Hot Corn Seller

William P. Chappel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On summer afternoons and evenings, the cries of the iconic hot-corn girls rang through the streets: "Hot corn, hot corn! Here’s your lily-white corn! All you that’s got money, poor me that’s got none, come buy my lily-white corn and let me go home." This woman and her customer are standing in what would have been the busy intersection of Chatham, Doyers, Bowery, and Catherine Streets, in present-day Chinatown. One of the stage coaches that transported riders to and from Westchester, New York, stopped near here. Chappel pictures it approaching the local watch house at far right, where lawbreakers could be temporarily detained.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art