MacDougal Alley

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A mews once occupied by artists and arts patrons

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Tucked behind the mansions of Washington Square North is a dead-end mews dating from the 1830s. These former stables were built to serve the wealthy families that lived close by. By 1907, however, artists (and automobiles) were transforming the Village, and these stables became the studios of such sculptors as Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, Daniel Chester French, and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, whose space at #19 was later absorbed into her new museum of American art.