Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village has many landmarks of music history. The jazz clubs in the area saw the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The bars and clubs that line Bleecker Street and the surrounding area helped popularize folk music in the 1960s. And of course there is that famous little recording studio just south of Jefferson Market on Eighth Street where some of the most important music of the past forty years was recorded. Out of all the Village music landmarks though there is one that absolutely dwarfs them all. In 1941 guitar manufacturer Epiphone was located at 144 West 14th Street and it was there that one Lester William Polsfuss assembled the first solid body electric guitar. Polsfuss was his birth name. His stage name was Les Paul. He went on to pioneer many technologies that influenced the recording industry but it was the solid body electric guitar that really changed the sound of music forever.

Les Paul died today at the age of 94. He certainly saw a lot of changes in his lifetime, especially over the past decade, as sequences of 0’s and 1’s have forever altered the music industry. Yet despite this move from analog to digital the innovations of Les Paul can still be heard and historic places can still be visited right here in Greenwich Village.

People are surprised that the Hudson Park Library is not landmarked nor is it in a historic district.

The line of townhouses just across the street are most definitely landmarked. Afterall, one of New York's most famous mayors lived there.

But, no, Hudson Park has not been so designated.

True, the building is 103 years old and was designed by Carrere and Hastings, the architects of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (aka the library with the Lions out front). It is a Carnegie Library, one of dozens in the city, so called because it was funded by Andrew Carnegie. Shouldn't it be landmarked? Or, at least, in a historic district?

Well, now, progress is being made in designating Hudson Park's neighborhood a historic district -- The South Village Historic District. Check out this map and send in your comments. Do you ever use "South Village" as a name for this neighborhood? What do you call it? I've heard West Soho.

View South Village Historic District in a larger map
(Personally, I say that Hudson Park is in the Village or the West Village but this historic district goes well south of the West Village.)

What do William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson and Kahlil Gibran have in common?

The all lived in the Village!

They may be the native sons of Mississippi, Ohio and Lebanon respectively, but for a time each of them called a piece of rarified Manhattan real estate south of 14th and north of Canal Street home.
In this blog I'll visit some of the places where Village writers hung their hats and maybe throw in some comments about their work and their lives (Of course, I'll sprinkle in some library stuff, too).
Also, more importantly, I invite you to comment on Village writers and add your own stories, observations and self promotions if you're a writer living in the Village or who has lived in the Village. Faulkner has made my list of Village writers for having lived here a couple of months before taking a postmaster gig back home in Mississippi, so if you've lived in the Village at all, it counts. You're a Village writer!
It's the desire to live here and having made that desire a reality that counts.
But really, what was Faulkner thinking when he moved here? What would have happened if he had settled in? The obstacles facing a poor family trying to bury the matriarch in Green-Wood Cemetery would be greater than those the Bundren family faced taking Addie to Jefferson. How would he have made that play? For literature's sake, it's probably best that we can only conjecture.

The Jefferson Market Branch of The New York Public Library has been meeting the informational needs of the people of Greenwich Village for over forty years. But one hundred years before the library, people in the neighborhood got their information from the Old Grapevine Tavern.

The three story clapboard roadhouse was built in the 18th century and was located on the southeast corner of 11th Street and 6th Avenue. Originally a private home, it eventually became a saloon know as The Hawthorne. The 11th Street side of the building was covered in a gnarled old grapevine and by the early 1800s the establishment was simply known as the Old Grapevine. It quickly became a favorite destination for those wanting to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city (lower Manhattan) and head north towards into the open country (11th Street).  read more »

Today marks the 86th anniversary of the birth of photographer Diane Arbus.

Diane Nemerov was born in New York City on March 14, 1923. In 1941, at the age of 18 she married Allan Arbus who worked in the advertising department of her family’s store. She received a Graflex 6x9 camera the same year. They started working in fashion, with Allan at the camera and Diane as stylist and art director.

She began to work independently in 1957 and after separating from her husband in 1959 (he later went on to become an actor) she moved to a rear carriage house at 131 1/2 Charles Street where she lived for nine years. During those productive years she received two Guggenheim Fellowships (in 1963 and 1966) and had her first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (1964). In 1968 she moved from Greenwich Village to East Village’s historic Renwick Triangle at 120 East 10th Street. In 1970 Diane Arbus moved to the Westbeth Artists Housing in the West Village where she lived until July 26, 1971.

