The Jazz Loft

From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in a loft building in Manhattan's wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day gathered and played their music. Smith's work has remained in archives until now. The Jazz Loft Project is dedicated to uncovering the stories behind this legendary moment in American cultural history.

“The loft is a curious place, pinned with the notes and proof prints . . . with reminders . . . with demands. Always there is the window. It forever seduces me away from my work in this cold water flat. I breathe and smile and quicken and languish in appreciation of it, the proscenium arch with me on the third stage looking it down and up and bent along the sides and the whole audience in performance down before me, an ever changing pandemonium of delicate details and habitual rhythms.” - Smith


W. Eugene Smith in the Jazz Loft snapping photos of the hustle on Sixth Avenue between 28^th and 29^th Streets in New York.

Smiths daughter Shana in the dingy stair way of the Loft

Thelonious Monk & his Town Hall band

Monk

Monk & Hall Overton

Zoot Sims

Roland Kirk

A fantastic radio series documents this extraordinary period in New York's underground culture.