Instructor

Tennessee Williams with owner Craig Rodwell and bookstore staff in front of the bookstore in 1976.  Photo from the Craig Rodwell Papers, New York Public Library.

The first bookstore dedicated to offering books and a space for gay and lesbian authors, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop was located here from 1973 until its closure in 2009. The store was not affiliated with Oscar Wilde, but owner Craig Rodwell chose this author owing to the playwright's fame in London as well as imprisonment and early death while in prison for the "crime" being gay. The store was located in a rowhouse that was constructed in 1827.

Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop (1967-2009)

This walking tour includes famous historic sites related to LGBTQIA history such as the Stonewall Inn. The tour is a work in progress and is growing to include other landmarks, museums, and historic places related to the gay rights movement in New York City.

Beyond Stonewall: Lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village LGBTQIA History Walking Tour

This winding walk through New York's Greenwich Village includes historic bookstores, studios, nightclubs, churches, and homes of influential authors, activists, and artists. Highlights of the tour include iconic establishments like the Village Vanguard and stops at former and current landmarks related to LGBTQ history such as the Stonewall Inn as well as the site of Cafe Society, one of the few truly integrated nightclubs in the city and the site where Billie Holiday debuted "Strange Fruit," one of the most stirring and significant protest songs in American history. Many of the stops on this tour are not currently designated by historical markers, and the hope is that this tour will help build more awareness of the influence of Greenwich Village residents such as Jane Jacobs, an activist who challenged urban renewal and Thomas Paine, a revolutionary patriot whose work Common Sense inspired many of the nation's early leaders. 

History of Greenwich Village Walking Tour

The Minetta Tavern was
established in 1937, replacing The Black Rabbit that had closed its doors just
8 years prior. The origin of the restaurant's title dates back centuries. The brook
that ran through the area was originally called the "Mannette" by
Native Americans. This name meant "Devil's Water." Though time and
acculturation slightly altered the name, now “Minetta,” the original meaning was
preserved and provides a cultural background for the tavern's name. At the
time, alcohol was commonly referred to as "The Devil's Water.”

 Frequented by many of the 1950’s "beats,” Minetta became
increasingly popular among the literary crowd. In addition to Joe Gould, Ernest
Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, E.E. Cummings, and Dylan Thomas, the pub
also became a hotspot for a group who called themselves “The Ravens.” Taking
their name from Poe's poem, this group met and published poetry in what became
known as The Raven Anthology Journal,
which was published from 1933-1940. Gould was perhaps the most controversial
member, and purportedly roamed The Village with a sign that read "Joseph
Ferdinand Gould, Hot Shot Poet from Poetville, a Refugee from The Ravens. Poets
of the World, Unite. You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Brains." Gould
boasted that he wrote An Oral History of
Our Time, a work that was supposedly completed in the Minetta. It included
bits of over 20,000 conversations he overheard. It was a hoax, however. The
manuscript does not exist.

Today, the Minetta Tavern&nbsp;is run by&nbsp;Keith
McNally. A portion of his biography as&nbsp;found on the tavern's official
webpage reads,&nbsp;"... born in London&nbsp;and moved to New York City in
1975 where he distinguished himself by being fired from every job he ever
held." After taking over the Minetta, McNally&nbsp;closed the tavern for a
period of 6 months to refurbish the pub back to its historical look. Today, the
tavern retains&nbsp;the original wooden bar that was first installed in 1931,
and it still serves a Northern Italian cuisine characteristic of its first days. 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

The Minetta Tavern was established in 1937 by Eddie Silieri, who became known as Eddie Minetta, taking his name from the tavern that in turn borrowed its title from the stream that ran through the area. Founded at the height of the prohibition era, The Minetta Tavern became a popular speakeasy for many literary legends, most notably Joe Gould, who frequented the pub so often that he was said to receive his mail there. With perhaps a similar taste for pubs, authors Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, E.E. Cummings, and Dylan Thomas visited the bar to unwind and socialize. Today, The Minetta Tavern retains much of its history, as much of the original design remains, serving to transport patrons back to a time when the world's greatest authors congregated here and wrote their masterpieces.

Minetta Tavern

In 1927,&nbsp;a barber named Dominic Parisi opened Caffé Reggio at 119 McDougal Street in&nbsp;Greenwich Village. It didn't begin as the&nbsp;coffeehouse visitors and residents know it as today, though. At its conception, it was actually a spot where Parisi would offer free cups of coffee to his customers who were waiting their turn for a haircut. Soon, however, the delicious brewed drinks became so popular that Parisi decided to open it as an official café. Though today the café offers a wide variety of caffeinated beverages, such as the caffé mocha, macchiato, and Americano, it was once known primarily for one particular drink: the cappuccino. In fact, Parisi brought the first ever espresso machine of its kind to America, and in his New York City café, introduced the cappuccino to the American public. Though the menu has grown over the decades, the cappuccino is still the star at Caffé Reggio. The cappuccino isn't the only thing still thriving at the café from those days, though.&nbsp;The original espresso machine itself is still an attraction -- as well as a continually used piece of equipment -- at the restaurant today. It was initially created as a showpiece for the 1900&nbsp;Paris World’s Fair, and was then bought by Parisi for $1,000 -- a substantial amount for the time. It is complete with valves, gauges, and decorative bronze angels and horses, all of which the new owner&nbsp;Fabrizio Cavallacci (who inherited the shop from his father) had polished a few years ago so it still shines like new. In fact, at one point comedian Bill Cosby was interested in buying it from the café. However, no attempts at purchasing the machine have yet removed it from its longtime home.&nbsp; Beyond the espresso machine, numerous other antiques adorn the café, including a 600-year-old bench that was&nbsp;once owned by the famous Medici family of Florence, Italy, the ceiling fan that appeared in the classic film&nbsp;Casablanca, and huge paintings from&nbsp;the famous school of&nbsp;Michelangelo Caravaggio. These antiques haven't retired in the café, however. Similar to the still-functioning espresso machine, the centuries-old bench is still lounged upon by coffee-sipping customers, and the fan is still put to use on many a hot summer's day.&nbsp; As well as being the home of antiques and art, Caffé Reggio&nbsp;has also been a hot spot for shooting films (or notable scenes for films, at least). Scenes from&nbsp;The Godfather II,&nbsp;Serpico,&nbsp;and, more recently,&nbsp;Inside Llewyn Davis, among others,&nbsp;have been shot in the café. Film companies approach the restaurant with their inquiries to film there, rather than the other way around, and the charge the companies a fee when it causes them to shut down shop for several hours. However, no fee is charged to student groups with one camera man who can be done at the location in a half hour.&nbsp; Today, Caffé Reggio continues to be a refreshing face among a coffeehouse-chain world. It remains a popular spot in the hectic city, holding on to its 1920s-esque charm even as the world around it changes. Open 365 days of the year, the café is there even for those craving a cappuccino on Christmas morning or New Year's Eve. It has only ever been owned by two Italian families, and continues serving up traditional dishes and coffee beverages.&nbsp;

In 1927, a barber named Dominic Parisi opened Caffé Reggio at 119 McDougal Street in Greenwich Village. At its conception, it was actually a spot where Parisi would offer free cups of coffee to his customers who were waiting their turn for a haircut. Soon, however, the delicious brewed drinks became so popular that Parisi decided to open it as an official café. This café was the first in America to serve the cappuccino when Parisi brought his espresso machine over from Italy. 


Caffé Reggio

From 1939 until the New York State Liquor Authority revoked its license, this was the location of a bar that earned a reputation as serving all patrons, including gay and lesbian residents of the community. The bar was raided by police in 1944 for serving gay customers in violation of the era's "morals laws." Although the bar owner was ordered to close for good, he continued to operate and given the bar's mob backing, the police generally looked the other way. The bar was raided again in the 1950s and 1960s and closed in 1967. In 1970, Gay Liberation Front operated the Gay Community Center at the site of the former bar. 

Tony Pastor’s Downtown (1939-1967) Gay Community Center (1970-1971)

Eva Kotchever, known variously as Eve Adams or Eve Addams, was a Polish Jew who immigrated to the United States in the 1920s along with her partner, the Swedish painter Ruth Norlander. She settled in Greenwich Village, which had an artsy, bohemian reputation and a population that was more welcoming to alternative lifestyles than perhaps any other part of the city. In 1925, Adams opened a bar at 129 MacDougal Street, which was then the heart of the Village's LGBT community. Next door to the Provincetown Playhouse, the tea room became a popular after-theater spot and quickly developed a devoted following. It was a welcome gathering place for Jews and intellectuals, who were not always welcomed in other establishments. Women found it a safe space as well, at a time when women generally didn't venture into bars or clubs without being accompanied by a man. The tea room was different: a sign placed prominently at the entrance read "Men are admitted but not welcome." Despite its somewhat scandalous sign, the tea room appears to have actually been quite tame; despite sometimes being referred to as a bar, it's not altogether certain that it served alcohol. Most of the activity at Eve's appears to have been poetry readings and after-hours discussions between lesbians. Adams, who came to be known as the "queen of the third sex," was a vital part of the fabric of the Village and was friends with many of the Village's literary and political luminaries, including Emma Goldman, Henry Miller and Anais Nin. Many of the Village's most well-known residents frequented the tea room, which undoubtedly garnered publicity for the establishment, not all of it positive. The growing popularity of the tea room apparently attracted the ire of Bobby Edwards, who wrote a society column for the Greenwich Village Quill, and whose office was directly across the street. Edwards did not approve of the growing presence of lesbians across MacDougal Street, and although he often covered events at the tea room, he had nothing positive to say about Adams or many of the events held there. By the summer of 1926, Edwards had published a number of critical pieces about the tea room, even after participating in a poetry reading there. In July of 1926, an female undercover police officer entered the tea room and engaged Adams in conversation. She would later claim that Adams took her dancing and made sexual advances to her both in a taxi and in a hotel room. She also confiscated a book which Adams self-published, titled Lesbian Love. As far as the police were concerned, the book was evidence of indecency and disorderly conduct. Adams was senteced to six months to the Women's Workhouse at Welfare Island, as Roosevelt Island was known at the time. In an improbable twist, Adams was imprisoned there at the same time as another, far more well-known, woman, who was also arrested on obscenity charges. Because of her role in the Broadway play, Sex, Mae West served 8 days at Welfare Island. Adams' uncle in Connecticut offered to pay her bail but the city refused it. Following the completion of her term, Adams was deported to France. After her deportation, many in the Village remembered both Adams and the tea room fondly. A few years after her deportation, a play based on Lesbian Love was performed--albeit surreptitiously--in a basement theater on Christopher Street. A number of Village residents were resentful of Edwards and his likely role in Adams' arrest. In France, Adams operated a cafe and bookstore and eventually became involved in the fight against Francisco Franco in Spain. Upon her return to France in 1943, she and her partner were arrested and Adams was sent to Auschwitz, where she later died. The building which once housed Eve Adams' Tea Room is now an Italian restaurant.

