The neighborhood certainly was changing. The language! The people! Where once distinguished callers in ones and twos had come once and twice a week—now in mobs they were crossing the once sacred threshold every day.
It was in the spring of 1908 that David W. Griffith came to preside at 11 East Fourteenth. Here it was he took up the daily grind, struggled, dreamed, saw old ambitions die, suffered humiliation, achieved, and in four short years was well started on the road to become world famous as the greatest director of the motion picture.
For movies, yes, movies were being made where once “The Last Leaf” had entertained in the grand old manner. That was what the inscription, “American Mutoscope and Biograph Company,” had meant.
But movies did not desecrate the dignity of 11 East Fourteenth Street. The dignity of achievement had begun. The old beauty of the place was fast disappearing. The magnificent old chandelier had given place to banks of mercury vapor tubes. There were no soft carpets for the tired actors’ feet. The ex-drawing-room and ex-concert hall were now full and overflowing with actors, and life’s little comedies and tragedies were being play-acted where once they had been lived.
Fourteenth Street, New York, has been called “the nursery of genius.” Many artists struggled there in cheap little studios, began to feel their wings, could not stand success, moved to studio apartments uptown, and met defeat. But 11 East Fourteenth Street still harbors the artist; the building is full of them. Evelyn Longman, who was there when “old Biograph” was, is still there. On other doors are other names—Ruotolo, Oberhardt, John S. Gelert, sculptor; Lester, studio; The Waller Studios; Ye Studio of Frederic Ehrlich.
In the old projection room are now stacked books and plays of the Edgar S. Werner Company, and in the dear old studio, which is just the same to-day as the day we left it, except that the mercury tubes have been taken out, and a north window cut, presides a sculptor by the name of A. Stirling Calder, who has painted the old door blue and hung a huge brass knocker on it.
Now, when I made up my mind to write this record of those early days of the movies, I knew that I must go down once again to see the old workshop, where for four years David W. Griffith wielded the scepter, until swelled with success and new-gained wealth the Biograph Company pulled up stakes and flitted to its new large modern and expensive studio up in the Bronx at East 175th Street.
So down I went to beg Mr. Calder to let me look over the old place and take a picture of it.
My heart was going pit-a-pat out there in the old hallway while I awaited an answer to my knock. “Please,” I pleaded, “I want so much to take a photograph of the studio just as it is. I’m writing a little book about our pioneering days here; it won’t take a minute. May I, please?”
Emotion was quite overwhelming me as the memories of the years crowded on me, memories of young and happy days untouched with the sadness that years must inevitably bring even though they bring what is considered “success.” Twelve years had gone their way since I had passed through those studio doors and here I was again, all a-flutter with anticipation and choky with the half-dreamy memories of events long past.