old, during World War II, my parents followed their fellow artists to Rockport, MA for the summer. My mother, with her two daughters, went on ahead to find a cot†age or rooming house for the season. Here is a letter that she wrote to my father, who was still in New York.

Clear View Cottage

Bearskin Neck

Rockport, Mass

Dear Jack,

We are all beside ourselves. We just moved in and we have the best cottage in all Rockport. Yesterday we met Joe Caplin and he and Virginia walked us over here (it’s across some water from them) They urged me to take it as cottages are going very fast., but I thought I ought to be careful and I looked all day yesterday –and came to the conclusion this is the best.

It is $200 for the season, but the woman I rented it from, who is an awful nice person said that she has had so many calls for August that we can sublet if we don’t want to stay.

I looked at such awful places for as high as $150…such bad appointments, stoves etc. that this place looks too perfect, almost.

Boarding houses seem to be out because of the rationing and meals are high, but you can get a good dinner for about 55 cents or less, but they can go as high as $1.75

If you feel like getting breakfast, Janet insists she make lunches, then we can eat out four times a week or so.

There are quite a few places for $150 back in the town, over the hill. But it might as well be Manasquan with a long walk to the water. Here we are surrounded by water.

This is how it is….x is our house.

There is a cookstove in the kitchen and an oil burning cook stove in the living room for heat and warmth on foggy days.

The bed in the living room will be ours-it opens out-one of those, but has strong mattresses on both sides.

I paid down $15. deposit and she will wait till you come for the rest. $185.

Bring all the towels you can. I will need sheets and pillow cases so if the laundry man doesn’t come, call him up or make him send them when they’re done. 5 0r 6 sheets and plenty of pillow cases…also the sharp kitchen knives and the iron.

I can see thousands of miles of ocean as I sit j

here and write.

The kids are beside themselves with joy/

I caught a stinking cold but bought Kleenex and vapo rub. I fortunetly brought the aspirin. I feel better today, but it is cold here. Better bring my heavy black coat with the shiny buttons instead of the spring coat., I picked…Please!

Come as quick as you can because it is lovely. We’re right in the heart of the fishing industry and it’s full of character.

I stayed in a room for two nights $3.50 per night. Some expense/

Love, Margo

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About Me

A Cartoonist's Daughter

Born in New York City of artist parents. Studied dance and art...wound up in Massachusetts. Can't dance anymore except in secret, but can still do art.

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Watercolors by Margaret

The Thief and The Prostitute....Ink and Wash

Vintage Christmas Card (1940s) by Jack

Middletown, NJ pictures

Margaret and Susan, Margaret cooking?, Jack in the old jalopy with the rumble seat and a sketch of Margaret bathing.

Sorry about the wide spacing in the text. I don't know what happened.

The House in the Woods

Sometime in the late thirties my father bought a one room school house and had it moved into the woods in Middletown, NJ.

There was no electricity, running water or anything else, like a bathroom. They carved a bedroom out for Susan and me and added a small screened in porch. I think we managed for a summer or two and then they put in a well and added a kitchen. We still had to use the woods for a toilet and the brook for a bathtub.

The kitched had a stove that was fed by bottled kerosene and there was a pump in the sink for water. I still have a lamp from that house...now electrified. I believe there was some kind of radio that ran on batteries or maybe just a wind up victrola.

Outside of our bedroom was a large table for eating and drawing. A closet had been built in our bedroom covered by a silk screen print of children's faces...I can still see it.

We would leave NYC in Jack"s old car and drive down some road (no Jersey turnpike then) Maybe I sat in the rumble seat. Sometimes we would stop at a road side stand for hamburgers and root beer. This was really a treat and very good food. Off we would go, again...probably stopping in Red Bank for some food...Did we have an ice box? I seem to remember Jack hauling blocks of ice. Driving on we would make a right onto a dirt road and then on to our house.

I was about eight years old and Susan about two. Jack would make me paper doll dresses and tell me stories. His idea of a paper doll dress was to cut a shape out of stacked papers and then I could paint them into different outfits. Paper dolls were my passion.

I had friends from school here...I can't imagine what they thought when we told them that they had to go to the bathroom under a tree. I hardly think that my grandmother would have enjoyed this...so I think visits with relatives were in Manasquan.

This was a great place and we all had a wonderful time. Though I do remember one year when we were leaving, and my parents were hammering some boards on the windows that they disturbed a hornet's nest. They were jumping around and yelling for us to stay inside.

Eventually my father sold the place to a friend and they followed the other artists to Rockport and Provincetown.