Check the Leo Catalog for more information on Diane Arbus. I recommend the book Untitled, the biography by Patricia Bosworth, and the highly fictionalized feature film Fur.

The Bosworth biography lists Arbus’s Greenwich Village address as 121 1/2 Charles Street, which interestingly enough is just about the location of another village landmark, Margaret Wise Brown’s relocated house. Other sources including the May 2, 2006 Greenwich Village Historical District Extension Designation Report and the address book notes associated with the discovery of her Hubert’s Museum photographs list her address as 131 1/2 Charles Street.

On a side note: architect Stanford White grew up in 118 East 10th Street, also part of the Renwick Triangle. White was murdered by Harry Thaw in 1906 and the murder trial was held at the Jefferson Market Courthouse.

This time next year, on October 16, 2009, the Spike Jonze film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to open. The film, shot with real actors and a combination of live-action puppetry and CGI, was originally scheduled to be in theaters now. I’ve read that Warner Brothers apparently was not happy with the finished product and test screening audiences felt it was too scary for children. I’m not sure Jonze necessarily set out to make a children’s film.

My first thought when I heard that someone was attempting a live-action CGI puppet film adaptation of the children’s classic was “good luck”. I then made a quick mental list of directors who could possibly pull it off. Michel Gondry was on the short list, as was Spike Jonze. It is interesting that both of these directors got their start in music, directing some of the most memorable music videos ever made. Their feature films haven’t been too bad either. With the artistic vision of Spike Jonze and the help of the capable Dave Eggers on the screenplay, Where the Wild Things Are promises to be one of the most original offerings of 2009.

Maurice Sendak created Where the Wild Things Are when he was living just east of Jefferson Market Library in a basement apartment at 29 West 9th Street, adding another literary landmark for you to check out next time you are in the neighborhood.

4 patchin place, a few steps from the jefferson market library just off 10th street, is the former residence of poet e.e. cummings (october 14, 1894 – september 3, 1962), who played a role in saving the jefferson market courthouse building.

the jefferson market courthouse closed in 1945 and after remaining vacant for many years was slated for demolition. In the late 1950s historic preservationist margot gayle enlisted the help of jefferson market neighbors including longtime village reseident e.e cummings to rally behind the idea of saving the former courthouse building. the jefferson market branch library opened to the public on november 27, 1967 and was declared a national historic landmark in 1977.

margot gayle died on september 28, 2008. last year the jefferson market library celebrated its 40th anniversary with a party attended by gayle who, at 100 years of age, was the guest of honor.

today is the 114th anniversary of the birth of e.e. cummings.

I am by no means an expert when it comes to children’s literature. I save that for the wonderful children’s librarians of The New York Public Library. In a readers advisory bind I can recommend some of the current series that the kids are reading and those classic children’s books that I’m particularly fond of now: Where the Wild Things Are, the Mo Willems Pigeon books, anything by David Wiesner, and Goodnight Moon.

Published in 1947, Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon has certainly had a lasting appeal. Maybe it’s in the simple poetry of the book. Maybe it’s in the story itself: the prolonging of the act of saying goodnight, something that everyone can relate to. Maybe it’s because the story is easily adaptable into a ritual that parent and child can continue after reading the book. Maybe it is because the main character is a rabbit.

I don’t have any real recollections of ever reading Goodnight Moon as a child. When I think of that children’s classic the first thing that comes to mind is the episode of The Simpsons where Christopher Walken reads the book to a group of terrified children at a book fair. “Please, children, scootch closer. Don't make me tell you again about the scootching.”

Another thing that comes to mind is the interesting history behind a charming little house near the Jefferson Market Library. This 18th century farmhouse was the residence and writing studio of Margaret Wise Brown in the 1940s. At the time the house was located at 71st Street and York Avenue. It was there that Brown wrote many of her classics, including Goodnight Moon. Illustrator Garth Williams even depicted the house in Brown’s Little Golden Book, Mister Dog. The house later faced demolition and on March 5, 1967 it was moved from the Upper East Side to its present location at 121 Charles Street. Complete with a beautiful yard and a cobblestone driveway, it is a truly magical and unique literary landmark unlike any other residence in New York City. Take a look next time you’re in the area, then stop by Jefferson Market and read Goodnight Moon. Personally, I can never read that story again without hearing Christopher Walken’s voice in my head: “Goodnight room. Goodnight Moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon."