I give occasional walking tours of lower Manhattan, mostly literary, which means that I am pointing out street corners, for the most part, that various writers of the 18th and 19th lived on, in buildings that have long since been demolished (Herman Melville, for example, grew up in a house on the site of the WTC, and Poe lived a few houses down the block a decade later.)
But sometimes, I’m aware of actual un-demolished buildings where more recent, non-literary celebs lived, and for some reason this is interesting to me, too. For example, the Yankees’ outfield, and not a forgettable one, of Mantle-Mantle and Bob Cerv (who once hit I think 38 HRs in a MLB season), shared an apartment in Kew Gardens in Queens at one point. I’d love to find out where this apartment building is, and even which apartment. I’ll bet the current inhabitants don’t have a clue. I wonder where Woody Allen grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn. I used to have the address of the apartment building that the Marx brothers grew up in in the east 90s, but I forget where I put that.
I would love to make a map of various places where famous people have lived. It connects me to them in some weird, visceral way, just to say, “Bob Dylan once walked down these very steps, and saw the same street I’m now looking at.”
I wonder if you folks could do one of three things for me:
tell me if you could actually care about this knowledge. If I were to make such a map, who would use it? Just me?
tell me if you are aware of any place this information has already been collected. Strange as this concept seems to me, I doubt I’m the first person to try to make such a map. It seems to be the sort of project that a NYC historian would have done long ago, and kept updated somewhere. but I’m unaware of any such ongoing project.
list places that qualify (don’t have to be in NYC, but that’s mostly where I can easily see if they’re still standing–I once found the street corner of the building in Syracuse where F. Scott Fitzgerald had probably been conceived). Either cite the book giving this information, or just explain how it is that you came across it, so I can verify it.
It’s a fairly well-known fact, certainly documented somewhere, that Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman were roommates during their long starving-actor periods. This is one of the things I’d like to include in this list/map, with proper supporting documentation. Also I’d to confirm whether either ever roomed with Robert Duvall during this period–I think I’ve heard that, though I don’t know with whom or where.
Sometimes you hear stories so unlikely, and so poorly sourced, that you’ve got to believe they’re just urban legends–last week, a colleague told me a highly implausible story about Tony Curtis, newly famous, calling out to his ex-roommate Gene Hackman from a limousine (the nasty line he called out supposedly had to do with another celebrity) that just seems off–I would guess that Curtis became a celeb about fifteen years before Hackman, and it seems absurd that they ever roomed together during their struggling years–but it is possible, I guess, if Hackman had especially long and early struggles, decades of struggle, really. Anyway this is the sort of thing I’d like to track down.
Oh, I could go on listing such oddities for days–I think Lincoln Center was built upon the site of the roominghouse in the West Sixties that Edward Albee wrote about in “The Zoo Story.” In fact, roominghouses in general are the staple of my literary walking tour, since that’s where so many struggling writers (Norman Mailer met Arthur Miller in one roominghouse in Brooklyn Heights, which Mailer wrote “Barbary Shore” about), and actors and painters, etc. once lived in. It’s so unsatisfying, though, to know that these events happened, and to have a general area that they happened in. I need to know WHERE these places were.
I don’t know of anyplace in particular that would be of interest to you but I will do a bit of checking and see what I can find out. I would surely use a map like that because I think that kind of thing is neat but I’m a nerd like that.
Do you get paid to give walking tours? I think that would be an excellent part time job!
I give the tours mostly to students during orientation (September and sometime --rarely–in January) to show the cool place they’ll be living in, but we always pick up a few gawkers and stragglers along the way. Because we’re located in both lower Manhattan and in Brooklyn Heights, I’ve also worked up a Walt Whitman tour that features many of the places he lived in and wrote about, and have given other particular walking tours of certain NYC-lit figures when asked to by various groups. (Sometimes even for individuals who ask nicely or who offer me a tour of their hometowns.) I’ve also gotten a short story out of the experience. LMK if you find out anything, Pbbth.
Irving Berlin grew up in a tenement on 330 Cherry Street in Lower Manhattan (cite).
This might be too uptown for your purposes (plus, it’s not where a celebrity lived), but the subway grate where the famous picture of Marilyn Monroe’s skirt billowing up is at 586 Lexington Avenue (by 52nd Street) – cite.
No, I’m prepared to map the whole friggen city and suburbs–what I’m trying to figure out first is who has already tried to do this, so I can update the map (if need be) or to compile one if someone has done such a project for actors, and someone else has tried to do for athletes, etc. I’ve done some literary stuff that really doesn’;t interest literary people very much–I’ve mentioned to a colleague that I could walk him from his apartment to the crummy building F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in before his first novel was published–this guy is a Fitzgerald scholar who showed zero interest in staring at that pile of bricks, which sorta puzzled me. When I learned that the subject of my last book lived in London Terrace, I walked around that block (23-24th Street from 9-10 Avenues) a few times just marvelling that I was stepping where he’d stepped many a time.
According to the Jimmy Stewart biography that I read, Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda roomed together in New York in their struggling actor days. I think their old apartment would be an interesting addition, but sorry I can’t help you with the address.
this post is exactly the sort of specificity I’m talking about. (Well, the exact street address would help.)
It’s funny but I’ve been getting emails from people, and posts in other threads, that contain helpful information, but no one wants to post clues here for me to track down? For example, do you ever rad show-biz or other artists’ biographies? Most of the ones I’ve read had mention stuff like “I used to have an apartment in Tudor City, near the UN…” that would give me some clue. Imbd would be good if they had more info like the one in the linked post.
Very cool --thank you! I’ll add this to my Brooklyn Heights tour. I lived around the corner from there, on Hicks Street, in the 1970s but I never knew Miller (one of my fave authors) lived in the heights. He was born in Williamsburgh and wrote about that well. I never read Plexus.