From just 1925 to 1926, a Polish immigrant, Chawe Zlocsewer, made history by operating what was perhaps the first lesbian bar in New York City. Known as Eve Adams' Tearoom (or Eve Adams' Hangout). The basement bar, popular as an after-theater club, made no secret of its clientele. Because it was openly a lesbian bar, Eve Adams' Tearoom was targeted by police and Adams (as Zlocsewer was known) was convicted on obscenity charges and eventually deported. 

Site of Eve Adams' Tearoom (1925-1926)

As its name suggests, the Provincetown Playhouse began in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1915. It began among a group of artists and writers who were vacationing together in a rented beach cottage. The group performed two plays on the cottage’s veranda and when word of the performances began to spread, they put on more performances in a former fish house turned makeshift theater. The following summer, even more writers and artists arrived in Provincetown after hearing about the group’s performances. After the summer of 1916, the group decided to form a permanent organization, which would be based in Greenwich Village, where many of them lived. The organization’s purpose was primarily to provide an outlet for emerging playwrights, particularly those with an interest in realism rather than the melodrama which was then in vogue. The group moved to New York City in the fall of 1916 and converted the parlor of an apartment at 139 MacDougal Street into a theater. The location was a fortuitous one; it was in the heart of the Village, next door to both the Liberal Club and Polly Holladay’s restaurant, both of which were popular haunts of the neighborhood’s bohemian set. While still in Provincetown, a young Eugene O’Neill became involved in the Players. In the Village, several of the playwright’s works were produced, including Bound East for Cardiff and Before Breakfast. In the first two years of the theater, O’Neill would have several other works brought to the stage, some of which would later be performed on Broadway. In the 1918-19 season, the New York City Building Commission forced the group to stop using 139 MacDougal as a theater. They found a building owned by their landlord three doors down at 133 MacDougal. They began renting the former stable and added a scenery shop and dressing rooms, as well as offices upstairs. By this point, Edna St. Vincent Millay was working with the Players as an actor and within a few years would herself become an acclaimed playwright and poet. The Provincetown Playhouse would continue to produce influential and experimental performances well into the twentieth century and served as a training ground for some of the most revered playwrights in American cinema. O'Neill alone would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize four times as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature. Both Bette Davis and Claudette Colbert made their New York stage debut in the theater. Edward Albee and Sam Shepherd had plays staged at the playhouse and Charles Busch's Vampire Lesbians of Sodom ran for five years at the theater, becoming one of the most successful Off Broadway plays in history. In 1984, NYU purcahsed several of the townhouses on MacDougal Street, including the building which housed the Provincetown Playhouse. Despite the objections of preservationists and the theater community, the university demolished virtually all of the theater, leaving little more than the facade and a theater that holds the same name.

The Provincetown Players originated in 1915 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, but they are far more well-known for the Greenwich Village theater that bears their name. The theater opened in 1916 and is considered by many to be one of the most significant sites in the history of American drama. Eugene O’Neill, the only American playwright to win a Nobel Prize for literature, was closely associated with the theater, with several of his early plays being produced there. NYU acquired the property and demolished most of the building in 2008, although a theater with the Provincetown name remains at 133 MacDougal.

Former Location of Provincetown Playhouse 

The Church of St. Joseph is one of the longest
standing churches within Manhattan. The church was founded by John Dubois in 1829 and was the sixth parish added to the
area. Before the church’s building was constructed, services were held in a
hall not far from the church. The building was created by John Doran with construction beginning between
1833 and 1834. 

Throughout the church’s longstanding service, the
building had many events happen under its roof. The building faced fires during
1855 and 1885 to its interior. The church also had various revisions to its
structure in the late 1900s, focusing on its interior as well as its overall
structure. Throughout all these events,
the church was noted for being involved with social issues, a standout point
for the parish and its surrounding area. 

The Church is well known for its relation to the LGBTQIA
community, notably, its support for the
group. It annually holds mass every pride month for those lost to AIDS and the church is open to
welcoming queer individuals to their congregation. The church was also the
meeting place for the Gay Officers Action League, with the first meeting being
held in 1982, in the church’s basement. This cemented the church as one of the
first sanctuaries to allow a gay-rights organization to use a church building
as a meeting place. This meeting was led by Charles H. Cochrane, who was the
first New York police officer to announce his sexuality. Cochrane’s courage to
come out was immortalized in 2016 when Sixth Ave. and Washington Place, a street very close to the church, was
renamed Charles H. Cochrane Way.

Constructed between 1833 and 1834, this is the oldest building constructed for the purpose of providing a space for Roman Catholic congregants to worship in New York. The parish is today known for providing a welcoming place for LGBTQIA Catholics and in 1982, it became one of the first Catholic churches to allow a gay-rights organization to use its sanctuary as a meeting space. From that time to the present, the Gay Officers Action League has met at the Church of St. Joseph. 

Church of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village

Anne Charlotte Lynch was born in 1815&nbsp;in Bennington, Vermont, to parents Patrick Lynch of Ireland and Charlotte Gray of Vermont. After the passing of her father in 1819 who died in a shipwreck, Anne and her mother, along with older brother Thomas, moved to Hartford, Connecticut. It was here that she attended the Albany Female Academy, from where she graduated in 1834. Upon graduating, Anne began teaching at Albany and Providence. It was during this time that she began her literary meetings, which were so popular it was said that "the very best literary society of Providence could be found in the parlor of Miss Lynch." In 1845, Anne and her mother moved to their new home on 116 Waverly Place, New York. Anne opened her doors to the&nbsp;New York literati community at her literary meetings almost as soon as she unpacked her bags. It was here that &nbsp;her soirees&nbsp;became most influential and coveted, with names like Edgar Allen Poe, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Herman Melville often frequenting her parlor every Saturday night.&nbsp;The Literary News journal recalled in 1894, "She received every Saturday evening. American literature was just beginning to make itself felt, and her house became the weekly gathering place for aspiring poets, writers, and novelists." It was here that Edgar Allen Poe first presented "The Raven," reciting it before the crowd that had gathered that Saturday night. At this time, Poe was a regular at the Lynch house, but when flirty correspondence was brought to light between him and Fanny Osgood, another Saturday night regular, Anne kicked him out of the social circle. The correspondence was a huge scandal, as both parties were married. Anne's reaction reflects&nbsp;the deep devotion she held towards preserving the purpose of the literary circle, discussions that focused primarily on literature instead of scandal. Today, 116 Waverly Place is little more than an expensive, upscale New York apartment. There are no visible markers which designate the house as one that once hosted the most prestigious literary names in American history, but such a history&nbsp;is there to be found for those who seek it out.

The home of Anne Charlotte Lynch served as a gathering place for many up and coming authors residing in New York during the mid 1800s. Every Saturday evening, Lynch welcomed guests such as Edgar Allen Poe, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and more. At these meetings, it was said that authors would exchange ideas, reflect on their work, and at times, share certain excerpts with their fellow authors. In addition to being a sculptor and hostess, Lynch was also an author herself, though she is most famous for hosting these meetings. She is credited with founding the modern book club in New York. 

Anne Charlotte Lynch's House

Any reader of Henry James or Edith Wharton knows that Greenwich Village--particularly the area on the north side of Washington Square Park--was once an affluent, blue-blood enclave. But that began to change in the late nineteenth century, when some of the elegant old homes were torn down to make way for hotels and apartments that catered to a more economically diverse clientele. In 1902, one of the neighborhood's grand homes was demolished to make way for the new, eight-story Hotel Earle at 103 Waverly. The hotel was named for the first owner, Earle S. L'Amoureux. In 1908, L'Amoureux added an identical connecting building that included reading rooms and a restaurant. By the time of the hotel's expansion, the area around Washington Square Park was well on its way to becoming a thoroughly bohemian province. Colorful and still affordable, the neighborhood attracted a large population of writers, artists, and musicians, a number of whom would temporarily make a home at the Hotel Earle. One of the earliest, soon-to-become-famous guests at the Earle was a young Ernest Hemingway, then a junior journalist. He stayed at the hotel for several weeks in 1914 before he set out for Europe and the life-altering experience of working as an ambulance driver on the front lines. By the 1950s, the Hotel Earle was past its prime. Its rates were lower and it attracted an ever more bohemian, eclectic clientele. One of the hotel's most well-known regulars was poet Dylan Thomas, who first stayed at the property in the early 1950s after being evicted from the Beekman Hotel. Thomas liked the hotel because of its laid-back atmosphere and proximity to some of his favorite watering holes, including the Minetta Tavern and the White Horse Tavern. It was after a night of heavy drinking at the latter that Thomas died in 1953. Low rates, its location in the heart of Greenwich Village, and a decidedly raffish kind of charm made the Hotel Earle a popular place to stay with musicians in the mid- to late twentieth century. Bo Diddly reportedly stayed at the hotel every time he was in the city and the Rolling Stones stayed there during their first US tour in 1964. Bob Dylan stayed at the Earle in 1961 after arriving in New York and would later live in Room 305 with Joan Baez, who immortalized the hotel in her song, "Diamonds and Rust." And though some dispute this claim, the Hotel Earle is also reportedly the place where John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas wrote "California Dreamin.'" In 1973, the hotel was purchased by Daniel Paul and his family. They gave the property a thorough restoration and in 1986, they renamed it the Washington Square Hotel, reflecting its proximity to one of the city's most beloved outdoor spaces.

