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Newspaper announcement, 1939 |
When he registered for the draft in 1918, Norman Wells described himself as a “print expert.”
His employer, the prestigious commercial art gallery M. Knoedler & Co., prized his knowledge and taste. Yet he had started his career as a clerk, uninitiated in the art world.
Nearly every summer between 1924 and 1938, Norman traveled with his wife Mathilde to Europe. There he met with art dealers and visited museums and chateaux, wherever an Old Master print might turn up and he could make an offer.
Paris, London, Amsterdam, Geneva – which city did he love most?
That would be Mount Vernon, N.Y., where he grew up rough-and-tumble with the neighborhood boys; friendships forged for life.
Norman joined Knoedler in
1897 when he was 22. I imagine the commute, which would last for fifty years.
He steps onto a train at the Mount Vernon West station and rides to the city;
walks down Fifth Avenue to the firm’s rowhouse gallery at 34th
Street.
Over time the company moves farther north and Norman keeps rising.
He is a busy man.
Back in turn-of-the-century Mount Vernon, an exhilarated Norman just became a volunteer fireman with Engine Company 3, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Commissioners, chiefs, deputy chiefs, superintendents, and captains—he knew them all and they loved him like a brother, revered his modesty and judgment.
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Mount Vernon, N.Y. Fire Department, 1908 |
Norman also had just dipped his toe into local Republican politics. During the next four decades, he would attend every party dinner, meeting, and inaugural buffet. He hobnobbed with the popular Mayors Edwin Fiske and Edward Brush and sought appointments on local commissions.
Perhaps his favorite Mount Vernon pursuit was the Mike Nitz Bowling Club, organized in fall of 1897—that lucky year—with Norman as its captain.
The club’s first big event did not occur at a bowling alley but on City Island, which is located in Long Island Sound very close to The Bronx.
City Island is fun, the way it transports you to an eighteenth-century village on the Massachusetts coast. In 1897, when the bowlers crossed the bridge in a carriage lent by the local funeral home, City Island must have been a blast.
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City Island Drawbridge circa 1880 www.bridgesnyc.com |
Norman and nine of his friends went to Flynn’s Restaurant, where they danced till midnight and then devoured a sumptuous feast, according to the Mount Vernon Argus. Everyone was home by 4 in the morning.
In 1898 they had another great time: dinner at Bock’s Alleys in Mount Vernon, followed by performances on banjo and xylophone.
In 1899, the highlight of the year turned out to be a Decoration Day outing with baseball, fishing, boating, and a shore dinner to beat the band.
Checking the old scores in the local papers, I understand why the Mike Nitz bowlers were happiest when they were eating and drinking. The club ranked poorly in its league.
But the happy bowlers persisted: beer bottler William Hobby, lawyer George Appell, saloonkeeper Alvin Bardes, county clerk Leon St. Clair Dick, jeweler Alfred Schickerling, diamond setter Martin Van Orden, and Norman Wells.
They rolled on after Norman’s
death, and never forgot him.
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Parke-Bernet auction catalogue, 1946. Mrs. Wells sold most of the couple's prints. |
See part I, August 13, 2025
https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2025/10/the-short-happy-life-of-norman-f-wells.html
Note: During the summer of 1940, Mathilde Wells presented the Mount Vernon Public Library with print cases for the new Norman F. Wells Alcove on its spacious second floor. She changed the displays seasonally—bird etchings, scenes of old New York, and work by modern artists Louis Lozowick and Martin Lewis—until her death in 1964.