He was an outsider who flitted at the fringes of one of the country’s most elite universities, a Brooklyn-bred, Bronx-dwelling candy peddler who charmed and enthralled generations of Columbia University students with the greeting: “Hey boys, I got paintings here!” Or, “I got those Hoishey bars.”
From the 1930s until 1982, when he died at 85, few students passed Sam Steinberg outside the student center or the Low Library steps without buying a candy bar at least once. Those who lingered a little longer also learned about Sam’s world through his Magic Marker illustrations: the stylized celebrities (Rudolph Valentino, Elvis, Richard Nixon), the surrealist animals (hoofed cats, mermaids, potato-headed dogs), the vivid whimsies (a pair of legs in Columbia gym shorts).
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