Inside Mark Rothko’s Former New York City Studio

For some, Mark Rothko’s art can be as elusive as mercury. Murmurs of “even I can paint that” can often be overheard by those standing next to his work. For others, Rothko’s vision is the apogee of creative expression. Yet there’s no confusion over the art market’s opinion of his oeuvre. In the past decade alone, a single Rothko painting sold for nearly $190 million (in that same time period, buyers at auction have spent roughly $1.1 billion on his work). But like many other artists in history, he struggled to survive. Even after Rothko was famous, the Russian-born émigré felt the burdens of financial hardship. In fact, it was in this exact state that Rothko found himself when, in 1957, he moved his studio to a building located on the corner of Bowery and Prince Street, in New York’s Lower East Side. At that time, the neighborhood was dangerous and drug-ridden, but the studio space was cheap and afforded tall ceilings over uninhabited rectangular rooms, perfect for an artist seeking to work on large murals. Which is precisely what Rothko was there to do; the 54-year-old artist had just been commissioned to paint a series of large murals to hang on the walls of the Four Seasons restaurant within Manhattan’s soon-to-be-completed Seagram Building. Yet, New York is a city that has the ability to cannibalize its own history. Now, some sixty-two years later, the fate of this near-mythical space is very much in peril.

It seems that almost every building in New York City has a remarkable story. But, of course, some are destined to be more interesting than others. And Rothko’s former studio at 222 Bowery is somewhere near the top of the list. Even if Rothko hadn’t painted there, even if he hadn’t worked on his most famous murals in that studio (a series Peter Selz, the former head of painting and sculptures at MoMA, once described as “celebrating the death of a civilization”), the building still housed some of the most interesting, if not eccentric, people in history.

222 Bowery was originally built in 1884 in a Romanesque Revival–style of architecture. The building was the first YMCA to open in New York City (a tour of the building today shows a coal chute and a basement indoor swimming pool in the original design). In fact, Rothko’s second-floor studio still has the original showers from the YMCA era and metal cages protecting the ceiling light fixtures, as were seen in older gymnasiums. In 1940 (eight years after the YMCA vacated the building) French painter Fernand Léger moved in. The artist had fled Europe during World War II, and it was in New York that he encountered a newfound perspective on color. “I was struck by the neon advertisements flashing all over Broadway,” he wrote. “You are there, you talk to someone, and all of a sudden he turns blue. Then the color fades—another one comes and turns him red or yellow.”

After Léger, and later Rothko’s, stint in the building (the latter eventually moved his studio to another location in 1962), the space turned from one that was exclusively housing artists to one occupied by poets and writers. That’s what eventually led William S. Burroughs to the building, in 1974. He kept the space until his death in 1997, at the age of 83.

Today, several artists and writers still coexist in the space (in fact, Rihanna shot a music video there several years ago). The American poet John Giorno has spent a half-century in the building, witnessing the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Allen Ginsberg, and Andy Warhol come and go from the building in the 1960s (Giorno was the subject of Warhol’s film Sleep). Yet it’s Rothko’s stint in this building that’s making 222 Bowery topical once again.

The adjective storied does little to encapsulate the appeal of this building (which was landmarked in 1998). Nevertheless, now, for the first time, the fate of Rothko’s studio is in serious jeopardy. The current owners of the space are seeking to rent it to anyone willing for the tune of $15,000 per month (for either residential or commercial use). The sum is shockingly substantial, particularly since the building does not have an elevator, while the roughly 800-square-foot studio has no kitchen, nor an updated shower or bathroom. But it does still have Rothko’s paint flung about the wooden floorboards (after the artist left, American-born Abstract Expressionist painter Michael Goldberg moved in to the space and applied coats of primer to the floor so that Rothko’s mark would always remain).

The cynical view would argue that the owner of the studio will have a myopic approach, renting the space to any philistine who has no intentions of preserving its remarkable legacy. But that doesn’t have to be the case. There is currently a group of activists that has taken to the cause of ensuring that Rothko’s studio survives to benefit future generations. “This space is too important, too woven into the fabric of American culture to let it go to any person willing to rent it out,” says Kim Depole, interior designer and curator of 222 Bowery Art. Depole has made the preservation of Rothko’s former studio her passion project. “My ultimate goal is to convince the likes of Christopher Rothko (the artist’s son, who is actively involved in managing the Rothko legacy) to take over the former studio. . . . Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could turn this space into an artist residency program? A space where creative minds could work in the presence of Rothko’s energy?” Depole says with an imbued sense of optimism.

A visitor walking through Mark Rothko’s former studio will immediately be struck by an ineffability that only appears when entering a sacred space. The floors of the studio look as if a small explosion was set off in the room, caking the wooden floorboards with various layers of colored paint. It’s a fitting floor for the son of Russian anarchists (Rothko’s parents immigrated to America in 1913, when Mark was ten years old). Rothko was extremely voluble when he wanted to be, and if one squints in the studio, the image of a man walking around the space—adjusting his thick-lensed glasses, burning cigarette in one hand, paintbrush in the other, discussing his work with one of his assistants—flashes before them in series of movements.

Mark Rothko’s paintings are not only the darling of the art market but also approachable for a multitude of innate reasons. His work, perhaps more than any artist, both shouts and whispers at any given moment. The whisper can be noticed in the blunted, hierarchical blocks of paint, as if erasing the detailed brush strokes applied to the canvases of history. Others, however, see a scream, a culmination that exploded into being from everything that preceded his time in art. But this debate can only happen today largely because of the work Rothko put into his art within the walls of 222 Bowery. This building wielded the power of an artist’s magic for a previous generation. Let’s hope it can do that for the next one, too.