Before Jackson Pollock was Jackson Pollock—the world-renowned artist famous for his enormous, paint-splattered canvases and some of the most valuable works in American art—he was a 20-year-old student sharing a cramped West Village apartment with his brother.
Pollock lived on the top floor of 46 Carmine Street from 1932 to 1933 with his older brother, Charles, and Charles’s wife, Elizabeth. Not exactly the glamorous artist loft of later New York lore, the two-room apartment doubled as their studio, with Charles working in the front room and Jackson in the back.
Pollock was still trying to make it as an artist, scraping by during the Great Depression and studying under painter Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. More than a decade would pass before he developed the drip-painting technique that made him famous.
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The home is located on the leafy Carmine Street.
Joel Pitra/DD-Reps; Francisco Rosario/DD-Reps
The apartment has changed since then. The roughly 690-square-foot one-bedroom now has 14-foot ceilings, four skylights, exposed brick walls, hardwood floors, an updated kitchen and bathroom, and a loft that can be used as a home office or studio. The Federal-style brick townhouse it occupies dates to 1827 and became part of the Greenwich Village Historic District in 2010.
The current owner, entrepreneur Fergus Hurley, added some art history of his own. After moving from Ireland to New York in 2020, he initially rented the apartment before buying it off-market the following year. During the pandemic, he turned the loft into a workspace and created a large abstract painting inspired by Pollock, using boards that had covered SoHo storefronts during the 2020 George Floyd protests.
Now splitting his time between Miami and San Francisco, Hurley is selling the apartment for $1.99 million with Shane Boyle of Compass. (The painting isn’t included with the apartment, although it’s possible it could be negotiated separately.)
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The living area features whitewashed brick and a vaulted ceiling with a massive skylight.
Joel Pitra; DD-Reps
The listing comes as The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently showing Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous, a major exhibition bringing together more than 120 works by Pollock and his wife, fellow artist Lee Krasner, which will run through January 31, 2027.
While the next owner probably won’t be sharing the apartment with a struggling young painter, they’ll at least have a pretty good story to tell about who once lived and worked there
Click here to see more photos of the West Village apartment.
Joel Pitra; DD-Reps
Authors
Abby Montanez
