Gutzon’s first studio in New York was originally a barn that extended across the rear of some ancient brownstone-front houses in Thirty-eighth Street near Third Avenue. He transformed it into one large room with a high skylight and a narrow balcony across the end opposite the entrance. Under this, behind the spiral stairway, was a dressing room, then a door leading to a little fountain and a storage place for clay and coal, and finally an inglenook with built-in seats on both sides of the fireplace and shelves above them for books and bric-a-brac. To enter the studio you passed through a green door opening from Thirty-eighth Street, along the old driveway bordered by geraniums to the proper entrance which led into a small anteroom. On the street door was a sign gruffly announcing that visitors were received “By appointment only.” But it was easy to get to the anteroom; and no matter how hard a secretary might try to carry out orders, Gutzon would certainly call out a welcome to anybody who owned a voice he recognized. His studio was only a step from Grand Central Station; so many of his friends dropped in just to watch him work. And because he had decided to love all mankind and knew that many of these people had come from a long distance, he would never let them be turned away. There was always something going on in this place until the day he moved to Stamford--politics, social reform, park improvements, drama, and sometimes sculpture. And in the background was a phalanx of New York’s clever people, studio helpers, secretaries, models, friends and acquaintances. They flowed in and out at all hours of the day and night, and there seemed never to be any end to them. Among his early helpers were Marian Bell, daughter of the inventor of the telephone, and her friend Alice Hill of Washington. Gutzon probably enjoyed making the pair of them sweep up the studio and mix clay. Once he made them dye untold yards of muslin until their hands were completely discolored. Art was difficult, he told them, because it was made up of so many different, disagreeable things. But, somehow, they liked his instructions, and they looked on the studio as a second home. Alice was married there to Frank Harris, a musician and inventor of an electronic pickup system to transmit music over the telephone. It was demonstrated successfully before an audience in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Other helpers developed into sculptors with independent studios of their own. Among them were George Lober of New York; Merrill (“Bud”) Gage of Santa Monica, California; “Bob” Garrison of Denver and New York; M. F. Malin of Salt Lake City; and William Tolentino of the Philippine Islands. Tolentino had been recommended by Mrs. Woodrow Wilson.