Literary New York

As you may be aware, New York City historically has been a favored gathering spot for writers. In the past cheap rents and a sense of community and experimentation not found elsewhere were the major drawing points. These days it's more likely the artistic legacy. Certainly not the cheap rents. While many locations of literary resonance have been wrecking balled out of existence in the name of real estate chicanery, a fair number still remain. While visiting these places are not likely to make you a better writer, becoming more attuned to your literary heritage could do wonders for your sense of perspective.




The epicenter of wit during the Jazz Age was certainly the Algonquin Round Table located in the dining room of the Algonquin Hotel at 59 W 44th Street. Around this table members of New York's intelligensia would gather to trade barbs and appetizers. Any given afternoon one might encounter Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, George S Kaufman, Harold Ross, Harpo Marx, Tallulah Bankhead, and Edna Ferber. Of the Vicious Circle, as they were known, Groucho Marx once remarked, "the price of admission is a serpent's tongue and a half-concealed stiletto." Dorothy Parker herself later dismissed the whole thing as "just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were." But they were clever jokes.




Jack Kerouac lived at 454 W. 20th Street in Chelsea in 1951, where he churned out the draft for his novel On the Road on a scroll of teletype paper in three furious substance-assisted weeks. Anticipating the word processor by several decades, Kerouac realized that having to pause to change paper sidelined his train of thought, so he hit upon this method of writing unhindered. The scroll itself has become nearly as legendary as the book, eventually being published in its original unedited form and sent on a tour of the country, including a stop at the New York Public Library in 2007.






No reputable summary of literature in New York is complete without the inclusion of the Hotel Chelsea at 222 W 23rd Street. If you were to make a drinking game out of naming the significant twentieth century artists who did not at some point stay here, you'd be stone sober by the end of the game. Over the years the Chelsea's guestbooks have been signed by Thomas Wolfe, O'Henry, Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas, Arthur C Clarke, Brendan Behan, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Quentin Crisp among many others. And that's not even getting into the musicians and artists.


"I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record." So uttered Dylan Thomas at the White Horse Tavern in 1953 shortly before keeling over. A few days later he was dead. Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Farina, Jane Jacobs, Norman Mailer, and James Baldwin were all known to carouse at this former longshoremen's bar in the loins of Greenwich Village.


Edgar Allan Poe lived at 85 West Third Street in the Village while writing "The Cask of Amontillado." The house has since been devoured by NYU, but they were kind enough to post this plaque for passing students to ignore.


Not the original location and no longer the original paper, but when the Village Voice was started in the fifties by Norman Mailer and compatriots it was an influential source of alternative news, covering the burgeoning counterculture in the city.




Herman Melville was born in 1819 on this spot near Battery Park. Although the building he lived in was replaced by glass and steel, there now exists this charming park where you can sit and read Moby Dick and sneak occasional glances at Melville's disembodied head.




William Burroughs lived at 222 Bowery during the Punk Years of the late seventies. He became a godfather of sorts to the music scene that was festering up the street at CBGB. It wasn't unusual for Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, or Lou Reed to swing by for a visit and probably to admire Burroughs' collection of firearms. A former YMCA locker room, his basement apartment was referred to as "The Bunker" because of its lack of windows.


Though only opened as recently as 2002, the Bowery Poetry Club at 308 Bowery is one of the few remaining curators of the New York literary scene.


While living at 206 E 7th St in 1952-53, Allen Ginsberg took numerous iconic photos of his Beat cronies, such as one of Kerouac looking contemplative on a fire escape which has been used for numerous book covers. William Burroughs stayed here while working on Queer and The Yage Letters. Interestingly, during this time Beat hero Charlie Parker was living just around the corner on Avenue B.




Between 1975 and 1996 Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky lived at 437 E 12th Street. Imagery from the apartment and the Mary Help of Christians Church across the street show up in many of Ginsberg's poems of the period.


Thomas Wolfe put the finishing touches on Look Homeward, Angel while living on the second floor of 27 W 15th Street in 1928. Between writing jags he often went down to have his nails manicured in the ground floor salon [citation needed].


Patchin Place is a gated cul-de-sac directly across from the Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village. "Are you still alive, Djuna?" E.E. Cummings was known to call out to his neighbor, the reclusive Djuna Barnes, just to make sure that she was. Other former residents of literary note include Theodore Dreiser, Louise Bryant, and John Reed (of Ten Days that Shook the World fame). These days Patchin Place is better known as a haven for psychotherapists. I'm not going to make the obvious joke there.




Across the East River, Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer both lived at 102 Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights during the forties. This is where Mailer worked on The Naked and the Dead and Miller wrote All My Sons. The two scribes were aware of each other and Mailer later recounted thinking of Miller, "this guy's never going anywhere."




Truman Capote lived in the basement apartment of 70 Willow Street where he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. He once described his neighborhood as a place where "seedy hangouts, beer-sour bars and bitter candy stores mingle among the eroding houses." The yellow mansion was recently sold for $12 million.

And this doesn't even cover Washington Irving, the Harlem Renaissance, F Scott Fitzgerald, Catcher in the Rye, and plenty more. For New York is a vast city and there are many corners.