Village Literary Guide
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PERRY STREET
ST. LUKE'S PLACE
SHERIDAN SQUARE
SULLIVAN STREET
UNION SQUARE
UNIVERSITY PLACE
WASHINGTON MEWS
WASHINGTON PLACE
WASHINGTON SQUARE EAST
WASHINGTON SQUARE NORTH
WASHINGTON SQUARE SOUTH
WASHINGTON SQUARE WEST
WAVERLY PLACE
THIRD AVENUE
FIFTH AVENUE
SIXTH AVENUE
SEVENTH AVENUE
4TH STREET
7TH STREET
8TH STREET
9TH STREET
10TH STREET
11TH STREET
12TH STREET
13TH STREET
14TH STREET
SOURCES FOR THE STREET GUIDE NOTES
FOR FURTHER READING
GREENWICH VILLAGE IN FICTION & DRAMA
MOVIES WITH GREENWICH VILLAGE AS A LOCATION AND INVOLVING “LITERATURE”
SOME FAMOUS PAINTINGS OF GREENWICH VILLAGE
NEW YORK CITY LINKS
A HISTORY OF GREENWICH VILLAGE
STREET GUIDE
ASTOR PLACE
13 Astor Place Astor Place Opera House: “On May 10, 1849, an angry crowd of more than ten thousand fans of the American actor Edwin Forrest surrounded this building during a performance of Madbeth starring tragedian Charles Macready. The ensuing riot that night was the culmination of a bitter feud between the two rival actors and their fervent admirers. Macready had come to symbolize and magnify a deep-rooted anti-English resentment held by many of the city’s poor. Thirty-one people died and 150 were injured in what became known as the ‘Astor Place Riots.’ The damaged hall was reconstructed and named Clinton Hall.” (Bunyan)
BANK STREET
1 Bank St. In 1913, shortly after the publication of O Pioneers!, Willa Cather, age 40, moved to a seven-room, second-floor apartment in a large brick house here. She lived with her companion Edith Lewis and wrote My Antonia (the third of a trilogy about immigrants in the United States), Death Comes to the Archbishop, and several other novels. When she became successful, Cather rented the apartment above hers and kept it empty to ensure perfect quiet. Her Friday afternoon at-homes here were frequented by D.H. Lawrence, among others. Unlike many Village writers of her day, Cather eschewed the radical scene and took little interest in politics. (Source: Frommer’s) 1 Bank St is now the site of Haus Interior.
5 Bank St. Willa Cather lived here, 1913 to 1927, according to Bunyan, and there’s a plaque on the building. (Check on this: no. 1 or no. 5?)
27 Bank St Allen Tate lived in the basement apartment here in 1927 when he was writing his biography of Stonewall Jackson. He served as the janitor in lieu of rent
63 Bank St. Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols died here, Feb. 2, 1979. (Bunyan 66)
155 Bank St. Diane Arbus committed suicide in her apartment here, July 28, 1971. (Bunyan 67)
BARROW STREET
43 Barrow Street. Mark Van Doren and Joseph Wood Krutch lived together here in the 1920s. (Bunyan 67)
BEACH STREET
3 Beach Street James Fenimore Cooper wrote The Pilot here, based on the life of John Paul Jones (1823). (Bunyan 67)
BEDFORD STREET
75 1/2 Bedford St. “The narrowest house in the Village (a mere 9 1/2 feet across), this three-story brick residence was built on the site of a former carriage alley in 1873. Pretty, redheaded, feminist poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, who arrived in the Village fresh from Vassar, lived here from 1923 (the year she won a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry) to 1925. Other famous occupants of the narrow house have included a young Cary Grant and John Barrymore.” (Source: Frommer’s)
86 Bedford St.; tel. 212/675-4449 ) Chumley’s opened in 1926 in a former blacksmith's shop. During Prohibition, it was a speakeasy with a casino upstairs. Its convoluted entranceway with four steps up and four down (designed to slow police raiders), the lack of a sign outside, and a back door that opens on an alleyway are remnants of that era. Original owner Lee Chumley was a radical labor sympathizer who held secret meetings of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) on the premises. Chumley's has long been a writer's bar. Its walls are lined with book jackets of works by famous patrons who, over the years, have included Edna St. Vincent Millay (she once lived upstairs), Edna Ferber, Ring Lardner, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, Eugene O' Neill, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Lionel Trilling, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Gregory Corso, Calvin Trillin, and Harvey Fierstein. Even the elusive J.D. Salinger hoisted a few at the bar here, and Simone de Beauvoir came by when she was in town. With its working fireplaces (converted blacksmith forges), wood-plank flooring, amber lighting, and old, carved-up oak tables, Chumley's lacks nothing in the way of mellowed atmosphere. Think about returning for drinks or dinner. A blackboard menu features fresh pasta and grilled fish. Open nightly from 5pm to an arbitrary closing time, Chumley's also offers brunch on weekends. (Source: Frommer’s)
102 Bedford St. Twin Peaks was reconstructed in 1925 for artists’ housing (apartments rented for $68.50 a month). (Stonehill) Often called "Twin Peaks", this building was renovated in 1926 when a wealthy patron of the arts, Otto Kahn, sought to create a home for creative artists in a fanciful building that would enliven the surrounding neighborhood.
