NEW YORK CITY LANDSCAPES

Brzosko painted New York City landscapes from 1960 through the middle of the 1980s. Some of his favorite early locations were Fort Tryon Park, the Cloisters, and the Spuyten' Duyvil (Spitin' Devil) railroad bridge that crosses between Manhattan and the Marble Hill section of the Bronx, just where the East River (Harlem River) meets the Hudson.

Around 1963, he discovered the site of a WWI shipyard under the Palisades in New Jersey near Edgewater. This is about 3 miles south of the George Washington Bridge and faces approximately 89th Street in Manhattan. Originally it had been called Lords Dry Dock, but Brzosko called it "Roses Stand" because he always got off the bus near a wooden shelter where a local woman sold roses in the summer.

Another subject, the Harlem River, is at the northern reaches of the East River. He painted at a small marina called the Atalanta Club near the Sherman Creek Generating Station (one of Con Edison's worst air polluters and since demolished) standing in the middle of the river near 207th Street. He also painted scenes of several bridges looking south along the Harlem River, as far as 155th Street (site of the old Polo Grounds and now a housing development called Polo Grounds Houses). Brzosko's landscapes uniquely document a bygone era of the New York City along its northern riverbanks.