Over 100 people are in this third painting of the series depicting the construction of 85 Broad Street. Most of them are associated with the neighborhood, including Goldman Sachs employees, People from the Clearing house, which is located on the left of the painting, staff of Fraunces Tavern Museum and Fraunces Tavern Restaurant (which are operated independently from one another, messengers, members of the construction crew, and some area residents.
- Collection of Goldman Sachs & Company
Broad St, the wide Thoroughfare that runs up the center of the painting, was a canal in the 17th century. It was filled in 1676
Goldman Sachs 1984
For the last of the series, I was given a huge list of partners of the company and other important members of that world. Everyone gladly posed, but when it came to the 3 Senior GS&Co executives, I was given photos of them. The photos of them were formal and intimidating portraits, completely unlike how they appeared to me in real life. During the years that I had been working on the painting, they had come by to see how the painting was going.
Therefore I had no problem with their resemblances. But the third executive was one I had not met, and the posed publicity photo of a seated man would not have worked in a painting of people walking on a busy street. The staff member who had arranged my appointments with everyone urged me to do the best without meeting him because he could not give me the time. But I could not do this, and explained it as well as I could. I had no idea of how he held himself when he stood, how he moved within a group, and knew I had no choice, but that I could not do this from a photo. I was taken to his office and there he sat and looked as serious as he had in the photos. "Why do you want to work so hard?" he asked. "I see you day after day, sitting in the street and working. Couldn't you do this easier with photos?" I told him that I loved doing this work. He gave me a big smile and leaned comfortably back in his chair and said that he felt the same way about his work. We ended up with a wonderful conversation and a wonderful portrait.
The building took many years to be finished, and later in 1983, I did a painting for us to keep. It is of that nearly finished structure as seen from the rear within the Coenties Slip area. The painting was to become my 54th one.