Manhattan is full of hotels with storied and colorful histories, but few can match the long and legendary history of the Washington Square Hotel which has operated at this location since the first years of the 20th century. Known for much of its history as the Hotel Earle, the property has played host to some of the twentieth century's most illustrious names in music and literature including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Bo Didley. Located just steps from Washington Square Park in the heart of Greenwich Village, the hotel was a welcoming and affordable temporary home for the Village's bohemian denizens. 

Washington Square Hotel (formerly the Hotel Earle)

Margaret Anderson, a native of Indianapolis, moved to Chicago in 1908 and joined the staff of The Dial. She also worked as a book critic for the Chicago Evening Post. She wasn’t entirely satisfied with her jobs, and in 1914, she founded her own journal, which she named The Little Review. Anderson envisioned the journal as something radical, with “the best conversations the world has to offer.” Strong-willed and charming, Anderson was determined that the journal succeed, and she was able to use her beauty and wit to solicit funding from wealthy patrons. She was equally successful in persuading some of the most acclaimed writers of the day to contribute to The Little Review. In addition to publishing works by political radicals like Emma Goldman, the journal also published Anderson’s defense of homosexuality. In 1916, Anderson met Chicago art teacher, Jane Heap, and the two soon fell in love and moved in together. Heap, often using pseudonyms, worked as co-editor of the Little Review. In 1917, the pair moved to Greenwich Village and began publishing the journal from their upper-floor apartment on 8th Street.Their move to New York was aided by Ezra Pound, who also served as foreign editor of the Little Review in London. It was Pound who sent Anderson and Heap parts of James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1918, which the pair began serializing in the journal. The pair had published roughly half of the novel in successive issues before they were charged with obscenity. Several issues containing parts of the novel were seized and destroyed by the US Post Office on the grounds that the prose was obscene. When the case went to trial in 1921, Anderson and Heap were found guilty, fined $100, and ordered to discontinue publishing the novel. Later that year, the pair removed the magazine’s motto, “Making No Compromise with the Public Taste,” from the journal’s cover page. The trial drew even more publicity for the journal, with residents of Greenwich Village appearing at the courthouse to protest the proceedings. The experience left Anderson depressed about the state of in the US and she handed over control of the magazine to Heap in 1923. Soon after, Anderson moved to Paris and began a romantic relationship with the French singer Georgette Leblanc. The Little Review’s last years were marked by a gradual decline, although it had succeeded in publishing some of the best known writers of the day, and many who were then unknown but would go on to become part of the American canon. Among the journal’s many contributors were Djuna Barnes, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and W.B. Yeats. The Little Review ceased publication in 1929 and is now regarded as one of the most influential modernist literary journals.

On the upper floor of a nondescript building in Greenwich Village, literary history was made. From 1914 to 1929, the top floor apartment was home to Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, who published the modernist literary journal, the Little Review. The journal published many of the most influential writers of the day, including Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and T.S. Eliot. But the Little Review is most remembered for its serialized publication of James Joyce's Ulysses, which was considered obscene at the time.

Former "Little Review" Office 

The relatively ordinary-looking building at 52 W. 8th Street has one of the more colorful and improbable histories to emerge from the Village. Built in 1929 and originally home to the Film Guild Cinema, the building is one of the first examples of modernist architecture in the city. Within about twenty years, however, a number of the façade’s distinctive modernist features would be removed, leaving a decidedly ordinary building in their place. Curious things were going on inside as well. The basement of the building was home, from 1930 to 1967, to a country music-themed nightclub called the Village Barn. The club was popular enough to spawn a television program of the same name, which ran for two years on NBC. During the time that the basement housed a country music venue, the abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffmann lectured in an upstairs studio. Upstairs, the building housed the Generation Club, a nightclub and performance venue. Some of the biggest names in music performed at the Generation, including BB King, Janis Joplin, Sly &amp; the Family Stone, and Chuck Berry. In 1969, Jimi Hendrix and his manager, Michael Jeffery, purchased the Generation Club. Their intent was to maintain the nightclub and add a small recording studio. Eddie Kramer, a recording engineer, persuaded the pair that the space would be put to better use as a state-of-the-art recording studio minus the nightclub. The newly redesigned studio, Electric Lady Studios, opened in August of 1970. The space was specially designed for Hendrix, with a distinctly Jimi-esque psychelic vibe. The new studio featured curved walls, sci-fi paintings, and multicolored lights that could be changed to suit any mood. Among the building's most distinctive features, however, were its round, bubble door and round windows. The day after its opening, Hendrix recorded "Slow Blues," his last studio record, in the facility. Hendrix died of an overdose just three weeks later. But Electric Lady Studios would play a major part in music history long after his death. In the 1970s, Led Zeppelin, Patti Smith, David Bowie, and Stevie Wonder were just a few of the performers who recorded in the space. More recently, following a remodel in the 2000s, the Ryan Adams, Lana Del Rey, Adele, and The Roots have recorded at the studio.

Constructed in 1929 and home to the Film Guild Cinema in its early years, this Greenwich Village building would later become home to the Village Barn, a country-themed nightclub that inspired an NBC spinoff. During the late 1960s, the building was home to the Generation, a legendary but short-lived live music venue, and later, a recording studio owned by Jimi Hendrix. Although Hendrix is most often associated with Seattle and London, this building is an important part of the musician’s legacy and he and his manager purchased the nightclub in 1968 and transformed it into a state-of-the-art recording studio that continues to operate as Electric Lady Studios. Hendrix’s untimely death occurred not long after the studio was completed, but it continues to draw some of the biggest artists of the day, including Lady Gaga and Lana Del Rey.

Electric Lady Studios 

Early on in his career,&nbsp;Robert Joffrey moved to New York and began teaching at The American Ballet Theatre School. In the 60's, he and Gerald Arpino&nbsp;founded The Joffrey Ballet School. The school thrived, partially due to its unconventional ways.&nbsp;The Joffrey was the first dance studio to incorporate present-day music into its curriculum and&nbsp;perform "rock ballets." Many dancers fled to the school, all wanting to take part in the ballet reformation. In the past 50 years, the Joffrey Ballet School has continued to dramatically influence American ballet. The Joffrey was one of the first places to begin to let dancers of different body types and races participate in company performances. Joffrey's goal was to inspire as many as possible with the art of dance- regardless of shape, color, or ethnicity. &nbsp;Not only are the dancers of the Joffrey exceptional, but the performances staged by the Joffrey Ballet School are unique as well. By collaborating with talented choreographers and incorporating modern day music, the Joffrey has made ballet an art for all to enjoy.&nbsp; After a life full of success, Robert Joffrey passed away on March 25th, 1988. He ended his career in the same place it sprouted wings- New York City. The torch of leadership was then passed on to Gerald Arpino, as he became the next artistic director. However, Arpino resigned two years later. &nbsp;Arpino died in October of 2008. While the original leaders of The Joffrey Ballet are no more, their legacy and influence live on in both the school and in the dance world. Their influence on dance continues on. As The Gerald Arpino and Robert Joffrey Foundation states: "Within five decades, Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino changed the fabric of American dance with their far-reaching artistic vision. The diversity of repertory and the focus on innovation that audiences have come to expect from ballet companies today were pioneered by the Joffrey Ballet."

The Joffrey Ballet revolutionized the art of ballet and paved the way for the modern ballerinas of today. The Joffrey Ballet School was founded by Robery Joffrey and Gerald Arpino in 1953 in order to create a place to classically train dancers for their professional careers. The studio is made up of three floors; it contains six studios. These studios are the second homes of hundreds of present-day students who, like many before them, aim to become professional ballet dancers. Many big names in the dancing industry have instructed in this company such as Yvonne Rainer and Rudolf Nureyev.