Corner of Bedford and Grove
Photo by Berenice Abbott (Source)
NY Times article on 102 Bedford
Walt Disney also lived here: NY Times
BETHUNE STREET
23 Bethune St. Photographer Walker Evans and photographer/painter Ben Shaln were roommates here in the 1930s. (Bunyan 68)
BLEECKER STREET
33 Bleecker Street Herman Melville lived here, age five to nine (the family later moved to 675 Broadway, site of the Grand Hotel) (Bunyan 68)
Bleecker and Mercer (southeast corner) African Grove Theater, the first African American theater in the US, opened 1821 (location debated). The company performed Othello and other Shakespeare plays; lasted only two seasons; according to legend, whites were required to sit in the rear of the theater. (Bunyan 69)
65 Bleecker Street, Bayard Building New York City's only building by Louis Sullivan, this loft building displays the architects acclaimed decorative design skills. Long famous for its unexpected presence on a narrow, dark street, the building is frequently visited by students of architecture from the United States and around the world. (Source: NYU Fine Arts)
102 Bleecker Street John Lloyd Stephens, American travel writer, lived here
144 Bleecker Street, Mori's Restaurant, “long one of the literary landmarks of the town” in the late 1800s and early 1900s, owned by Placido Mori and his wife, from Tuscany, frequented by “actors, authors, painters, and musicians” (Wilson 86).
145 Bleecker St. James Fenimore Cooper, author of 32 novels, plus a dozen works of nonfiction, lived here in 1833. Though he is primarily remembered for romantic adventure stories of American frontier—especially Leatherstocking Tales, the epic of frontiersman Natty Bumppo (written over a period of 19 years)—Cooper also wrote political commentary, naval history, sea stories, and a group of novels about the Middle Ages. (Frommer’s) When Cooper lived here, this block of Bleecker Street was called Carroll Place; he lived at number 4. (Edmiston & Cirino)
159 Bleecker St. Circle in the Square Theater Founded by Ted Mann and Jose Quintero in 1951 at the site of an abandoned nightclub on Sheridan Square, the theater moved to Bleecker Street in 1959. It was one of the first arena, or "in-the-round," theaters in the United States. Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke (starring Geraldine Page), Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (starring Jason Robards, Jr.), Thorton Wilder's Plays for Bleecker Street, Truman Capote's The Grass Harp, and Jean Genet's The Balcony all premiered here. Actors Colleen Dewhurst, Dustin Hoffman, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Jason Robards, George C. Scott, and Peter Falk honed their craft on the Circle in the Square stage. The theater continues to present high-quality productions. (Frommer’s)
160 Bleecker St. The Atrium. This 19th-century beaux arts building by Ernest Flagg is today a posh apartment building. Before becoming the sadly defunct Village Gate jazz club in the late 1950s, this former flophouse was Theodore Dreiser's first New York residence (in 1895, he paid 25¢ a night for a cell-like room). (Frommer’s) This is the only survivor of a group of three men's hotels built by Mills in New York City. Built as a hostel for poor gentlemen, this block-wide building contained 1,500 tiny rooms available at affordable rates. The hotel was closed during the day to encourage its residents to seek work. The hotel was built in accordance with the 1879 Tenement House Law known as the 'Old Law.' With two 60-square foot airshafts penetrating a structure that occupies four city lots, this building exemplifies Flagg's main proposals for changes in the zoning laws. A major lobbyist for housing reform, Flagg might have been inspired by the layout of the Dakota [1884], or by the apartment buildings he had seen in Paris during his studies abroad. (Source: NYU Fine Arts)
172 Bleecker St. This is where James Agee lived in a top-floor railroad flat from 1941 to 1951, after he completed Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Though the book enjoyed a great vogue in the 1960s, it was originally scathingly reviewed and went out of print in 1948 after selling a mere 1,025 copies. Time magazine called it "the most distinguished failure of the season." Rallying from critical buffets during his Bleecker Street tenancy, Agee created the screenplay for The African Queen and worked as a movie critic for both Time and The Nation. He had to move from this walk-up apartment after he suffered a heart attack. (Frommer’s) Now Café Espanol is on this site.
