From The Greenwich Village Collection:
The Picture Book of Greenwich Village, 1985
By Corinne Neary, Senior Librarian
As the regular visitor to the Jefferson Market Library, or the regular reader of the Village View will know, nestled in the library basement is our Greenwich Village collection. This collection is full of books in old library bindings and neighborhood nostalgia, among lots of information about the city at large. Fitting the eccentric mood of the Village at the time is Bruce Gaylord’s The Picture Book of Greenwich Village.
Full of neighborhood history (the Jefferson Market building is likened to the centerpiece on a wedding cake), descriptions of Christopher Street Liberation Day, children’s street games, park life, street festivals, restaurants, gay bars, artists, street people, and more, the book also includes six pages of “major authors from 1800-1970” who called the Village home, and the addresses at which they lived. Here are just a few of those names and places.
Edward Albee… 50 West 10th Street, 238 West 4th Street
Louisa May Alcott… 130 MacDougal Street
Sherwood Anderson… 54 Washington Place, 12 St. Lukes Place
James Baldwin… 82 Washington Place
Djuna Barnes… 5 Patchin Place
William Burroughs… San Remo Bar
Willa Cather… 82 Washington Place, 5 Bank Street
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) … 4 West 10th Street, 21 5th Avenue
E.E. Cummings… 4 Patchin Place, 21 East 15th Street, 11 Christopher Street, 9 West 14th Street
T.S. Eliot… 4 Patchin Place
Ralph Waldo Emerson…Pfaff’s Tavern
Robert Frost… Seven Arts
Henry James… 21 Washington Place, 11 Fifth Avenue, 57 West 14th Street, 27 Waverly Place
Sinclair Lewis…17 West 10th Street, 137 MacDougal Street
Norman Mailer… White Horse Tavern
Herman Melville… 33 Bleecker Street
Anais Nin… 215 West 13th Street
Edgar Allen Poe… 18 and 85 Amity Place, 113½ Carmine Street
Ezra Pound… 4 Patchin Place
Carl Sandburg… 91 Greenwich Avenue
Sara Teasdale… 1 5th Avenue
Gore Vidal… 49 Grove Street
Nathaniel West… Brevosort Hotel
Walt Whitman…Pfaff’s Tavern
Richard Wright… 82 Washington Place
The quote with which Bruce Gaylord ends his book, from the great Lucille Ball: “The Village is the greatest place in the world.” (May 29, 1946, at a gala premiere at the old Loewe’s Theatre on Seventh and Greenwich Avenues. )
