WRITERS (Including poets,
playwrites, novelists and journalists)
50 West 10th today
Edward
Albee
50 West 10th
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright
best known for Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?.
The playwright, and Hello Dolly
writer Jerry Herman,
lived in this
converted 1869 stable.
77 St. Mark's Place
W.H. Auden
77 St. Marks Place.
Born in
England, the poet Wystan Hugh Auden, arrived in New York City in 1939.
After stints
at the GeorgeWashington Hotel on East 23rd Street
and in Brooklyn
Heights, he and companion Chester Kallman settled into a second-floor
apartment at this location.
His living quarters were described as being so cold that the toilet no
longer functioned and he had to use the toilet in the liquor store at
the corner. Auden is regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of
the 20th
century.
The building now houses a restaurant, La Palapa.
778 Park
Avenue
William F.
Buckley
Jr.
778 Park Avenue
Buckley died in 2008. He lived in a 4 bedroom
apartment here for 40 years.
The apartment was often the venue for Monday night dinners that
famously included peanut butter canapes and Veuve Cliquot in the "Red
Room" before the guests were summoned to the dining room for an evening
of conversation with William and Pat, his wife.
It is said that Mr. Buckley hosted 1,200 formal events here.
This is the also the building where Brooke
Astor lived.
206 East 7th St
222 Bowery-The Bunker
William Burroughs
419
West 115th St -
1946
206 E 7th St - 1952
Allen Ginsberg was a roomate at both these apartments.
222 Bowery
In 1974, after years of living in Paris and London, Allen Ginsberg
gained for Burroughs a contract to teach creative writing at the City
College of New York. Burroughs successfully withdrew from heroin use
and moved to New York. He eventually found an apartment, affectionately
dubbed 'The Bunker', at 222 Bowery.
The
dwelling
was
a
partially
converted
YMCA
gym,
complete
with
lockers
and
communal
showers.
Burroughs
shared
this
space
for
a
time
with
the
painter,
Mark
Rothko. This was also where
painter Ferdinand Leger had
his studio in 1940-1941
860-870 UN Plaza
today
Truman Capote
860-870 U.N. Plaza.
After publishing In Cold Blood, Truman Capote spent
his royalties on a
25th-floor, $62,000 apartment in the then new twin-towered co-op. He
lived here until his death in1984.
Johnny Carson
was another famous resident here.
Willa Cather
5 Bank Street From 1913 to 1927, Cather and her friend Edith Lewis
lived at here. They had to move as the apartment was to be taken down
during construction of the Seventh Avenue subway line.
Cather's novels, O Pioneers! (1913) The Song of the Lark (1915) My
Ántonia (1918) One of Ours (1922) A Lost Lady (1923)
The Professor's House (1925) My Mortal Enemy (1926)
and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) were all published during the
years that she lived at this address.
61 Jane Street
John Cheever
61 Jane Street
Cheever did not live in the apartment building that
is at this address today. Seven houses were replaced by this building
in the
early sixties.
In 1930, when he was a teenager and a dropout, the New Republic
published his
first story, and he lived in a building corner where #61 now is.
404 East 55th St
Noel
Coward
Hotel
des Artistes—1 West 67th St.
The Campanile—450 E. 52nd St.
404 E. 55 St. This was the playwright's last Manhattan residence.
Patchin Place
today
EE Cummings
21 East 15th St In 1916, Estlin Cummings fulfilled his dream of
living in a "N.Y. garret" when he rented this studio, after graduation
from Harvard, and securing a job at Collier's publishing. It was a
twenty by twenty foot room with a ten foot ceiling and a small
kitchenette.
11 Christopher St In the spring of 1918, after serving in France in an
ambulance unit during WWI he moved into what he described as "The best
studio in New York." Three furnished rooms with tall windows for $30 a
month. He was drafted back into service later that same year.
When he was discharged in January 1919 he rented a large studio
apartment on the forth floor at 9
West 14th Street.
4 Patchin Place 1924, after traveling in Europe and a brief marraige
to Elaine Orr, Estlin settled here and lived at this address until
1962. His apartment was on the top floor, back.
This is where, in 1950, EE Cummings and Dylan Thomas happily spent a
few hours
together in mutual admiration, after the younger poet had
expressed a desire to meet this famous Greenwich Village poet.
SOURCE: Wetzsteon, Ross.
Republic
of
Dreams—Greenwich
Village:
The
American
Bohemia,
1910-1960
The Apthorp
Joan Didion
and John
Gregory Dunne
The
Apthorp–2207 Broadway
The couple was at home in their apartment here when
Dunne died suddenly of a heart attack on December 30, 2003. Joan Didion
wrote about the event in her book The
Year
of
Magical
Thinking.
Theodore
Dreiser
Patchin Place
The entrance gate at the Apthorp
Nora
Ephron Photo: Elena Seibert
The Apthorp–2207 Broadway Nora Ephron moved into the Apthorp in 1980.
She was one of those lucky New Yorkers who was able to rent a huge,
fabulous rent stabilized apartment in this building, at a bargain
price. Ephron loved her apartment. She was still living there 10 years
later when rumors, that rent stabilization would be abolished, started
to spread. When her lease expired her rent was tripled but she signed a
new lease, but it would be the last one she would sign. She wrote about
her experience
in a
New Yorker article in 2006:
"Then truly shocking things began to happen. The landlords cleaned the
building and began making improvements in order to raise our rents.
Rich tenants moved in and movie stars came and went. The courtyard,
once an idyllic spot full of happy children, was suddenly crowded with
idling limousines. My lease expired again, and my rent was effectively
raised 400%. And, just like that, I fell out of love. Twelve thousand
dollars a month is a lot of cappuccino."
Nora Ephron, Personal History, “Moving On,”
The New Yorker,
June 5, 2006, p. 34
The Dakota
today
Charles Henri
Ford Photo
by
Gerard
Malanga
(www.gerardmalanga.com)
Charles Henri Ford was a surrealist poet, magazine
editor, filmmaker, photographer, collage artist and co-author of
America's first "gay" novel. He was also part of Gertrude Stein's inner
circle in Paris in the 1930s and, in the 1960s, an important influence
on Andy Warhol.
51-55 West
10th today
Kahlil Gibran
51 West 10th Street
His perennial best-seller "The Prophet" was written
here. Gibran lived here from 1911 until his death in 1931.
This is the site of Studio Building (1858-1956)
The spot is now occupied by Peter Warren House, 1950s apartments named
for Admiral Peter Warren, an Irish-born Royal Navy captain whose
captures made him a rich man and the owner of much of what is now
Greenwich Village.
408 East 10th
Street
Allen
Ginsburg
419
West 115th St -
1946
Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Edie Parker and Joan
Vollmer move into the communal apartment. Herbert Huncke will be a
frequent visitor.
206 E 7th St - 1952
Gregory Corso and William Burroughs were roommates; Burroughs started
Naked Lunch here. In 1956 he publishes "Howl".
170 East 2nd St - 1958
He wrote "Kaddish" here and edited "Naked Lunch".
408 E 10th
Consuelas Grocery now, Ginsberg lived above here from 1965-75.
704 E 5th
At this address, Andy Warhol, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey
were frequent visitors. Ginsberg lived here until his death in 1997.
SOURCE:
http://east-village.com/history/20th-century/
28 West
10th today
Dashiell
Hammett
28 West 10th
Detective novelist Dashiell Hammett lived here 1947
to 1952. His time here was interrupted by his 1951 prison term for
refusing to name names.
Later, in the late 1950s, surrealist Marcel
Duchamp lived here.
390 West End Ave
Joseph Heller
390 West End Ave
Joseph Heller is remembered primarily for writing Catch-22, a novel about American
servicemen during World War II. The movie rights to the novel were
purchased in 1962, and, combined with his royalties, made Heller a
millionaire.
1 East 62nd today
Ernest
Hemingway
1 East 62nd Street
In the fall of 1959, Hemingway rented a one-bed, one-bath,
900-square-foot apartment here. He was looking for a place where he
could have privacy when he came to New York City. He had always stayed
in hotels in the past.
During the summer of 1960 he set up a small office here an attempted to
work. He was in poor mental and physical health and could do little
writing.
Hemingway left NY for good soon after, and commited suicide in
July 1961 at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.
419 West 115th Street -
1946
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Edie Parker and Joan
Vollmer move into the communal apartment. Herbert Huncke will be
a
frequent visitor. Kerouac was briefly married to Edie Parker.
454 West 20th Street - 1951
Kerouac and his new wife, Joan Haverty, lived here.
307 West 11th
Kerouac revised On the Road
here at his girlfriend Helen Weaver's
courtyard apartment. He also wrote part of Desolation Angels, which
mentions this building and its "Dickensian windows."
