Bill Honan was the editor of The Villager when Joseph Papin drew for the paper. I posted the following drawing a week and half ago (my apologies as my best intentions to post this immediately were thwarted by some recent time commitments).
The credit reads: “Carmine G. DeSapio (left) at a press conference in the Fifth Avenue Hotel this week with members of The Villager’s editorial staff. [Clockwise from left, Carmine DeSapio, J. Owen Grundy, Bill Honan, Jason Marks.] Drawing especially for The Villager by Joseph Papin.”
The caption reads: “Left: A front-page drawing [by Joseph Papin] from The Villager showing Carmine DeSapio at the Tamawa Club declaring victory after the ’58 election. Right: William Honan.” Lincoln Anderson, The Villager, Volume 77/Number 48–April 30–May 6, 2008 thevillager.com/villager_261/honanchanged.html
The following is excerpted from the same article by Lincoln Anderson, The Villager, Volume 77/Number 48–April 30–May 6, 2008:
“In the late 1950s, The Villager, which had always prided itself on being the area’s genteel and ‘neighborly neighborhood newspaper,’ took on a sharper edge under new editor William Honan, for the first time endorsing political candidates.
“Honan, The Villager’s editor from 1957-1960, was 26 and had just gotten out of the Army when he joined the paper.
“Under its new direction, The Villager embraced the new Reform Democratic movement and the overthrow of the old Tammany Hall machine politics, endorsing in a front-page editorial Charles E. McGuinness and Gwendoline Worth, the Reform candidates from the Village Independent Democrats club, over Carmine DeSapio, the Tammany boss, and Elsie Gleason Mattura, the incumbent district leaders.
“‘The paper had never endorsed candidates before ’58. We broke with that tradition,’ Honan recalled in a 2003 phone interview.
“A 2,500-word, full-page editorial on the paper’s back page detailed the case for the Reform candidates and against DeSapio. … ‘He turned out to be corrupt — and we figured that out right away,’ Honan said of DeSapio.
“… ‘All of the arts were flourishing, as well as politics,’ Honan said. ‘It was becoming a vital neighborhood as it was in the early years of the Village. As the Bryans aged so did the paper — and it needed to be revitalized.’
“During Honan’s tenure the big issue was fighting Robert Moses’ plan to build a major road through Washington Square Park and the community’s wish to close the park to traffic. Again, The Villager published a front-page editorial. Thanks to the persistence of a united community and The Villager’s coverage and editorials, the road project was defeated and the park closed to cars.
“‘We called it the “counter-automotive revolution,”‘ Honan remembered.
“Honan went on to a distinguished career as a correspondent and editor for the Times. He has written several groundbreaking books, including Visions of Infamy: The Untold Story of How Journalist Hector C. Bywater Devised the Plans That Led to Pearl Harbor and Treasure Hunt, on the Nazis looting of the Quedlinburg art hoard.” (Shown below, images from Amazon.com)
Bill Honan and Joseph Papin collaborated on a little book in 1959 called The Greenwich Village Guide (Honan, William H. editor and illustrations by Joseph Papin, The Greenwich Village Guide (with map and directory). NY: The Bryan Publications, 1959):
“List of illustrations” by Joseph Papin in The Village Guide, followed by two of his illustrations in the book – “The Jefferson Market Courthouse” and “Washington Square’s Elegant Old Row.”
Bill Honan and Joe Papin collaborated on another book project, this time a little booklet: Another LaGuardia – How He Did It And How We Can Do It Again, By William Holmes Honan and Illustrations by Joseph Papin, Citizen Press, New York, 1960. The following images are two of the Joseph Papin drawings from Another LaGuardia. Artist Thomas Nast, (1840-1902) depicted Tammany Hall as a tiger in an editorial cartoon nearly 100 years before in 1871; the image became the iconic and immediately recognizable symbol of Tammany Hall:
The Another LaGuardia publication includes the following descriptions of Joseph Papin and William Honan and the publication itself:
The text above reads: “JOSEPH PAPIN, who has illustrated ‘Another LaGuardia,’ believes that contemporary political satire has lost its relevance to traditions of the fine arts. In his own work, Mr. Papin seeks to re-establish this relevance and lift political satire from the level of the journalistic cartoon and caricature to the stature accorded it by Goya, Daumier, Forain and other masters. Mr. Papin’s drawings, satiric and otherwise, have appeared in Harpers, The Reporter, Newsweek, The Villager and other publications.”
The text above reads: “WILLIAM HOLMES HONAN arrived on New York City’s political scene last September with a bang. His editorial in The Villager repudiating Tammany Hall leader Carmine G. DeSapio was immediately recognized as a brilliant manifesto of the reform movement within the Democratic Party. It was also considered to be a major factor in shaving DeSapio’s margin of victory down to a bare 586 votes (out of more than 9,000 cast) when the Tammany chief was running for re-election to the only directly elected office he holds.
“The 29-year-old editor of The Villager is a native of Manhattan and has written extensively about New York City for such magazines as Cue, and as editor of the popular Greenwich Village Guide. Politically, Mr. Honan describes himself as ‘born a Republican, raised a Democrat, educated as an independent and converted by practical politics to a fusionist.’”
“The text above reads: “Most of this essay [‘Another LaGuardia’] originally appeared as a series of article in The Villager under the collective title of ‘A Fusion Mayor in ’61?’ Copyright 1960 by William H. Honan. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A.”
Leave a Reply