By When Jill Gill talks about her past 70 years as an artist and urban observer, she says she sees both the past and present at the same time. Among the most startling differences reflected when comparing her more than a hundred street scenes with the way these blocks look today is what Gill calls the “absence of sky.”
She marks 1954 as the beginning of her life as a painter. She recalled being particularly impressed, and her interest in urban change over time sparked around that time when she observed the Third Avenue El being dismantled. Building facades were revealed that she had never noticed before.
Gill’s beautiful, whimsically stylized watercolors are a pure joy. They also offer a particular pleasure to long-time Manhattan residents whose memories are jogged into recalling once familiar but now forgotten urban landscapes. Take, for example, the image of the east side of Broadway, between 68th Street and 67th Street. Gill shot multiple photos of the block and later painted the scene in the mid-1980s before the stretch of buildings was razed for the construction of the Millennium Tower in 1994. Directing your eye from uptown on the left to downtown on the right is the Ansonia Post Office with a flag out front, La Crepe Restaurant…and near the corner, Cinema Studio. All are likely to be hugely nostalgic for anyone who may have carried a bundle of holiday cards to be mailed at this post office or enjoyed a sweet or savory crepe at the once very popular La Crepe or considered Cinema Studio their favorite place to view foreign films. You’ve got many blocks to pick from, some buildings are still intact. “Zabar’s still exists, but the point is that my painting shows it with neighboring businesses before it took over half the block,” explained Gill. But, most of the blocks that Gill painted are not as well-known and were photographed when Gill knew they were about to be razed and eliminated from the landscape.
Gill initially intended to be a short story writer. After finding her passion and gift for painting, she continued to pursue both writing and painting with extraordinary results. Her book SITE LINES: Lost New York 1954-2022 has 106 street scenes and commentary related to seven Manhattan neighborhoods. Upper West Side scenes include the Sapphire Indian restaurant at 61st, the 79th Street site of a former two-story Woolworths, and Loew’s 83rd.
The style of her highly detailed ink and watercolor paintings is very recognizable, and the perspective is all her own. In the past, she has done very many watercolor and ink Manhattan townhouse portraits commissioned by their owners, as well as room interiors, country estates, gardens, and restaurants. Among her celebrity clients are Tina Brown, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Linda Ellerbee, Drue Heinz, Charles Kuralt, Pierre Matisse, Zubin Mehta, Anna Quindlen and Kurt Vonnegut.
As a mother of a son and two young daughters, Gill was not interested in spending time in the playground. Instead, she took out her little Brownie camera and photographed individual buildings and whole blocks that were going to be razed. She discovered some by pounding the pavement. She also scoured newspapers to learn what was soon to be subject to the wrecker’s ball. Sometimes, she painted a scene right away. Or, “It sometimes takes up to ten years before preserving a lost block in a painting,” she said.
Gill’s son, John Freeman Gill, currently writes the Streetscapes column in the Sunday New York Times Real Estate section. “In his introduction to my Site Lines, he recounts (in an essay ‘How My Mother Saved New York,’) the origins of my interest in architectural preservation and his…,” Gill noted. A sample describing the sweep of her paintings reads,
“This volume is my mother’s life work: her personal chronicle of several of the many vibrant lost New Yorks buried in the public consciousness that lie beneath our current city like the nine cities of Troy built atop one another across the centuries.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a number of these New Yorks, simultaneously moving from one to another through my mother’s paintings. That is the open-hearted promise of her art: If you let Jill Gill be your guide, if you follow her down the avenues and side streets of these ghost metropolises, her watercolors will launch you on your own journey of memory.”
Gill’s paintings vary in size from 15” x 20” to 40” x 60”. Where does she paint? “Always on my bed, with a little bowl of water and my paints on a tray.” At a time when she had three large street tabby cats, they kept her company.
In 2023 Landmark West! received a New York Preservation Archive Project (NYPAP) Award to digitize Gill’s UWS photographs and clippings. Over the following months, Landmark West Preservation Associate Becca Bran scanned the many Gill filing cabinet folders of UWS photographs and ephemera, ranging from the West 60s up to Symphony Space/Thalia on Broadway at 95th Street. These images will be made available online in 2025.
You get the impression that this project was a special opportunity for both women. When she has time, Becca continues to work as Gill’s private assistant. The setting of their meetings alone is exceptional. Gill’s apartment at 81st Street and Riverside Drive does not have a river view, but there are more than enough paintings and salvaged architectural artifacts displayed to distract and enthrall any visitor.
Gill is pleased with a David Gross documentary entitled, Her New York. “It’s devoted exclusively to my paintings and thoughts on being a New Yorker. Poetic and incisive”. The short film can be viewed on Gill’s website.
Gill’s work appeals on many levels. It’s relatable for those familiar with specific neighborhoods. Both fanciful and a form of historical documentation, it’s original beyond any narrow classification. Importantly, it documents change in a way that calls attention, without anger, to the dramatic loss of three to seven-story, low-rise buildings that have reduced surrounding breathing space and diminished open sky.
The mix of free-spirited joy and commitment to expressing a point of view are characteristic of Gill. “I may be 91, but fortunately, my mind is younger,” she said.