Now owned by photographer Annie
Leibowitz; her renovation is creating controversy.
18 West 10th
Emma
Lazarus
18 West 10th
Poet Emma Lazarus is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet
written in 1883; its final lines were engraved on a bronze plaque in
the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1912. The sonnet was solicited
by William Maxwell Evarts as a donation to an auction, conducted by the
"Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the
Statue of Liberty" to raise funds to build the pedestal.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
37 West
10th today
Sinclair
Lewis
37 West 10th
Author Sinclair Lewis and journalist Dorothy Thompson lived here
from1928-29.
Lewis wrote -- "Main Street" in 1920, and then at a two-year pace,
"Babbitt", "Arrowsmith", "Elmer Gantry", and he wrote "Dodsworth" while
living here. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930.
In 1923, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay lived here.
Measuring only nine and a half feet wide, this circa-1873 home was at
various times a carriage house, a
cobbler’s shop, and part of a candy factory.
My candle burns at both
ends; It will not last the
night; But ah, my foes, and oh,
my friends-- It gives a lovely light!
Millay wrote the poem, which she first called "My Candle," at Romany
Marie's café in Greenwich Village.
444 East 57th today
Arthur Miller
444 East 57th St, 13th
floor.
Miller lived here with Marilyn Monroe whom he
married in 1956. They
divorced
in 1961. Nineteen months later, Monroe died of an apparent drug
overdose.
Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd
Miller stayed six years at the Chelsea in the sixties.
(Brooklyn Heights addresses: 102 Pierrepont St. where Miller wrote “All
My Sons” and to 31 Grace Court where Miller lived when he wrote “Death
of a Salesman.”)
441 East 9th Streeet today
Frank
O'Hara
441 East 9th Street
1959 - The beat poet lived here until 1963.
Formally the
Pickwick Arms,
now the POD Hotel
John O'Hara
230 East 51st St.
O'Hara was 27 years old when he lived in this small
hotel in 1933 and 1934. He was living here when he wrote the novel that made
him famous, Appointment in Samarra.
O'Hara was an American writer whose works
also include Pal Joey
and BUtterfield 8.
On the southeast corner of
West 4th Street and 6th Avenue,
this garden rests on what once was
the site of the Golden Swan
Café.
This Irish saloon—known to
regulars as the Hell Hole—was
the haunt of neighborhood artists
and writers including Eugene O’Neill.
In 1928, the Golden Swan building
was demolished for the construction
of the Sixth Avenue subway.
Eugene O'Neill
Photograph by
Edward Steichen in the
April 1934 Vanity Fair.
O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room
in Times Square. The site is now a Starbucks; a commemorative plaque is
posted on the outside wall with the inscription: "Eugene O'Neill,
October 16, 1888 ~ November 27, 1953 America's greatest playwright was
born on this site then called Barrett
Hotel, Presented by Circle in the Square."
Lucerne
Hotel—formerly the Hotel Lucerne - 79th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. O’Neill listed this as his address while
away at school at Princeton University in 1907. His parents maintained
a residence here.
Jimmy-the-Priest's—242
Fulton Street (at Church Street) Jimmy-the-Priest's
served
as
part-model
for
Harry
Hope's
saloon
in
''The
Iceman
Cometh.''
O'Neill
set
''The
Iceman
Cometh''
(and
''Long
Day's
Journey'')
in
1912
becuse
it
was
the
most significant year -apart from his birth in 1888 -
of his life. It was the year he hit bottom. O'Neill lived here and spent countless hours and endless days
drinking in this saloon and rooming house. It was torn down to make
way for the World Trade Center. Provincetown
Playhouse, 133 Macdougal Street This is where O'Neill's New York career began in
1916 with ''Bound East for Cardiff.' The Provincetown Players performed
many of O'Neills early works in the their theater here.
11 Bank Street
John Dos
Passos
11 Bank Street
Dos Passos lived here while writing Manhattan Transfer
85 West 3rd,
today
Edgar
Allen
Poe
In the late 1830s to the early 1840s Poe
lived at
85 West 3rd Street
113 1/2 Carmine Street
137 Waverly Place and
130 Greenwich Street
He was said to have
written "The Raven" at all of these addresses. The Village was the only
community in America where Poe could score drugs in the 1840s.
