Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Sugartree Alley in Salem, Ohio still retains some of the character of the unnamed Back Alley that Burchfield sketched in 1921 in the months before he moved to Buffalo. He found a sentimental beauty in crowded, ramshackle structures, old horse-drawn carts, hand-hewn telegraph poles and fences that represented small town life. (Burchfield noted that his 1924 wood engraving, The Haymow, was based on his 1920 watercolor titled Sugartree Alley.) Due to the post-World War I depression, Burchfield lost his job at the Mullins Company in 1921, so he worked during the summer at the Kenreich farm in Greenford, Ohio. About a year later, he married Bertha Kenreich, who joined him in Buffalo, where he had taken a job at the M. H. Birge & Sons Company.