A Royal Portable Typewriter For These Blue Times

Under the headline, “Why This Professor Is Writing Letters for People Feeling Blue” in The New York Times today, an article by Deborah L. Jacobs described Brandon Woolf using a Henry Dreyfus-designed Royal Quiet DeLuxe portable typewriter on a street corner in Brooklyn. “With a typewriter and a mailbox, a sidewalk project explores the art of consoling those who need good news” said the go-first.

Woolf, 37, a member of the full-time faculty of New York University, writes letters on his 1940s machine as a public service called “Free Letters for Friends Feeling Blue”, on the corner of Fourth Street and Prospect Park West. It’s timed to coincide with “the heightened anxiety” surrounding the election, Woolf told Jacobs. He provides not only the typewriter and paper but also an envelope and a stamp.