Joffrey Ballet School

By the mid-19th Century, the area around&nbsp;Jefferson Market in Greenwich Village had become associated, in the
minds of respectable people, with "everything that is bad, mean and unsavory." A plan for a new courthouse in the area was first
proposed in the early 1870s and approved by the notorious New York political machine of “Boss”
Tweed. When over $150,000 was spent with nothing to show, the original design
was scrapped and the firm of Withers and Vaux was hired to create a new design. Although credited to both English-born Frederick Clarke Withers and Calvert Vaux - the latter is famous for&nbsp;co-designing Central Park with Frederick Olmstead -&nbsp;the courthouse, as well as&nbsp;the then-adjacent prison, were designed solely by Withers in the Victorian Gothic style, inspired by the English writer John Ruskin, and it is considered his best-known work.&nbsp;The project&nbsp;was&nbsp;highly controversial: citizen
protests and contract disputes marked its construction. However, the final cost of not only the courthouse, but
all of the complex’ buildings, was less than $360,000&nbsp;– quite a bargain, since
the estimated cost for the original (unused) design ran to millions of
dollars!&nbsp;&nbsp; The building originally included a police court, which later served as a night court, on the ground floor and a district court on the second floor. Harry K. Thaw, the infamous killer of architect
Stanford White, was arraigned and imprisoned there in 1906. In 1909, striking female workers from the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were arrested and taken to the night court there. This was to humiliate
the proper young ladies: during this era, prostitutes were frequently brought into night court.&nbsp;(Two years later, many young women in that
same <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://theclio.com/web/entry?id=12322">factory</a> would die in a notorious and horrific fire.) Due to redistricting, the building stopped being
used as a courthouse in 1945, and for over a decade thereafter it was
employed&nbsp;for many purposes, including as a police academy.&nbsp;After the building was abandoned in 1958, many local people of prominence, including the
preservationist Margot Gayle, the historian Lewis Mumford, poet e.e. cummings and
actor Maurice Evans banded together to save first the clock tower, then the
building itself.&nbsp;In 1961, New York City Mayor Robert Wagner
announced that the building would be converted into a library.&nbsp;Architect Giorgio Cavaglieri was hired in 1965 to
completely convert the abandoned building, and he accomplished the task in only two years. The&nbsp;library has a children’s reading
room where the police court used to be, and an adult reading room where the
district court once was. A reference library, which contains many volumes
(some rare) on the history of New York, is located in the basement.&nbsp;The exterior&nbsp;is faced in red brick with Black brick and
yellow sandstone trim; its cornice and frieze are made of granite.&nbsp;At the northeast corner is a tower with an iron
balcony and pyramidal roof, with a prominent four-faced clock at the top.&nbsp;The structure contains many&nbsp;gables&nbsp;and stained-glass windows. The tympanum above the library’s entryway contains a bas-relief sculpture representing the climactic courtroom scene in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In 1996, the old fire bell in the tower rang for the first time in over a century.

The Jefferson Market Library (formerly the Third District Judicial Courthouse) is located in New York City's Greenwich Village, on a triangle of land bounded by Sixth Avenue to the east and 10th Street to the northwest. The area was originally a local market established in the early 1830’s shortly after the death of Thomas Jefferson, and named after him. A new courthouse, built in the Victorian Gothic (or Venetian Gothic) style, as well as a new prison and market, were constructed on the location during the years 1874-1877 by the architectural firm of Withers and Vaux (the old courthouse building is all that remains). It was voted fifth among the ten most beautiful buildings in America by a poll of architects in the 1880s. 

The building was vacated in 1958 and marked for demolition, but preservationists rallied to save it. In 1961, the city announced that the old courthouse would be converted into a library, and it was opened as the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library in 1967. In 1972, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Jefferson Market Library (formerly Third District Judicial Courthouse)

Djuna Barnes was born in 1892 in upstate New York. She grew up in an intellectually sophisticated but abusive home in which her father moved his mistress into the home along with Djuna, her seven siblings, and her mother. As a sixteen-year-old, Barnes was raped, possibly by a family friend or possibly by her father. Shortly thereafter, she was forced into a marriage with the brother of her father’s mistress. These traumatic experiences would figure in some of her later writing. Barnes left home at a young age and moved to New York City. She moved to Greenwich Village and thrived in the vibrant, bohemian atmosphere of lower Manhattan in the early twentieth century. She got work as a journalist, often putting herself risky, precarious situations for the sake of the story. Her determination to be a part of the story included allowing herself to be rescued from a skyscraper by a fireman. In addition to newspaper articles, Barnes also wrote poetry and short stories during this period, including her first book, a chapbook titled The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings. She also tried her hand at playwriting; three of her one-act plays were produced by Eugene O’Neill and the Provincetown Players. In the early 1920s, Barnes joined a number of American writers and artists who moved to Paris during the interwar years. The city was home to a large number of expats, and Barnes soon became part of the city’s literary and artistic scene, befriending such luminaries as James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. It was in Paris that Barnes’s writing career took off and it was also there that she became involved with Thelma Wood, in what would be the defining relationship of her life. Barnes rejected labels, but was a part of the lesbian community centered on the Left Bank. She apparently did not identify as either a lesbian or bisexual, once famously saying, “I’m not a lesbian, I just loved Thelma.” It was a passionate and tumultuous relationship, but was ultimately destroyed by Wood’s drinking and infidelity. Her heartbreak over the failed relationship with Wood inspired Barnes’s only major novel, Nightwood. Published in 1936, Nightwood focuses on the lives of an eccentric group of characters in Paris, and is widely believed to be autobiographical. Believing her portrayal in the book to be unfairly harsh, Wood never spoke to Barnes again after its publication. Though the book was a critical success, the years following its publication were difficult ones for Barnes. She began drinking heavily, becoming so ill at one point that when her friend Peggy Guggenheim intervened to get her out Europe before the outbreak of World War II, it was doubtful that she would survive the transatlantic journey. She had already attempted suicide while in London, and after her return to New York, her family placed her in a sanitorium. Barnes eventually severed ties with her family, whose abuse would feature prominently in her play The Antiphon, which she began in 1950. She stopped drinking and moved into 5 Patchin Place, a one-room apartment where she lived as a virtual recluse for the next forty-two years. She became increasingly suspicious of anyone she didn’t know well and rejected many attempts by admirers of her work (including Carson McCullers, who camped out on her doorstep) to meet their muse. The years at Patchin Place involved very little writing. Barnes even refused to allow her earlier works to be reprinted, which may explain why she is not as well-remembered as some of her contemporaries. Barnes died on June 18, 1982, at the age of 90.

This Greenwich Village apartment was home to Djuna Barnes who was one of the first major novelists to make the lives and issue of lesbianism a major focus of her work. Published in 1936, Barnes' novel Nighthawk appears today as a landmark work and is based on Barnes's own relationship with another woman, Thelma Wood. Though she spent a number of years as an expat in Paris, Barnes returned to New York City in 1940 and lived at Patchin Place until her death in 1982.

Former Residence of Djuna Barnes 

The three-story houses of Patchin Place were constructed in the 1850s as living quarters for Basque waiters who worked nearby at the Brevoort Hotel. In the early twentieth century, electricity and running water were installed, and Patchin Place began to attract a new type of resident: actors, artists, and writers. On July 1, 1918, the residents even put on a production of Yeats' play, The King's Threshold in the communal backyard, with the orchestra playing through the window of one of the kitchens. Three hundred audience members attended, and the proceeds were donated to the Goodhue Home Fund of The Evening Post. Among Patchin Place's literary residents were poet E. E. Cmmings, his wife and fellow poet Marion Morehouse, and author Djuna Barnes, the couple's reclusive friend and next-door neighbor at #5 Patchin Place from 1940 on.A Brief Biography of E. E.Cummingss, 1894-1962 

Edward Estlin Cummings began writing poetry as a child, and produced a poem a day from age eight to age twenty-two. He attended Harvard University, where he transitioned from traditional poetic forms into the dynamic, avant-garde style he is known for: unconventional use of punctuation, syntax, and semantics in precise, spare poems. Some of his early poems were included in the Harvard Poetry Society's Eight Harvard Poets collection. The year after his graduation from Harvard, in April of 1917, Cummings volunteered in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Service in France after the outbreak of the First World War in Europe, though the United States was not yet involved and Cummings considered himself a pacifist. On the French-German border, he befriended William Slater Brown, with whom he was arrested in September of 1917 on suspicion of treason. The two Americans were sent to an internment camp in Normandy; Cummings' father managed to secure his son's release in December, but Brown remained imprisoned until April 1918. The U.S. entered the war in July, and Cummings was drafted into the U.S. Army, training for six months in Massachusetts until relased in January of the following year. Cummings' daughter, Nancy, was born that December; Nancy's mother was Elaine Thayer, whose husband, Schofield, was a friend of Cummings and approved of his wife's relationship with him. Elaine divorced Schofield in 1924 to marry Cummings, who moved into 4 Patchin Place in September and adopted his daughter, Nancy Thayer. Not until 1948 did Nancy find out that her adoptive father was also her biological father. Only a year after Elaine and Cummings married, Elaine divorced her second husband upon meeting another man. In 1932, Cummings met Marion Morehouse, a Broadway actress and one of the most well-known fashion models of the late 1920s-early 1930s. Though Morehouse's obituary lists her as the "widow" of e. e. cummings, the two never actually married. Morehouse was born in 1903 in South Bend, Indiana, and kept many details of her life shrouded in mystery, even to e. e. cummings, her companion for thirty years.



Meanwhile, e. e. cummings had published his first book, The Enormous Room, in 1922. It was a fictional account of his imprisonment in France, and gained critical acclaim for its juxtapositon of a grim topic with a cheerful tone and emphasis on personal growth. In 1923, Cummings' first collection of poems, Tulips and Chimneys, was published, though with many poems cut and without Cummings' preferred form of the title (Tulips &amp; Chimneys). The deleted poems were published two years later, in a volume entitled &amp;. The same year, XLI Poems was published, and Cummings received Dial magazine's annual $2,000 award. His next collection, Is 5, was released the following year with an introduction explaining his approach to writing. With his own style established and critical acclaim for both the wonderment and the satire expressed in his works, e. e. cummings became one of the most popular poets of his time. He also wrote a play entitled Him (a series of skits which jumped from tragedy to grotesque comedy, influenced by the burlesque and the circus) and a travel diary entitled Eimi, which drew from Cummings' 1931 trip to the Soviet Union. The Soviet regime's strict regimentation and duhumanizing policies were the antithesis of Cummings' deep value of the individual, and Eimi (Greek for "I am") unabashedly attacked the dictatorship of Stalin. After Eimi was published in 1933, Cummings struggled to release his poetry through the left-wing publishers of the time, and self-published several volumes in the late 1930s. Harvard University invited e. e. cummings to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures in poetry in 1952; these were later published as i: six nonlectures. The "nonlectures" consisted of personal accounts of Cummings' life and writing. Cummings died in 1962.



