In New York City, from the early 1950s through the mid-1960s (and beyond), many galleries began as an outgrowth of an artistic community that had sprung up in a particular area of downtown Manhattan.
Author Morgan Falconer describes it this way for the Royal Academy of Art Blog:[A]rtists lived and worked around them" ... and although "[t]he backdrop was dull – pool rooms, an employment agency, a metal-stamping factory – but the mood lively and do-it-yourself.... One visitor to a group show in 1951 remembered sheltering from the summer heat under a sign painted by Kline.... By day the artists would work, by night they would frequent "The Club", their private talking-shop, or dance in someone's studio – the tango, the jitterbug, even the kazatsky, the Russian folk dance beloved by Communists and Russophiles in the 1930s.
During the most active years of the 10th Street cooperatives, sculptors William King, David Slivka, James Rosati, George Spaventa, Sidney Geist, Israel Levitan, Gabriel Kohn, and Raymond Rocklin, became known as representatives of the 10th Street style of sculpture, even though there was remarkable diversity in their work.
This afforded a way for many artists to mingle with each other and the writers, poets, curators and occasional collectors who gravitated to the scene.
At that time, six members (Alice Forman, Philip Held, Aaron Levy, Gertrude Shibley, Alida Walsh, Florence Weinstein) joined the Phoenix Gallery, which had moved uptown to 939 Madison Avenue.