Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

This journal page covers February 10, 1959, and February 10, 1960. In his entry for February 10, 1959, Indiana records "another unbelievable night" at the Persian Room (a nightclub in the Plaza Hotel), and that he saw the Alec Guinness movie The Horse's Mouth. He writes that afterwards he walked up to Lincoln Square to see how the demolition for the cultural center (Lincoln Center) had progressed:

"The buildings on both sides were standing, but Paul’s [Sanasardo] was torn down and only an incredibly narrow empty space was there with the pillars of the large warehouse to its rear looming in the distance. 125 was still standing and there was a light on in the foyer . . . Practically every building left standing is boarded up, and the once teeming street deserted. I looked for a familiar door (the one I painted yellow?) on the site facing, but did not find one. My work is gone, and almost the memories too."

Indiana had sublet Sanasardo's Sixty-Third Street loft in the summer of 1955.

In his journal entry for February 10, 1960, Indiana writes that Richard Smith came over for dinner so that he could see Jean Giraudoux's play Tiger at the Gates, which aired as an episode of Play of the Week. He records that Smith seemed interested in his new constructions (of which he had almost twenty "in a state of near-completion"), and "particularly [the] new painting, [the] green and white January painting." Smith asked Indiana if he was working to get a show, "and said that he thought I should be." He also notes that Smith was at Robert Natkin's the night before, and that Natkin had sold some works from his show (at the Poindexter Gallery), but that Smith "seems very far from being won over to his work."