Historic Marker Inscriptions:&nbsp;

4 Patchin Place

One-time home of “Poet and Painter” e.e. cummings (d. 1962) and his wife, model and photographer Marion Morehouse (d.1969)

“—do lovers love? why then to heaven with hell. Whatever sages say and fools, all’s well”

Placed here by the e.e. cummings Society and the City of New York Landmarks Preservation Commission.



e.e. cummings

1894-1962

The poet and painter, who made art of commas and parentheses, lived here for the last forty years of his life. He characterized himself as “an author of pictures, a draughtsman of words.” New York Landmark Preservation Foundation.

The three-story houses of Patchin Place were constructed in the 1850s as living quarters for Basque waiters who worked nearby at the Brevoort Hotel. In the early twentieth century, electricity and running water were installed, and Patchin Place began to attract a new type of resident: actors, artists, and writers. On July 1, 1918, the residents even put on a production of Yeats' play, The King's Threshold in the communal backyard, with the orchestra playing through the window of one of the kitchens. Three hundred audience members attended, and the proceeds were donated to the Goodhue Home Fund of The Evening Post. Among Patchin Place's literary residents were poet Edward Estlin Cummings, his wife, and fellow poet Marion Morehouse, and author Djuna Barnes, the couple's reclusive friend and next-door neighbor at #5 Patchin Place from 1940 on.

4 Patchin Place, E.E. Cummings Historical Marker

For a time in the early 1940s, the home at 130 West 10th Street was one of the most important places in the emerging folk music scene. The home was known as the Almanac House, so named because various members of the Almanac Singers lived in or passed through the house. The Almanac Singers consisted of Woody Guthrie, Millard Lampell, Pete Seeger, Bess Lomax, Lee Hays, Gordon Friesen, Agnes Cunningham, as well as others. Guthrie, Seeger, and Lampell lived in the home, while other members of the collective spent varying degrees of time there. There were several Almanac Houses, as the group moved somewhat regularly. All the homes were in the Village, but the one on West 10th Street appears to have been the singers’ home for the longest period of time, with the Almanacs living there for most of 1941. Seeger and Millard lived on the third floor, Guthrie on the second, and the first floor was used as communal space. Because the Almanacs were virtually always behind on rent, they put on concerts, called hootenannies, in the building’s basement. They charged .35 cents a person, and the basement was often completely filled with fans of the Almanacs as well as other performers. The Village, at that time, was home to a number of folk singers and musicians and would play a significant part in the early revival of folk music. Given the left-leaning politics of the Almanacs, many of their guests and many of the attendees of the hootenannies were similarly political, including some who were openly members of the Communist party. The singers often performed for labor unions or left-wing organizations, and some of their songs were strongly critical of America’s becoming involved in World War II, although their stance on the war changed after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. It was during his time at the Almanac House that Guthrie wrote his autobiographical novel Bound for Glory. His former housemates recalled that Guthrie’s time at the house was extremely prolific, with the singer spending hours in front of a typewriter, often with a stack of typewritten pages on the floor at the end of each day. In recent years, the former home of Guthrie and his fellow Almanac Singers has been converted into modern rental units.

Folk singer Woody Guthrie lived in various places in New York City, most notably the house on West 10th Street, known as the Almanac House. The name comes from the fact that Guthrie lived in the home with the Almanac Singers, a loose musical collective of which he was a part. Other members of the collective lived in the home at different points and for varied lengths of time. Among those who lived in the building were Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Butch Hawes, and Bess Lomax. The group often gave weekend concerts, which they called hootenannies, in the basement of the building.

Almanac House (former home of Woody Guthrie)

The building that would eventually become Julius’ Bar was constructed in 1826 in the Greenwich Village Neighborhood. In 1840, the building began to see use as a grocery store, and it remained as such until it was converted into Julius’ Bar in 1864. In the 1920s, the bar saw a great deal of activity serving as a speakeasy during the era of Prohibition. During these "dry" years, the bar was quite popular among jazz musicians and literary artists. By flouting the law, Julius’ Bar survived the Prohibition era and the establishment prospered as a local bar that reflected the people of the neighborhood. As a result, records indicate that by the 1950s, some of the gay men who had moved to Greenwich Village patronized the bar. The bar’s management responded in a variety of ways designed to discourage these customers owing to a city law that barred establishments from serving gay men. After the police raided the bar several times and fearing for the loss of their liquor license, bartenders would deny service to anyone they knew was homosexual and some would even harass gay customers.

On April 21st of 1966, several members of the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest gay rights activist groups, decided to try to test the New York City law against serving gay patrons. After notifying several reporters, members of the Mattachine Society staged what they called a “Sip-In” to test the law. The first bar owner where the activists hope to stop closed the bar while the next two establishments willingly served the men. When the activists arrived at Julius’ Bar they were denied service. The refusal was documented and used as evidence in court, and the ensuing trial led to a removal of the law against serving homosexuals.&nbsp;According to Dick Leitsch, who was one of the four men who participated in the protest, the bartender initially set out four glasses for the men. At that point,&nbsp;Leitsch recalls that the four men went out of their way to state that they were homosexual. At that point, the bartender put his hands on top of one of the four glasses and said that he could not serve the men. This dramatic refusal was photographed and reflected the fact that the bar was raided by police for serving gay men just ten days prior. A failure to refuse service with witnesses and photographers would have likely resulted in the loss of the bar's license.&nbsp;The protest was scheduled to happen at another bar, but the owner had heard about the plan in advance and closed his establishment to avoid a potential confrontation. In response, the four men chose Julius' specifically because of the recent raid. The bartender likely understood that his denial of service would provide a test case while also saving his establishment's license. According to Leitsch, the photograph of the bartender placing his hand over one of the men's glasses helped their case.&nbsp;Julius’ and several other bars in the Greenwich Village tacitly supported the victory of the Mattachine Society and the removal of the local ordinance that required the State Liquor Authority to revoke licenses of bars that openly served homosexuals. From 1966 on, Julius' was known as a gay bar.&nbsp;The significance of the protest, according to Leitsch, was that it served as a catalyst for further action. "Until this time gay people had never really fought back," Leitsch explained. "We just sort of take in everything passively, didn't do anything about it. And this time we did it, and we won."&nbsp; Three years later, gay patrons at the Stonewall Inn launched an open rebellion against the continuation of police raids despite the end of the law that prohibited service to homosexuals. The Stonewall Rebellion became a crucial moment in the gay rights movement, but that protest could only happen after the end of the discriminatory law. On April 20th of 2016, Julius’ was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Julius' is located in a building that was constructed in 1826 and has been home to a bar since the Civil War. Today, that building is home to the city's oldest continuously-operating gay bar. While Julius' is now a center of the local LGBTQIA community, it was not until 1966 that this bar would openly serve gay patrons. On April 21st of that year, four gay rights activists challenged the city law that required establishments to deny service to homosexuals. Taking inspiration from the sit-ins and other tactics used by civil rights activists, these members of the Mattachine Society, a small national organization that was influential in the early gay rights movement, decided to challenge the city law. The activists chose this bar because it had long served local gay patrons and was known as a safe place, but following several police raids and fearing for the loss of their license, the owners had been less welcoming. The owners were sympathetic but having been raided and harassed by the police for serving gay men just ten days prior. As a result, they denied service to the four men. This provided a test case for attorneys working with the Mattachine Society who successfully challenged and ended the New York City law. In April of 2016, Julius added to the National Register of Historic Places in recognition for the important role it played in ending New York City's discriminatory law. 

Julius' in Greenwich Village 

Max Gordon, a Lithuanian immigrant, opened the first Village Vanguard in 1934 on Greenwich Avenue. The following year, he opened a new Village Vanguard at its current location, in a small, triangle-shaped basement on Seventh Avenue South. In the near century since its opening, the legendary club remains largely as it was in 1935. Gordon appreciated talent in many forms, and the club was founded with the intention of hosting poetry readings and folk music. In the 1940s, however, the club began to host primarily jazz acts and within a few years it developed a reputation largely as a jazz venue. Gordon was a kind and welcoming presence and genuinely supported the young musicians who performed at the club. Over the years, a number of aspiring musicians got their start at the Village Vanguard, including Harry Belafonte and Judy Holliday. As the popularity of jazz grew, so did the popularity of the club. By mid-century, the Village Vanguard was attracting some of the biggest names in the business. Among the giants who have performed there: Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, and Sonny Rollins. But the Village Vanguard isn't only a venue for performances; many of the greats of the genre have recorded there as well. The first of these was Sonny Rollins's "A Night at the Village Vanguard," recorded in 1957 and now regarded as one of the classic jazz recordings. Over the course of week in 1961, John Coltrane recorded "Live at the Village Vanguard," another hallowed addition to the jazz canon. Max Gordon, who was in the audience virtually every night the club was open, died in 1989. His widow, Lorraine, closed the cl/ub for exactly one night before reopening and carrying on with business. Her own eye for talent was as sharp as her husband's and she continued operating the club until her death in 2018. The Gordons' daughter, Deborah, now oversees the legendary venue, which remains largely unchanged from the time her father opened it in 1935.

Believed to be the oldest continuously operating jazz club in the world, the Village Vanguard debuted in 1935. Since that time, the club has hosted some of the biggest names in jazz, blues, folk, and even occasional comedy acts. Seating just 132 patrons, the club is famous for its intimacy and its acoustics. The club's original owner was Max Gordon and when he died, his wife, Lorraine, took over the club's operation. Both Gordons are now deceased, and their daughter, Deborah.

