The family's brick rowhouse on Dawson Street was four rooms for six people in a Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant neighborhood. Andrew, the youngest, was ill through several childhood years with Sydenham's chorea and spent long stretches confined upstairs.
His mother Julia gave him comic books, movie magazines and a projector. He cut out pictures of film stars and pasted them into scrapbooks on the bedspread. Celebrity, repetition, cheap printed color: an entire body of work rehearsed in a sickroom.
The house is still a private residence on an ordinary street, unmarked for most of its life.
Memories attached to this place
“Julia cut flowers out of tin cans and sold them door to door. That's where the hands came from.”
“The whole street was mill families. Nobody had a car and everybody had a porch.”
“He drew constantly. The other kids thought he was strange and left him to it.”
Timeline
- 1928Born in Pittsburgh to Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants.
- 1934Family moves to Dawson Street in Oakland.
- 1936Illness begins the long stretches in the upstairs bedroom.
- 1945Enrolls at Carnegie Tech, a mile from the house.
A bedroom ceiling stared at long enough becomes a career.
