2,4,6 Minetta Street

These three houses on Minetta Street dated to 1800, when ”the Minettas” — Street, Lane, and Place — were home to free African Americans. By 1900, the tiny houses had become rag pickers’ warehouses. They were renovated as private homes in the 1920s, when the Village attracted artists, writers, and professionals in search of an American Montmartre. Only months after Abbott photographed Minetta Street, the houses were demolished to make way for a five-story apartment building fronting on Sixth Avenue. Abbott’s composition was typically direct and artful. The stepped shadow falling across the facade of no. 4 echoes the stoop below, while the shadow of a bulbous chimney across the street breaks up the rectilinear pattern of light and dark.