Cavalier gallery getting new home
GREENWICH — If someone had told Ron Cavalier a few months ago that he would be relocating his Greenwich gallery, he would have said that was impossible.
For over a quarter-century, the Cavalier Ebanks Gallery has made its home at 405 Greenwich Ave. The site on the lower part of “The Ave” conferred certain benefits: The restaurants, cafes and other retailers contributed to the steady pedestrian and vehicular traffic that Cavalier Ebanks Gallery enjoyed for much of its spell at the storefront.
But the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in midMarch brought with it a new reality. What Cavalier once thought impossible became a consideration. And then, more recently, after the town’s Board of Selectman voted to close the bottom part of the street to vehicular traffic, the impossible became inevitable.
“Once the decision was made to close lower Greenwich Avenue, it was no longer suitable for us to run a gallery out of that space,” Cavalier said recently, just weeks ahead of the relocation of his gallery up the street, to 175 Greenwich Ave.
The decision had not been any easy one. Though Cavalier grew up in Norwalk, his family’s roots in the world of Greenwich art run deep.
Cavalier’s father, Ronald Joseph Cavalier, who died earlier this year, was a foundryman who cast in bronze the works of renowned sculptors, including Auguste Rodin and Alexander Calder. The older Cavalier restored and preserved the Greenwich sculpture collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, before it was moved to Washington, D.C., where it is now displayed in the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
“As a young child and in my teens, I spent a fair amount of time at the estate, viewing the sculptures,” Cavalier said. “I always felt Greenwich was a home to me even though I didn’t grow up there.”
The younger Cavalier opened his first gallery in Stamford in 1986. By 1993, he had relocated to Greenwich Avenue, where he remained until this November. He also has galleries in Nantucket, New York City and Palm Beach, Fla., that are known for carrying a variety of both up-and-coming and established artists, including the color field painter Wolf Kahn, photographer Steve
McCurry and sculptors Doris Caesar.
“We really have a broad range of historical works to young contemporary artists,” Cavalier said. “And we also have a private sales division where we handle modern masterworks.”
The decision to close the lower half of Greenwich Avenue to vehicular traffic through December 2021 was made to aid businesses, especially restaurants, on the Avenue. But the unintended consequence, Cavalier said, was added stress on him and his partner, Lindsay Ebanks.
Luckily, the owners’ lease at the 475 Greenwich Ave. location expired in December (the original gallery will remain open through the end of the year). Cavalier and Ebanks acted quickly and decided to move to a more accessible location on a part of the street that Cavalier said was “booming.”
“It’s in the middle of the Ave,” Cavalier said. “There is plenty of parking on the
street, cars are able to drive down past the gallery and there is parking in the back. ... We’re thrilled with it.”
The new space, set to open by Nov. 15, is slightly narrower and has lower ceilings than the original gallery down the Avenue. But it also has an additional 1,500 square feet of gallery space.
From the middle of the Ave, Cavalier and Ebanks hope to build on 26 years of success, as well as capitalize on emerging streams of revenue that have emerged during the pandemic. While foot traffic in and out of the store has badly suffered, online sales have been strong, Cavalier said.
Additionally, the gallery has benefited from citydwellers driven out of New York amid pandemic fears. It’s a small silver lining in a time of turbulence and change, he said.
“Clearly there’s a large group of people who have moved out of Manhattan, who have bought these wonderful large homes, not only in Greenwich, but Darien and New Canaan and Westchester County who are new clients for us, as well as other galleries and home furnishing stores,” Cavalier said. “We all feel there’s an absolute boom coming for our businesses as a result of the influx of people from New York City.”