184-186 Bleecker St. Café Figaro (tel. 212/677-1100) is an old beat-generation haunt. In 1969, Village residents were disheartened to see the Figaro close and in its place arise an uninspired and sterile Blimpie's. In 1976, the present owner completely restored Figaro to its earlier appearance, replastering its walls once again with shellacked copies of the French newspaper Le Figaro. Stop in for pastries and coffee or an omelet and absorb the atmosphere, or sit at a sidewalk table to watch the Village parade by. (Frommer’s)
189 Bleecker St. The San Remo café: see 93 MacDougal Street. For several decades, beginning in the late 1920s, the San Remo (today Carpo's Cafe), an Italian restaurant at the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets, was a writer's hangout frequented by . famous bohemian hangout of Miles Davis, Tennessee Williams, James Agee, Jackson Pollock, W.H. Auden, Frank O'Hara, James Baldwin, Village character Maxwell Bodenheim, photographer Weegee, William Styron, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Dylan Thomas, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. John Clellon Holmes wrote about the San Remo in his 1952 novel, Go, one of the first published works of the beat generation. Gore Vidal once picked up Jack Kerouac here. Lost popularity because the bartenders beat up the customers once too often. (Frommer’s and other sources)
Photo by Thomas E. Kennedy (Source)
190 Bleecker Street Beat Poet Gregory Corso was born here, above a funeral parlor, March 26, 1930. (Bunyan 71)
276 Bleecker Street, cheese store
Photo by Berenice Abbott (source)
259 Bleecker Street, Bread Store
Photo by Berenice Abbott (Source)
259 Bleecker Street, then and now (Changing New York)
293 Bleecker, Thomas Paine lived here for a while, beginning in 1808, before moving to 59 Grove, where he died in 1809.
337 Bleecker is the former residence of Lorraine Hansberry, the African-American paywright who wrote A Raisin in the Sun. She was the first black playwright to win the New York Drama Critics circle Award for Best Play of the Year. (NYU Tour)
309 Bleecker Street Home of Thomas Paine
393 Bleecker Street Mark Van Doren and his wife lived here
413 Bleecker Street. Pingpank Barber Shop, Now the location of Leo Design.
Photo by Berenice Abbott (Source)
Bleecker and Christopher Streets
Photo by Berenice Abbott (Source)
BOWERY
22 Bowery, site of the first NYC YMCA, home to William Burroughs for a time.
37-39 Bowery, Bowery Amphitheater: The Virginia Minstrels appeared here in 1843, one of the first minstrel shows.
46-48 Bowery, Bowery Theater, opened 1826, the first theater to be lighted with gas and the first American theater to have a ballet performance (1827). An anti-abolitionist mob sacked the auditorium after an English actor, George Percy Farren, allegedly made some anti-American comments against slavery. (Bunyan 73)
201 Bowery, Tony Pastor’s Opera House, a concert saloon opened in 1865 and helped make vaudeville respectable by cleaning up the acts—no offensive language or behavior, and no smoking and drinking. (Bunyan 74)
Bowery and Bayard, New England Hotel Stephen Foster, composer, was found here in a run down hotel, naked, bleeding, taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died a few days later. (Bunyan 72)
BROADWAY
647 Broadway. Pfaff’s, a rathskeller restaurant in the basement, a hangout of Village bohemians before the Civil War, including Artemus Ward and Walt Whitman. (Bunyan 83)
667-77 Broadway, Winter Garden Theater, replaced the Metropolitan Hall on this site after it burned down in 1859; all three Booth brothers performed here together (the only time in their careers) for a performance of Julius Caesar in 1864, less than five months before John Wilkes assassinated Lincoln. His brother Edwin vowed never to act again, but financial circumstances forced a return. The Winter Garden was replaced by the Grand Central Hotel, which collapsed in 1973, killing four. (Bunyan 85)
721 Broadway, home of the New York Hotel, opened in 1844, an “innovative” hotel that was the first to introduce room service and an a la carte menu. August Brenatano opened a bookselling business in the lobby; popular among southerners during the civil war, thought to be a hotbed of Confederate spies and blockade runners. The hotel was five stories high and covered most of the block; had a famous French chef; off the beaten track in its day, when most of the action was lower on Broadway, it became chic. (In fact, it was thought to be a “wild and perilous undertaking” it was so far from the gentile neighborhood. It also featured new amenities such as indoor plumbing on every floor and individual room keys. Building taken down in 1893, replaced by loft building, a craze at the time, called the New York Commercial Building. (Gallatin continues the tradition with its innovative curriculum of a la carte courses and student services and individualized keys, and in the renovated space, there will be indoor plumbing.)
