This Weekend's Question

What could Martin Johnson Heade have been doing in New York City in the winter of 1869-1870?

I am working on a nocturne.

"The story of Orpheus underlies every poem. The poet risks the dangers of silence and darkness, bringing the message of human emotion to the gods and carrying back news of the gods to men."

-Susan Stewart, "Out of Darkness: Nocturnes," from Poetry and the Fate of the Senses (The University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 256.

Below is a photograph of the famed Tenth Street Studios (located at 51 West 10th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues), designed by the architect Richard Morris Hunt and built in 1857. This is where Heade stayed while in New York. The building was razed in 1956.

The photograph is by Bernice Abbott, taken on November 10, 1938.