The Village Vanguard 

The White House Tavern, built and designed in 1880, is the&nbsp;2nd oldest continuously run tavern in New York City. It&nbsp;was originally ordained as a spot for local longshoremen until it gained popularity amongst the Beat Generation of&nbsp;authors and other artists&nbsp;in the 1950s.&nbsp; Common visitors to the tavern were&nbsp;James Baldwin,&nbsp;Bob Dylan, Mary Travers,&nbsp;Norman Mailer, John Ashbery, Anais Nin,&nbsp;Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Jim Morrison. In fact, it became known as&nbsp;a “nostalgic high temple of the Alcoholic Artist” by&nbsp;New York&nbsp;magazine, due to&nbsp;the common ruckus stirred among its drunken guests. One of the White Horse's&nbsp;bathroom stalls even has the words "Go home Jack!" scrawled onto it, which was&nbsp;supposedly put there&nbsp;by a customer frustrated by Jack Kerouc's belligerent behavior. Perhaps the most notable visitor of all, however,&nbsp;was the&nbsp;Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. After being introduced to the bar by fellow poet Ruthven Todd in 1950, Thomas could be regularly found at the bar telling stories of his beloved Wales,&nbsp;"[reciting] from his favorite poets, savagely [satirizing] literary critics, [bursting] into musical hall ditties... and [answering] questions with self-deflating aphorisms, deadpan wit, and ebullient laughter." Unfortunately, though, the tavern would beThomas' last "watering hole"&nbsp;before his death. On&nbsp;November 3, 1953, the poet drank eighteen shots of whiskey, and, allegedly, stumbled out into the street right afterwards. He was then taken back to the Chelsea Hotel,&nbsp;where he was staying, and died at&nbsp;New York’s St. Vincent Hospital&nbsp;a few days later due to "complications from pneumonia and other ailments."&nbsp; The memory of Thomas is still kept alive at the tavern today, however, for, alongside the&nbsp;namesake white horse pictures and figurines,&nbsp;memorabilia in his honor can be found. Also, on the anniversary of his death, the White Horse serves the last meal he ate there before he died.&nbsp;

Dubbed the "Nostalgic Temple of The Alcohol Artist" by NY Magazine, the White House Tavern is best known for the night of November 3, 1953 when Welsh poet Dylan Thomas downed 18 shots of whiskey which led to his demise later the next morning. A common hangout spot for literary figureheads in the 1950s, in addition to Thomas, included regulars such as James Baldwin, Anais Nin, Norman Mailer, John Ashbery, Frank O'hara, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Travers, Jack Kerouc, Bob Dylan, and Jim Morrison. Though not quite as popular today, the spot remains an attraction to those who know its origins, and those who do not quickly learn of it upon entering, as portraits of Thomas adorn the walls. 

White Horse Tavern

New York at midcentury was the thriving financial and business capital of the world. Major construction projects dotted the city. But it was also a time when, like many American cities, swaths of its boroughs were wiped away, demolished in the name of urban renewal. New York's urban renewal was overseen by Robert Moses, whose numerous titles gave him a remarkable degree of authority and influence over the city. It was Moses who was responsible for much of the midcentury bridge construction in the city as well as several of its expressways. By the late 1950s and 1960s, however, there was a small but growing chorus of opposition to Moses and urban renewal. There was a growing awareness that urban renewal most often meant the destruction of working class, African American or Hispanic neighborhoods. And, following the demolition of the grand Penn Station in 1963, there was increasingly a sense in some corners of the city that new is not always inherently better than old. Though Moses was responsible for some of the biggest civic undertakings, he met his match in Jane Jacobs. When Moses proposed an expressway (the Lower Manhattan Expressway, or LOMEX) that would cut straight across Lower Manhattan and would involve levelling parts of Greenwich Village, Jacobs's home. Like several of Moses's projects, the plan would involve relocating residents and building large housing project towers for the poor who would be displaced. A self-taught journalist, Jacobs rapidly became an activist, organizing other Greenwich residents, writing letters, and organizing protests. Jacobs was already well-known for her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which made a forceful case against urban renewal and maintained that the urban neighborhoods that Moses and other saw as blighted were actually vibrant communities that should be saved. Jacobs ultimately triumphed over Moses. In 1969, New York Mayor John Lindsey withdrew his support for the proposed expressway, a move which effectively ended Moses's reign over the city. The tragedy of Penn Station's demolition and the near-tragedy of an expressway's construction through Greenwich Village helped to galvanize a movement in the city for historic preservation. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was formed in 1965, largely because of the collective remorse following Penn Station's destruction, and not long after Jacobs's campaign against Moses, much of the West Village was landmarked as the Greenwich Village Historic District. Because of the efforts of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, much of the remainder of the Village was added to the district in 2006 and 2010. In 1968, Jacobs and her husband moved to Toronto so that their sons would be kept out of the Vietnam War. In Toronto, Jacobs continued her work in saving historic communities from demolition in the name of urban renewal. She died in 2006.

In 1950, Jane Jacobs, her husband, and children moved into a modest rowhouse on Hudson Street. It was from this ordinary home that Jacobs wrote her masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The work was a response to a wave of urban renewal in the city which culminated in the destruction of Penn Station and threatened to level much of her colorful Greenwich Village neighborhood. In the book, Jacobs made a forceful case for maintaining unique urban neighborhoods with walkable streets. Though Jacobs eventually moved to Toronto and lived there for many years, she is still intimately associated with the Village, and part of the street in front of her former home was renamed "Jane Jacobs Way."

Former Residence of Jane Jacobs 

The Snake Pit, a bar that catered to gay patrons located in a basement space in Greenwich Village, was unique. At a time when many gay bars were operated with the support of the Mafia, the Snake Pit was a gay-run establishment and its patrons were quick to say it was legally run, although it did operate after hours. NYPD's longstanding practice of raiding gay bars declined following the Stonewall riots, but they did not end. In fact, the raids continued into the 1970s and even the 1980s. Many of the raids were led by the same officer, Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, the same officer who led the raid at the Stonewall. Raids on Mafia-run bars like the Stonewall were unusual because leaders in these organized crime syndicates had formidable allies and were known to bribe police officers. Bars that catered to the gay community and weren't run by the Mafia were far easier and more frequent targets of police raids. In many cases, police often uses a check on liquor licenses as a pretext for the raid and then arrested patrons once inside the bar. In March of 1970, just nine months after the Stonewall raid, Pine led officers in a raid on the Snake Pit. Pine didn't want a repeat of the uprising of the previous year, so his officers took a drastic step: all 167 men in the bar were arrested. The patrons were taken to the 6th precinct, which at the time was just a block and a half away. Inside the precinct, one of the arrested men, a 23-year old Argentinian named Diego Vinales, panicked at the thought of being deported and jumped out of a second floor window. He landed on an iron fence and was impaled on 14-inch spikes, which tore through his legs and pelvis. Vinales would survive his injuries after spending three months in the hospital. However, in the immediate aftermath of the raid, rumors spread that Vinales was dead. The response to the raid and to the rumors regarding Vinales was quick. Both the Gay Activists Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front led a protest the following afternoon that involved roughly 500 people who marched from Christopher Park to the police station. A candlelight vigil was also held at St. Vincent's hospital, where Vinales lay seriously injured. Eventually all of the disorderly conduct charges (a common charge faced by patrons of gay bars raided by police) were dismissed, aside from Vinales's, who was charged with resisting arrest. The raid on the Snake Pit and the publicity surrounding it led to greater numbers of the city's LGBT community becoming politically active. In the aftermath of the raid, Pine was reassigned to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Years later, Pine apologized for his role in raiding gay bars. The fate of Diego Vinales, whose first visit to a gay bar in America was the night of his arrest, is unknown. He reportedly went back to Argentina, but there is no information regarding his life after leaving the United States.

Just a few blocks away from the Stonewall Inn, another bar that catered to gay patrons in Greenwich Village called the Snake Pit became the site of another police raid just in the spring of 1970. Only months after the landmark raid at the Stonewall Inn, a mass arrest of over one hundred patrons at the Snake Pit led to increased political activism of the LGBT community in Greenwich Village and beyond. 

Site of the Snake Pit & Police Raid (March 1970)

Thomas Paine was born in England in 1737. Much of his life was marked by hardship and failed business ventures, but in the early 1770s, Paine met Benjamin Franklin, who was then in London as part of his efforts to improve relations between the British and their colonies. Following an invitation by Franklin, Paine arrived in the colonies in 1774, just as the conflict between the Americans and the British was moving irrevocably toward war. In January of 1776, Paine published a 47-page pamphlet, Common Sense, which made a strong case for independence at a time when many colonists were still wavering on the issue. Common Sense made Thomas Paine famous and a beloved figure among the American colonists. But the years after the American Revolution were difficult ones for him. He moved to France and supported the French Revolution, but during the Reign of Terror, he opposed the execution of Louis XVI. It was an unpopular move and led to Paine's nearly being executed on the guillotine. He was allowed to leave the country due to the intervention of James Monroe, who was then serving the American minister to France. When he returned to the United States, Paine was something of an outcast. The Founders were divided on the issue of the French Revolution, with some alarmed by the radical turn it took. Paine's reputation never fully recovered from his support of the revolutionaries. His well-known atheism did nothing to endear him to his adopted countrymen. Paine settled in New York City in the early 1800s when he was old and in failing health. He lived in three different places in the city, including a modest rented residence at 309 Bleecker Street, which was then known as Herring Street. At the time, Greenwich was still very much a village and was very sparsely settled. Paine lived a quiet life, rarely leaving the home, although passers-by often noted seeing him at one of its windows.He died in 1809. The home where Paine spent some of the last years of his life was demolished in the 1930s and a one-story store was built at the spot. That building would also demolished and replaced with another store, which stands on the site today.