839 Broadway, the Roosevelt Building, whose rooftop served as the first movie theater of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company of the 1890s.
CENTRE STREET
12 Centre Street Walt Whitman lived at a boardinghouse here in 1842, of which he writes in a story for the New York Aurora about getting home late one evening and being locked out, forced to spend the night in a city shelter. (Bunyan)
CHARLES LANE
between West and Washington Streets
Photo by Berenice Abbott (Source)
CHARLES STREET
16-18 Charles Street
Photo by Berenice Abbott (Source)
69 Charles St. (formerly 10 Van Nest Place) Sinclair Lewis lived here.
79 Charles St. (formerly 15 Van Nest Place) Hart Crane lived here. (Edmiston and Cirino)
CHARLESTON STREET
25 Charleston Street: Edna St Vincent Millay and her family lived here in 1918.
CHISTOPHER STREET
51 Christopher Street, The Stonewall Inn, where a police raid on June 28, 1969, gave birth to the gay rights movement.
84 Christopher St. between Bleeker and 4th St. is a former residence of actress Sally Kirkland. Robert DeNiro and Rip Torn used to rehearse scenes here. (Source: NYU Tour)
121 Christopher St. – The Lucille Lortel Theatre opened in 1954 and is one of the oldest Off-Broadway playhouses. It was known as the Theatre De Lys until 1981 when it was renamed to the Lucille Lortel. Kurt Weil’s Three Penny Opera had its New York premiere here. Volunteer ushering can also be done here. Just call a few days or weeks in advance with two available dates. For more information, visit www.lortel.org. (Source: NYU Tour)
CHURCH STREET
236 Church Street. “The first newspaper in the United States owned and published by African Americans, Freedom’s Journal, was launched at this site in 1827, the same year slavery was abolished in New York State. The Reverend Smauel Cornish and John Russwurm, the frst African American to receive a college education in the United States, edited the paper. The paper’s goal was printed in the first issue: ‘We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. . . .’” (Bunyan 95)
Church and Leonard Street (sw corner), Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, site of the first church built by and for African Americans in NYC (1796); Sojourner Truth renounced her slave name here. (Bunyan 95-6)
Church and Leonard Street (nw corner), Italian Opera House, the first theater in the US designed exclusively for opera; it became the National Theater, burned down in 1839, rebuilt, burned again.
COMMERCE STREET
11 Commerce St. Washington Irving wrote "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" while living in this quaint three-story brick building. Born into a prosperous New York family, he penned biographies of naval heroes as an officer in the War of 1812. In 1819, under the name Geoffrey Crayon, he wrote The Sketch Book, which contained the stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," "Westminster Abbey," and "Rip Van Winkle." Irving was one of the elite New Yorkers who served on the planning commission for Central Park and was ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846. He coined the phrase "the almighty dollar" and once observed that "A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only tool that grows keener with constant use." (Source: Frommer’s)
38 Commerce St Nestled in a bend in the street (following the bend of Dutch Governor Wouter Van Twiller’s farm in the 1630s) the Cherry Lane Theatre, founded in 1924 by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Famed scenic designer Cleon Throckmorton transformed the Revolutionary-era building (originally a farm silo, later a brewery and a box factory) into a playhouse that presented works by Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot and Endgame premiered here), Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter. In 1951, Judith Malina and Julian Beck founded the ultra-experimental Living Theatre on its premises. Before rising to megafame, Barbra Streisand worked as a Cherry Lane usher.
