Lithograph on Japan paper, 1903; edition of 3. Image size 9½” x 7¼”; sheet size 11¾” x 10½”. Titled “To Gus” and signed by the artist in pencil in the lower margin.

This venerable saloon, the oldest of its kind still in existence in New York, is located at 15 East 7th Street near the Bowery and Cooper Union. It was thought to have been established in 1854, though there is some uncertainty on this point. Duncan, then a student at the Art Students League, captured the interior of the saloon in 1903 from the vantage point of its rear dining room, looking outward at the bar located in the front of the building. In his separate note accompanying the lithograph, which Duncan wrote on the kraft backing paper of the frame assembly, “McSorley’s Old English (sic) Ale House, a few doors east of the Bowery one block below Cooper Union. Drawn the winter of 1903. 3 proof only from the stone. W. J. Duncan”

A rare and historically important view of old New York in very good overall condition. Further information may be obtained from Joseph Mitchell’s article “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon”, originally published in The New Yorker and in the author’s collection of essays titled Up In the Old Hotel., published in 1992 by Pantheon Books, New York, which we highly recommend..

$ 1,200.