Patchin Place today
John Reed
1 Patchin
Place—located off 10th Street and Avenue of
the Americas
Reed began writing "Ten Days That Shook the World" here.
300 East 57th St
J.D. Salinger
300 East 57th Street
This building was just a few years old when Salinger
rented an apartment here. It was just after the
publication of Catcher in the Rye
in1951. The place was sparsly furnished with only a lamp and an
artist's drawing board. He lived here until the end of 1952 when he
moved permenantly to New Hampshire.
J.D. Salinger died on January 27, 2010 in Cornish, N.H., where he had
lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.
330 E 51st St
John Steinbeck
38 Gramercy Park N. Stienbeck dropped out of Stanford University in
1925, leaving without a degree. From Stanford, he traveled to New York
City and held various temporary jobs while pursuing his dream as a
writer. However, he was unable to get any of his work published and
returned to California in1926. He lived in a small dingy room in this
building during that time.
330 East 51st street Steinbeck moved here in1943 while working as a war
correspondent for the New York
Herald Tribune. He wrote Cannery
Row while living here.
206 E 72nd St Stienbeck lived in a beautiful brownstone house at
this site from 1951 until his death in 1968. The house has been
replaced by an apartment building called the Wellesley. His house
looked very much like the one still standing at 210 E 72nd. He wrote Winter of our Discontent and Travels with Charley while living
here.
The White Horse Tavern
Dylan Thomas
Of course, Thomas was not
born in New York City, nor did he ever really reside here. When he came
to NYC the first time he stayed at the Hotel Earle, now the Washington
Square Hotel, but when his wife, Caitlyn, joined him for his
second reading tour, they rented a cheap apartment with a kitchenette
at the then dilapidated Chelsea Hotel
at 222 West 23rd. After that,
The Chelsea became his home whenever he came to NY.
Dylan Thomas famously drank his breakfast, lunch and dinner and while
in New York, his favorite bar was the Whitehorse
Tavern.
Legend has it
that this where he drank himself to death shortly after his 39th
birthday.
On November 9th,1953, Thomas died at St.
Vincent’s
hospital
on
West
12th
Street. It happened five days
after he reportedly announced to his companion, that he’d had 18
straight whiskeys —”I think that’s the record”—and wasn’t feeling well.
He came
to St. Vincent’s from his temporary quarters in room #205 at the Chelsea
Hotel, and he never left.
14 West 10th today
Mark Twain
14 West 10th Street
1901-Twain lived here briefly before moving to fancier digs.
(This was also where Joel Steinberg lived when he was accused of murder
and convicted of manslaughter in the
November 1, 1987, death of a six-year-old girl, Elizabeth ("Lisa"),
whom he and his live-in partner Hedda Nussbaum had "adopted". A media
frenzy accompanied the story of Lisa's death.)
21 Fifth Avenue - (at
9th
Street)He lived in here
from 1904 to 1908.
And, of course, at some point, he stayed at the Chelsea
Hotel.
John Updike
West 13th Street (number unknown)
John Updike realized New York City was too small for him shortly after
his second child was born. The family’s two-room apartment on
just wasn’t going to cut it, he realized, and so he moved his family to
Ipswich, Mass.
235 East 58th St
Tennessee
Williams
235 East 58th Street
1948-early 50s
15 West 72nd Street
1965
400 West 43rd Street —
Manhattan Plaza
1978
Hotel Elysee—56-60 54th
Street
Died here
13 East 8th,
today
Thomas
Wolfe
13 East 8th Street
In February 1924, he began a temporary job teaching English at New York
University (NYU), a position he occupied
periodically for almost seven years. Tom shared this space with and
older married woman, Aline Berstein, who he had a tortured affair with
for years to come.
263 West 11th Street This is where the first draft of "Look Homeward,
Angel" was written.
27 West 15th Street He took two rooms on the second floor of this old
loft building, This is where the re-writes were done and in October 18,
1929, the book was published.
865 First Ave (between
48th
and
49th
street) Moved here in 1935
232 East 62nd
Tom
Wolfe
232 East 62nd Street
Wolfe lived in this four-story, 20-foot-wide painted
brownstone from
the late 1970's until he sold it in 1990. The house, which has all the
usual original details, was divided into four apartments, but Mr. Wolfe
and his family lived there as if it wasn't. Wolfe wrote "The Bonfire of
the Vanities" (1987) while living here before buying the 12-room
apartment he shares with his wife and children a few blocks north.
