New Workers’ School (51 West Fourteenth Street)

Site on West 14th Street in Manhattan of a Lovestonite school in a since-razed building. In Hayden Herrera’s Frida it is where Diego Rivera paints his panels of American history after the Rockefeller Center mural is stopped.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Frida	Hayden Herrera	setting	Rivera spends Rockefeller’s fee painting 21 movable panels here, the reason he refuses to go home.

Frida — Hayden Herrera (1983)

Source: Frida - A Biography of Frida Kahlo · Original · Readwise highlight

at 51 West Fourteenth Street that housed a Lovestonite organization called the New Workers’ School.

• Role: setting
• In the book: In Chapter 11, with no site offered to repaint the destroyed mural, Rivera paints a revolutionary history of the United States on twenty-one movable panels in a dilapidated building here, from July 15 to early December 1933. Assistants wait for him while he spends time with Louise Nevelson; public showings with lectures follow on December 8 to 10.
• Why it matters: The panels keep Rivera in New York for months more, the root of Frida’s frustration at 8 West Thirteenth Street.
• Real vs. fictional: Real site; ⚠️ the pin is today’s building at the address, not the 1933 one.