Thomas Paine was one of the most significant figures in the years leading to the American Revolution. His pamphlet, Common Sense, helped to convince colonists that the moment had come to demand independence from Great Britain. Paine's later support for the French Revolution led other Founders to distance themselves from the revolutionary author and philosopher. During the final years of his life until his death in 1809, Paine lived here in a simple wooden house in Greenwich Village. This portion of New York was sparsely inhabited at the time and the modest wooden structure was demolished in the 1930s.

Former Residence of Thomas Paine (Demolished)

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, as the country's cities underwent rapid changes brought on by industrialization and immigration, reform-minded women established settlement houses, which were created to help alleviate poverty in slum neighborhoods. In 1902, Greenwich House was founded by Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch. Like other settlement houses, Greenwich House provided a wide assortment of programs for the community that reflected the views of Simkhovitch, who envisioned the house as an integral part of the community. Greenwich House expanded quickly in the early 1900s, acquiring several other buildings in the neighborhood in the process. It established music and pottery schools, programs which are still extant and housed in historic buildings. It also provided infant and child care programs and investigated the high rates of infant mortality in the Village. In addition to pottery classes, Greenwich House offered numerous art programs, which was likely due to the influence of Gertrude Payne Whitney, who was a member of the board and later founded the Whitney Museum. Whitney was also instrumental in getting artists to paint murals in the main building's interior. Like most settlement houses, Greenwich House was staffed by social workers and middle-class reformers, all of whom were young women. Most of these women have undoubtedly been lost to history, but in 1927, Greenwich House welcomed famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart as a volunteer and resident. Earhart had already worked as a social worker in Boston, but her flying career often got in the way of her work there. After moving to Greenwich Village, she approached Greenwich House about continuing her social work there and was offered a staff position and a room. She lived in Barrow Street building until 1929, and though people in the community almost certainly knew who she was, she lived, reportedly, like a regular citizen. Greenwich House remains a vital part of the Village and still maintains many of the programs it began more than a century ago. It offers senior services, health services, and maintains a youth community center, in addition to its original offerings.

A Village institution, Greenwich House was founded in 1902 at the height of the settlement house movement. It was originally known as the Cooperative Social Settlement Society of the City of New York and remains one of the Village's most active forces for improving the lives of residents. Many people have worked for and benefitted from Greenwich House, but one of its most famous staff members was famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who worked and lived there in the late 1920s.

Greenwich House (former home of Amelia Earhart)

A native of Maine, Edna St. Vincent Millay began writing as an adolescent and after placing fourth in a poetry competition, she was awarded a scholarship that allowed her to attend Vassar College. As a student at Vassar, she continued writing poetry and developed an interest in the theater. She published her first book as a senior at Vassar and with encouragement from the college, she also wrote her first verse play, which dealt with the them of love between women. After graduating, Millay moved to Greenwich Village and lived with her sister Norma in a small attic apartment. Millay supported herself by publishing short stories and satire under the pen name Nancy Boyd. She and Norma also became active with the Provincetown Players. Millay became an integral part of the Village's bohemian set and was friends with many of the men and women who would become (or already were) the leading writers and artists in Greenwich. Among Millay's circle of friends were the poet Witter Bynner, critic Edmund Wilson, journalist Floyd Dell, and the poet Arthur Davison Ficke, with whom she had a brief but intense affair. Though Millay had rejected a number of lovers, preferring to dedicate herself solely to her craft, in 1923, she married Eugen Boissevain, the couple moved into the narrow residence at 75 1/2 Bedford Street. The row of houses from 73 to 77 had recently been redesigned as housing for a group of artists, writers, and actors. Millay and Boissevain would live in the home until 1925, when they moved to their home, Steepletop, in Austerlitz, New York. Millay was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry the same year that the couple moved into the Bedford Street apartment. Millay and Boissevain were married for 26 years, with Boissevain largely abandoning his career to manage Millay's, as well as her precarious health. He was largely responsible for arranging the readings through which Millay became famous. She lived at Steepletop until her death in 1950.

In the years between the World Wars, Greenwich Village became home to an astonishing number of writers and artists, some of whom would become luminaries in their fields. Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of the country’s most influential poets, lived in the Village and was an integral part of its cultural life. From 1923 to 1925, she lived on Barrow Street with her husband, Eugen Jan Boissevain. In addition to once being home to Millay, the home has the distinction of reportedly being one of the narrowest in the Village. 



Former Residence of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1923-1925)

In 1938, Barney Josephson, a former shoe salesman with leftist proclivities opened Café Society in the basement of 1 Sheridan Square. Built in 1834, the building was remodeled in the late 1920s and during that remodel, the basement was combined with that of the adjoining building. Josephson had traveled in Europe and was struck by the racially integrated venues he saw there. A serious jazz fan, Josephson envisioned his club as a place that would showcase the best jazz performers and would do so in an integrated, diverse environment. Often described as New York City’s first integrated club—Josephson himself described it as such—that status is disputed as there were other spaces where white and Black patrons were known to gather. What made Cafe Society unique and significant perhaps was less the issue of whether it was first but rather they fact that Black patrons were often present in large numbers and seated throughout the club. Cafe Society was known for deliberately attracting a diverse (and often politically liberal) clientele. The club was famously billed as “the wrong place for the Right people,” which was as much a jab at conservatives as it was a statement about the club’s politics. Café Society hosted some of the biggest jazz performers of the day, including Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Art Tatum, and others. Gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a regular performer. But the club’s most legendary moment came when the then-unknown Billie Holiday performed the anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit" for the first time. The song was inspired by a poem written by Jewish American high school teacher Abel Meeropol. In 1948, Josephson's brother was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities because of his support of leftist causes but refused to testify. Cafe Society was known to have hosted events with known Communists, and after his brother's trial, Josephson's business saw a pronounced decline. He was forced to close the club in 1950. After Cafe Society closed, several establishments took up residence in the building, most notably the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, which was operated there from 1978 to 1995. Founded by Charles Ludlam in 1967, the company became one of the city's most highly regarded Off-Off-Broadway theater troupes. Ludlam wrote, directed, and starred in nearly production, many of which involved drag, poltiical satire, and gender-bending roles. Following Ludlam's death of AIDS in 1987, the street in front of the building was renamed Charles Ludlam Lane.

Between 1938 and 1950, the basement of this unassuming wedge-shaped building at 1 Sheridan Square was home to Café Society, one of the few regularly and thoroughly racially-integrated clubs in New York City and the United States. In an era when social spaces like nightclubs drew the color line in both formal and informal ways, Café Society was one of the few upscale spaces where white and Black music lovers regularly gathered. Shortly after the club opened, twenty-three-year-old Billie Holiday performed “Strange Fruit” for a public audience for the first time at Cafe Society. The anti-lynching ballad would become one of the earliest and most powerful protest songs in American history. After Café Society closed in 1950, the building housed several other establishments, most notably the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, an innovative theater troupe led by Charles Ludlam.



Cafe Society (1938-1950) 

Greenwich Village has no shortage of time-honored bars, but few can claim to be as beloved as the Kettle of Fish, which is undoubtedly one of the longest-lasting watering holes in the neighborhood. The bar dates back to 1950, when it opened on MacDougal Street. At that time, it was next door to the Gaslight Café, a popular hangout for Beat writers and the bohemian denizens of the Village. Its location made the Kettle of Fish a natural place to catch spillover from the café and it became a popular gathering place for Village residents. Because the Gaslight was already a popular place for the Beat Generation, the Kettle of Fish became one as well. During its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, the bar was a regular haunt of such Beat luminaries as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac was once captured standing under the Kettle’s neon “Bar” sign in a photograph which is now an iconic image of that time and place. The sign still occupies a place in the bar’s lounge. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan was a regular at the bar. Since its time as a midcentury Beat watering hole, the Kettle of Fish has moved twice. Its current location on Christopher Street has its own literary heritage. Before 59 Christopher Street was home to the Kettle, it was the location of the Lion’s Head, which claimed Norman Mailer, Frank McCourt, and Jimmy Breslin as regulars. It is also three doors down from the Stonewall Inn, where the LGBT movement was born. Each year’s Pride parade ends at the Stonewall, which means that for one day a year, the Kettle is also essentially a gay bar, due to the spillover from its historic neighbor. The Kettle of Fish has occupied its current location since 1999. The current owner, Patrick Daley, has a long history with the bar, having worked as a bartender at the Kettle when it was still on MacDougal Street. A one-time resident of Milwaukee, Daley is a huge Green Bay Packers fan, and when he began showing Packers games in the bar, other expat Wisconsinites began gathering at the bar on game day. Nowadays, the Kettle of Fish, while still proud of its literary and cultural history, is primarily a Packers bar, although it attracts a diverse clientele.

The Kettle of Fish has been a popular, classic neighborhood bar in Greenwich Village since the 1950s. The bar was originally located on MacDougal Street, but has moved twice and now occupies a spot on Christopher Street. For much of its history, the bar was a literary haunt, and had a particular following among Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac. Nowadays, however, the bar is known as a popular spot for Green Bay Packers fans.

Kettle of Fish Bar

The
importance of this event can only be grasped if one understands what life had
been like for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the years before
it occurred. Sodomy laws were on the books in almost all states. Homosexuality
was officially listed as a mental illness by the medical establishment. It was
perfectly legal to deny a job or an apartment to someone who was (or perhaps was
only suspected of being) gay or lesbian. As members of a marginalized group, known
homosexuals were constantly vulnerable to intimidation, exploitation, and
violence. Perhaps even more troubling was the unseen damage this situation did
to people’s psyches, filling their lives with fear, anxiety and self-hatred. 

