Edward Hopper House Art Center

The History...
From the porch of the two-story clapboard house on North Broadway, you have a clear view down the slope of Second Avenue to the bank of the Hudson River and the opposite shore. It was this view that the young Edward Hopper saw every day from his upstairs window when he was growing up in the late 1800's

The house was built in 1858 by the boy's maternal grandfather. Edward's father, Garret Hopper, moved into the house after marrying the owner's daughter, Elizabeth, in 1878. Edward and his sister Marion were born in the house - he in 1882 and she in 1880. Marion lived in the house, unmarried, until her death in 1965. Although Edward left Nyack early in his life, he held title to the house until he died. Thus the house was home to three generations of one family, and no other family has owned it.

The Hoppers were a prosperous American middle class family. Garret Hopper owned a dry goods store, where women bought material for making clothes before the days of ready-to wear. The store was on South Broadway a few doors south of Main Street, in what is now Grace's Thrift Shop.

The character of Nyack has changed since Edward Hopper was a boy. Approximately half of the business blocks were built in the first decade of Edward's life, and many of the houses are still standing.

From the time of the Civil War until 1893, Nyack was a fast growing center of transportation and manufacturing. Nyack was both a rail terminal, with 30 passenger trains a day, and a port for steamboats and a cross-Hudson ferry. The town boasted three shipyards; six shoe factories, four cigar factories, a church organ factory and a piano factory three stories high. After the financial panic of 1893 and a brief but harsh depression, growth came to a halt and many factories closed permanently. Nyack survived as a picturesque river town.

The young Hopper was greatly influenced by the one industry that continued well into the 20th century--boat building. After school, he spent many hours around the docks at the foot of Main Street and at a boat yard a few blocks north of Hopper House where Gedney Street joins Ackerman Place.

Edward built one boat to prove he could do it and thought seriously of becoming a marine architect. Some of his earliest drawings were of boating on the Hudson River. His love of boats and the water was reflected in his paintings and watercolors throughout his career.

Edward Hopper graduated from Nyack High School in 1899 and started commuting to art classes in New York City. He also taught art classes at the house in Nyack on Saturdays. After three trips to Paris from 1906 to 1910, he moved to a room on East 59th Street in New York City -- never to call Nyack his home again. In 1913 he moved to an apartment and studio, Number 3 Washington Square North, where he lived until he died. In 1924 he married artist Josephine Nivison, who committed her life to his career and served as a model for many of his paintings. They did not have any children.

In the summers, Edward and Jo Hopper sometimes drove across country but usually visited New England. From 1930 to 1966, they stayed in a house that they had had built in South Truro on Cape Cod, MA. On the way up to the Cape, they would stop in Nyack to pick up their car and visit sister Marion in the family house.

A few of Hopper's mature works depict scenes in Nyack or elsewhere in Rockland County, NY. One of his best-known paintings, "The House by the Railroad" (Museum of Modern Art), is believed to be based on a house in Haverstraw, NY. "Pretty Penny," the only work Hopper did as a commission, was painted just before World War II for Helen Hayes and her husband, the playwright Charles MacArthur. The house of the title is a few blocks north of the Hopper House.Marion, Edward, and Jo Hopper died in 1965, `67, and `68 respectively, and are buried in a family plot at Nyack's Oak Hill Cemetery, overlooking the Hudson River