Photo of Cherry Lane Theater (Source)
39-41 Commerce
Photo by Berenice Abbott (Source)
Commerce Street, Nos. 39-41, then and now (Changing New York)
48 Commerce St. In Commerce Street's bend is a Greek Revival house fronted by a bona-fide working gas lamp and built in 1844 for malicious merchant maven A.T. Stewart. (Source: Frommer’s)
50 Commerce St. The Blue Mill Tavern was a hangout for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of spying for the Soviet Union and playwright Eugene O’Neill. It has been featured in The Brothers McMullen, Woody Allen’s Anything Else and the final episode of Sex and the City. (Source: NYU Tour)
COOPER SQUARE
41 Cooper Square, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Cooper Union Foundation Building: Peter Cooper wanted to provide educational opportunities for all citizens regardless of class. Therefore, he established a school of higher learning with a mandate to provide free schooling and training for working-class students. Augustus Saint Gaudens, the sculptor, remembered Cooper coming by his workbench when he was a youth, suggesting that the young cameo jeweler attend night classes at the Cooper Union. Cooper is memorialized by Saint Gaudens who build a monument to the philanthropist in front of the brownstone, round-arched building designed by a German-born architect.
CORNELIA STREET
31 Cornelia St Next door, at 31 Cornelia St., once stood the Caffè Cino, which opened in 1958 and served cappuccino in shaving mugs. In the early 1960s, owner Joe Cino encouraged aspiring playwrights, such as Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, and John Guare, to stage readings and performances in his cramped storefront space. Experimentation in this tiny cafe gave birth to New York's off-Broadway theater. Plagued by money troubles, Cino committed suicide in 1967; Caffè Cino closed a year later. (Source: Frommer’s)
33 Cornelia St. Throughout the 1940s, James Agee lived on Bleecker Street and worked in a studio at this address. Here he completed final revisions on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which portrayed the bleak lives of Alabama sharecroppers.
EAST BROADWAY
165 East Broadway, Garden Cafeteria, an earlier restaurant on this stie was popular among Yiddish intellectuals, many of whom worked for the Jewish Daily Forward; among the diners, Emma Goldman, Leon Trotsky, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. (Bunyan 99)
173-75 East Broadway, offices of the Jewish Daily Forward, founded 1897.
197 East Broadway, The Education Alliance, originally the Hebrew Institute, founded 1889.
GAY STREET
12 Gay Street New York Mayor Jimmy Walker owned this 18th-century town house. More recently, Frank Paris, creator of Howdy Doody, lived here.
14 Gay Street In the 1920s, Ruth McKenney lived in the basement of here with her sister Eileen, who later married Nathanael West. It was the setting for McKenney's zany My Sister Eileen stories, which were first published in the New Yorker and then collected into a book. They were then turned into a popular stage comedy that ran on Broadway from 1940 to 1942, followed by a Broadway musical version called Wonderful Town and two movie versions. (Source: Frommer’s)
Photo of 14 – 16 Gay St., by Berenice Abbott (Source)
Gay Street, Nos. 14-16, then and now (Changing New York)
18 Gay Street: During Prohibition, this street held several speakeasies. Mary McCarthy, living here, “exulted in being poor and alone” after separating from her first husband. (Edmiston and Cirino)
GREENWICH AVE
45 Greenwich Avenue In 1947, William Styron came to New York from North Carolina to work as a junior editor at McGraw-Hill. He moved here in 1951 after a stint in the marines and the success of his first novel, Lie Down in Darkness. Styron originally showed manuscript pages from that novel, begun at age 23, to Hiram Haydn, a Bobbs-Merrill editor whose writing class he was taking at the New School. Haydn told Styron he was too advanced for the class and took an option on the novel. (Source: Frommer’s)
51-55 Greenwich Avenue
91 Greenwich Ave. At the beginning of the 20th century, Max Eastman was editor of a radical left-wing literary magazine called The Masses. The magazine at this address published, among others, Max Eastman, John Reed, Floyd Dell, Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, Upton Sinclair, Edgar Lee Masters, e.e. cummings, and Louis Untermeyer. John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Picasso, and George Bellows provided art for its pages, which a newspaper columnist dismissed thusly: “They draw nude women for The Masses, Thick, fat, ungainly lasses-- How does that help the working classes?” The Masses was suppressed by the Justice Department in 1918 because of its opposition to World War I and Reed, Eastman, political cartoonist Art Young, and writer/literary critic Floyd Dell were put on trial under the Espionage Act and charged with conspiracy to obstruct recruiting and prevent enlistment. Pacifist Edna St. Vincent Millay read poems to the accused to help pass the time while juries were out. The trials all ended in hung juries. (Source: Frommer’s