Thus at a time when it was illegal to serve alcohol to gays and being caught in drag
made one subject to immediate arrest, police raids on bars like the Stonewall Inn
were quite commonplace. However, on that night in June 1969, what began as the customary weekly&nbsp;raid on the Stonewall Inn did not go
as planned. Many patrons who were set free by the police declined to leave the
scene; many who were arrested simply
refused to cooperate.&nbsp;As the growing crowd outside the establishment, which
included passersby and even tourists, became more and more restive, the eleven
policemen on the scene quickly became overwhelmed and frightened. When a
lesbian was handcuffed after getting into a scuffle with a policeman, she yelled
to the crowd, “Why don't you guys do something?” Then, when this woman was unceremoniously
dumped into the back of a patrol wagon, the crowd exploded. By 4:00 a.m. the following
morning, after the Tactical Police Force of New York City had become involved,
the battle at the Stonewall Inn ended. Rioting continued in Greenwich Village
for the next few days. However, during those days, for the first time, gay men
and women openly expressed affection in public – kissing and&nbsp;holding hands – as
they had previously never dared to do, having lost their shame and fear of
exposure. 

The
event was transformative for attitudes both inside and outside the LGBT
community. It was only after Stonewall that the first organizations for homosexuals
that included the word “gay” in their names (Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activist
Alliance) were formed; prior to this, such organizations deliberately employed
obscure names – like The Mattachine Society and The Daughters of Bilitis – to conceal
from mainstream society the orientation of their memberships. For a short time, the police continued to target gay bars, but after a young man died by accident
in one of these raids, demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns, in which
sympathetic straight people also participated in large numbers, soon forced the
police to abandon this policy. On the first anniversary of Stonewall, gay civil
rights marches were held not only in New York, but Los Angeles and Chicago. On
the second anniversary of the event, Gay Pride marches took place in numerous
cities not only in America but Europe – a tradition that continues to this day.
Ironically, the changes that Stonewall brought about doomed the “bar culture”
of which the Stonewall Inn was a typical example, since it became increasingly
unnecessary for LGBT people to congregate in dark, secretive places to express
their sexuality. &nbsp;&nbsp;

The
Stonewall Inn was closed later in 1969. It reopened in 1990 as
"Stonewall" and returned to the original name of "The Stonewall
Inn" in 2007. In 1999, the inn was declared a National Historic Landmark
and continues to inspire Pride parades today.

Here, on June 28, 1969, hundreds of people who would now be referred to as LGBT stood up to harassment by the New York City police, rebelling against the habitual mistreatment to which they were subjected. In conscious or unconscious emulation of public confrontations with the law by civil rights and antiwar protesters of the period, the patrons of the Stonewall that night did not meekly submit to injustice, but spontaneously insisted upon their right to associate without fear of arrest. This event is often considered the single most important milestone in the gay and lesbian quest for civil equality, as it galvanized the entire movement. 


The Stonewall Inn

Commisioned in 1979 in recognition of the ten-year anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, this monument to the civil rights activists who participated in the most famous gay rights protest in American history was not actually located next to the Stonewall until 1992. Following its completion in 1980, New York politicians balked at approving the dedication of the monument in their city and the monument was instead dedicated in Madison, Wisonsin. 

Gay Liberation Monument

Alex Haley, who was indifferent as a student and had no formal training as a writer, would nonetheless go on to write two of the most influential books of the twentieth century. He began writing during his time in the Coast Guard, partly to relieve boredom. Following his retirement from the Coast Guard, Haley, his wife, and their children returned to the US and began living in New York City. There, Haley began working full-time as a free-lance writer and had numerous articles published. He also worked as a writer and senior editor at Reader's Digest. It was in his capacity as writer and editor for Reader's Digest that the collaboration between Haley and Malcolm X began. Haley suggested an article that would focus on the leader, but Malcolm X was dubious of Haley's intention and referred the matter to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. With Muhammad's approval, the article was published in 1960. Haley also conducted interview features for Playboy magazine, and after the Reader's Digest article received favorable attention, Malcolm X agreed to an interview for that publication as well. The two earlier interviews led to another collaboration between the two men. A publisher contacted Haley about producing a book on Malcolm X's life. Though both men agreed to the idea, the partnership got off to what Haley described as a "very poor start," as he found Malcolm X to be less than forthcoming, despite their earlier collaboration. The interviews were conducted in Haley's basement apartment on Grove Street, and due to Malcolm X's schedule, had to be conducted for two to three hours starting at 9 or 10PM. After long days, Malcolm X was often tired and tended to talk more propaganda than give Haley substantive autobiographical information. Gradually, however, Haley was able to develop more of a bond with Malcolm and was able to get him to answer his questions forthrightly, no matter how personal. The two men conducted roughly 50 interviews at Grove Street, covering every aspect of the civil rights leader's life, with Malcolm reviewing Haley's chapters and Haley accompanying the leader as he gave speeches. The interviews continued from 1963 until shortly before Malcolm's assassination in February of 1965 in Harlem. The result was a groundbreaking work, The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. It was an unusual premise: an autobiography told to and written by someone other than the subject, and when it was published in 1965, it was an immediate success. It was translated into several languages and sold more than 8 million copies. Haley would later go on to write Roots: The Saga of an American Family, an account of his ancestors who were sold into slavery. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an acclaimed television mini-series. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation placed a plaque at 92 Grove Street in 2019, idenitifying its significance as the site of the interviews between Malcolm X and Haley.

In the early 1960s, author Alex Haley rented a basement apartment at 92 Grove Street. Haley was living here from 1963 to 1965 when he interviewed Malcolm X and these interviews would form the basis of Haley's first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The book was published following the civil rights leader's assassination in 1965. In 2019, Village Preservation placed a plaque on the building's exterior which identifies its historical significance.

Former Writing Studio of Alex Haley

Frances Perkins was born in Boston in 1880. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College and moved to Chicago where she volunteered in settlement houses and worked as a teacher. Within a few years, however, she moved to Manhattan to attend graduate school at Columbia University. She was nearly thirty, but the time that she spent immersed in the heady intellectual climate of Greenwich Village was formative. In 1911, while living in the Village, Perkins witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which occurred just around the corner from Washington Square Park. One of the worst workplace disasters in the city’s history, the fire resulted in the deaths of 146 young women, many of whom jumped to their deaths from the eighth and ninths floors of the building. Perkins, who was in the park at the time of the fire, recalled the impact of seeing the jumping women and would later say that “the New Deal was born that day.” Perkins was already politically active and worked for the Consumer’s League when she witnessed the Triangle fire, but that experience led her to develop even more connections in city politics and to work for legislation that would make factories safer for workers. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt recommended her for the position of Executive Secretary for the Committee on Safety for the city. The following year, Perkins married Paul Wilson and moved out of the Waverly Place apartment and moved to Washington Place. The marriage suffered under the weight of Wilson’s mental illness and the increasing demands of his care, and within a few years, the family moved to a smaller apartment as Wilson’s care became increasingly expensive. Perkins is, of course, most well-known for serving as Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt. She was the first woman to be named to a presidential cabinet and was one of only two people to serve under Roosevelt for the duration of his presidency. Her early experiences as a settlement house volunteer as well as her time in Greenwich Village continued to influence her work as Labor Secretary. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Social Security Act, and other significant pieces of New Deal legislation.

A native of Boston, Frances Perkins moved to Manhattan in 1909. By this point, she had already graduated college and worked as a teacher and in settlement houses. She came to New York to pursue a master’s degree at Columbia. The future Secretary of Labor would spend several years in Greenwich Village, making important connections and being influenced by the thinkers and writers who made it their home. 

Former Home of Frances Perkins

In the early 1800s, the population of Greenwich Village was increasing, and most of the area's residents were the working poor. The crowded neighborhoods and unsanitary conditions led to the spread of diseases, and in 1827, residents and local doctors founded a free medical clinic. It initially operated out of temporary facilities, but in 1831, a permanent location--the building that still occupies the intersection of Grove, Christopher, and Waverly Place--was built. The building was called the Northern Dispensary because it occupied what was then the northernmost reach of the city. As the number of residents in Greenwich Village increased, so did the number of patients who were treated at the clinic. (One of them, reportedly, was Edgar Allan Poe, who was treated for a cold.) By the mid-1800s, the clinic was treated enough patients each year that a third floor was added to the original two-story structure. A subtle change in the color of the bricks between the second and third floors can still be seen on the building's facade. By the 1960s, the clinic was being used primarily for dental care. But in 1986, the clinic refused dental care to writer George Whitmore, who had AIDS. At the time, New York City could have arguably been described as the country's epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, and many of the city's cases were centered in Greenwich Village. Whitmore sued the clinic, which was ultimately fined by the city's Human Rights Commission. In 1989, the clinic announced that it was closing because of financial pressures. The following year, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York purchased the building with plans to convert it into a 15-person nursing home for homeless AIDS patients. Suprisingly, given the high rates of infection in the Village, a number of residents banded together to oppose the move. The plan was eventually abandoned and the Archdiocese sold the property to William Gottleib, a reclusive Manhattan investor notorious for buying properties and doing nothing with them. Gottleib died a year after buying the building, which has sat vacant since 1998. As recently as 2017, the property is still owned by the Gottleib estate, and it is unclear what will become of the building. The restrictive deed, which requires that it only be used to aid the poor, limits the possibilities for the historic property.

Occupying a corner lot at the intersection of Grove and Christopher Streets and Waverly Place, the Northern Dispensary was built in 1831. The building's deed stipulated that it be used only to house and aid the area's indigent and it originally housed the Greenwich Village Free Medical Clinic. By the mid-1800s, the clinic was treating enough patients that a third floor was added. The Northern Dispensary continued operating until the late twentieth century. The clinic closed in the 1980s after a lawsuit stemming from the clinic's refusal to treat a man who suffered from AIDS. The building has sat vacant for roughly two decades.


History of Greenwich Village Walking Tour

Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop (1967-2009)

Introduction

Images