While doing research for visuals for my documentary on cartoonists for The New Yorker who were/are women, I found some old photos. Below is one I took of the vestibule in The New Yorker offices when they were on West 43rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. This was probably taken around 1980, I don’t recall. It was the hallway where the elevators let you off on the 20th floor, home of the Editorial and Art Departments. The Advertising Department was purposefully on a separate floor.
The person behind the glass there was the person you gave your weekly submissions to, sliding your manila envelope of cartoon gems through a slit in the glass window. The door to the left, I was to learn, was how one got into the offices.
Then, she or he slid your envelope of rejections from the previous week out to you, and you turned around, got on the elevator to back to the ground floor.
If you did sell a cartoon, as I did in 1979 for the first time, you were buzzed into the inner sanctum of the magazine, which looked like this, above. You made your way back to the Art Department, and Art Editor Lee Lorenz’s office, below, in the room on the right. That’s where he told me they wanted to buy my first cartoon. I nearly passed out.
I rarley went into the offices after that first sale (you had to be invited in), but once a year there would be a gathering for a Holiday Party. It would be in this small area somewhere. I don’t have photos of the whole place, but it was rather tiny. Cartoonist Henry Martin always made his legendary rum balls for the occasion, and Irish coffees were served.
Just a little trip down memory lane, thank you for indulging me!
Happy Saturday!
That whole story reminds me of when I worked at the Dayton Daily News. The advertising floor was separate and the one elevator stopped there for — I suspect —the same reasons. Editorial and advertising, there was a very “thick wall” between them. Today, I’m not so sure. The newspaper was three separate buildings sorta “glued” together so there were four separate elevator systems and a half dozen staircases serving it all. (We even had a murder where a pressman stored his wife’s body in a barrel of concrete in the basement! Fun building 😁) The newspaper is in a modern office building now... yuck, boring..
And the annual Christmas party was held in the press room, where the smell of catered slab pie and pressed turkey roll mixed perfectly with the smell of ink and grease and paper. It was magical and I miss it terribly.
I love it, thank you for sharing. Nearly passed out, once invited back to the inner sanctum for a purchase of your art!