Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Eileen Johnson
Occupation: Director, Little Missionary’s Day Nursery
Location: 93 St. Marks Place
Time: 1:45 pm on Feb. 4

I’m from Dublin. I came in 1980. Part of it was to get away. I was teaching over there but I was frustrated with living at home with my parents. I had also been here in 1970 as a student. I never forgot it. I really was in love with New York and I always felt like I would come back.

When I moved here I lived in a women's hotel on Lexington and 57th Street in the beginning. Oh my goodness. It was one tiny little room and the bathroom was in the hallway. It was kind of sad. Some of these ladies were kind of old and had nowhere else to go.

Then I started subletting around the city. I ended up subletting in the East Village and I loved it. I remember back in 1980, people used to be out in the street with the big barrel on fire, singing and playing guitars and everything. I don’t know what it was but there was something. Maybe it was because it was like Dublin, because the buildings were old and because of this type of building. I liked the feeling — I can’t even explain it.

I moved here for good in 1982. My husband was living in an apartment on Avenue C. We had people pulling swords and everything on the street. Swords. So then he moved in with me and then when we had kids we moved to Stuyvesant Town.

I’ve always been a teacher. In Ireland, I taught in high school and then 6th grade, but when I came here I was illegal [at first] so I did coat checking. It was easy to be illegal then ... I then got into teaching this age group and it’s very creative. [Getting a job for Little Missionary] was just luck. I stayed home with my kids when they were little and then I started looking around for work. I got another job and somebody said, ‘Oh you should go look at that Little Missionary, but it’s probably falling apart. They probably won’t survive. Things are bad over there.’ So I opened the door and I walked in ... I could see that it was a treasure. I just wanted to be part of it. When I started here as a teacher in 2001 we only used one floor. There were only eight kids left when I started. Now we have 80.

The building itself has been here since the mid 1800s, I think. It was somebody’s home and then it was a boarding house and then it went into foreclosure. Then they donated the building to Sara Curry, who was an incredible person. I was so impressed with her and her kindness and her goodness. She was born in Long Island to a big family. They were orphaned when the parents died. She and her brother went to Utica and she became an activist at the factories there. She started organizing women and taking care of the women’s children. Then she came to the city. She started out on Avenue C in a little apartment and she saw the way that kids were left on their own on the street.

She used to feed the neighborhood. She would have huge Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and it was said that she would give her own shoes away. I don’t know how she hooked up with these wealthy people but she got this house in 1901. There were 200 kids a day here.

We actually expanded this year. Tenants had to leave, so we renovated the upper floors. [The school's] board is amazing. The board is made up of local people and parents, which we could use more of. They let me bring my own philosophy in here, and that is about listening to children and letting them have their feelings. I didn’t grow up that way so I really feel that’s important for kids. You can stop everything that you’re doing and listen to what they’re saying and what they’re feeling. It’s very fulfilling. You go home at the end of the day feeling that you did something good.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.