Charles Hoffbauer 1875-1957

Estate of the artist, Rhode Island, until the late 1960s
Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Jobe, Greenwich, Connecticut
Private Collection, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1980-1996
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, June 6, 1997, lot 34, illustrated in color
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

(possibly) New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Paintings by Charles Hoffbauer, April 1912, no. 11 (as Herald Square)

Patricia Jobe Pierce, The Ten, Hingham, Massachusetts, 1976, illustrated p. 15

A Rainy New York Street depicts Herald Square, at the intersection of Broadway and Sixth Avenue, looking north on Broadway from 34th Street.  The two-story building with an arcade at the far right is the old New York Herald building designed by McKim, Mead and White for James Gordon Bennett.  Erected in 1893, the Herald building was one of the city's architectural wonders, with its Venetian arcade and row of bronze owls around the cornice, who blinked their electric eyes at night to tell the time.  On the roof above the main entrance is the famous clock with its bronze figures, nicknamed Stuff and Guff, who struck the hours (now on a pedestal at the north end of the square).  The Herald building was demolished in 1921.