Jane Jacobs West Village Walking Tour – New York, New York
Photo of entrance to 555 Hudson Street while holding open Eyes on the Street by Robert Kanigel with a photograph showing the same storefront with Jane Jacobs in the door.
We took inspiration from the recent book Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs and set off on a walking tour of the West Village in New York. The author Robert Kanigel gives a thorough treatment of the life and work of Jane Jacobs. Inside the cover is a map showing key sites featured in the book. We used this as a jumping off point for our exploration of the West Village with some interesting discoveries that we found along the way.
1. 23 Bethune St (#3 in Kanigel)
One of the first writing studios for Jane Jacobs was located here at 23 Bethune St. In the fall of 1958 she was 42 years old. After twelve years working at a Midtown office, she briefly freelanced. Early on she realized the need of an office away from home, or, as she said “a room to work in where I am uninterrupted by people, telephone, etc.” (Kanigel, 199). Less than a 5 minute walk from her home on Hudson Street, Jane’s husband arranged for the office for $45 a month. When the building was sold out from under her by a literary agent, she ended up relocating her office to Sheridan Square.
Detail of sub-grade entrance to 23 Bethune St.
2. West Village Houses on Washington St. (#10 in Kanigel)
The West Village Houses were a series of five story walk-ups (without an elevator). In February 1961, just one month after submitting the manuscript for The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the Planning Commission sought to designate the West Village as an urban renewal area (Kanigel, 231). The West Village Urban Renewal District called for the clearing of 14 blocks and replacing it with high-rise development. Due to vigorous citizen resistance this proposal never transpired. The West Village Houses were built many years later instead as an alternative to modernist high-rises going up in other areas of the city. There were 475 dwelling units in five-story buildings with two units a floor and no elevator. This development avoided the gentrification of high-rises and expensive condos that came afterward to this neighborhood, and provided moderately priced in-fill housing without tearing existing housing down or pushing people out (Kanigel, 247). Some industrial buildings and truck parking were lost. Housing advocates felt West Village Houses “would restore the balance between residential and commercial that had existed before the overhead rail track (which, farther north became today’s High Line linear park) and gone in to serve the adjacent warehouse district” (Kanigel, 244).
Detail of West Village Houses facing up the the sidewalk edge on Washington Street.
Map from ca. 1955 showing elevated tracks which further to the north are part of the popular High Line project.
Washington and Bank St just beyond the northern most point of the West Village Houses. The elevated railway here once connected to the High Line project to the north.
3. 447 Hudson, Clearwater. We took a brief break for lunch at Morton and Hudson Street. Notice the beautiful backyard patio space whether diners are served in good weather. The basement where the restroom is located gives you a glimpse at the construction of this typical New York building type.
4. Jane’s 1st Apartment, 55 Morton Street (#1 in Kanigel)
This was Jane’s first apartment in the West Village from 1935 to 1944. The rent in 1940 was $50 a month. Once a walk-up, it had been fitted with an elevator.
Entrance to 55 Morton Street
5. Jane’s 2nd Apartment, 82 Washington Place (#4 in Kanigel)
Willa Cather wrote her first novel in 1912 while living in this building. From 1944 to 1947 Jane lived here. One Saturday night in March 1944, Jane had a party at her apartment. Jane’s sister Betty invited some of her coworkers from Grumman on Long Island. One of these was Bob Jacobs. Later he recounted how “I walked in the door and there she was in a beautiful green woolen evening dress, and I fell in love” (Kanigel 93-94). Around 1948 she and Bob moved from Washington Place to her third and final home in the West Village at 555 Hudson St (Kanigel, 113).
6. Washington Square Park 9 (#5 in Kanigel). This ten acre park was focal point during the time that Jacobs spent in the West Village. When family visited her on Hudson street they would take the 10-15 minute walk from Hudson Street to the park. Later when it was threatened by a proposal to run a sunken highway through its center, Jacobs was among those who tried to stop the expressway and succeeded (Kanigel, 136-137).
7. Sheridan Square (#6 in Kanigel)
Within the first year of coming to New York while she was still living in Brooklyn, Jane ventured to Manhattan and got off the subway at Sheridan Square. Later she recounted, “I was enchanted with this place… I spent the rest of the afternoon just walking these streets” (Kanigel, 68). That same day she decided this was the neighborhood where she would have to move.
Jane Jacobs refers to her office in a building along Sheridan Square in The Death and Life of Great American Cities as follows:
The floor of the building in which this book is being written is occupied also by a health club with a gym, a firm of ecclesiastical decorators, an insurgent Democratic party reform club, a Liberal party political club, a music society, an accordionists’ association, a retired importer who sells maté by mail, a man who sells paper and who also takes care of shipping the maté, a dental laboratory, a studio for watercolor lessons, and a maker of costume jewelry. Among the tenants who were here and gone shortly before I came in, were a man who rented out tuxedos, a union local and a Haitian dance troupe. There is no place for the likes of us in new construction. And the last thing we need is new construction (Jacobs, 1961, 193).
Jane’s daughter Mary remembered the office as a “stark little room” with shouts and thumps of boxing from the gym next door (Kangigel, 200).
In seeking the location of the office it is necessary to understand the background of the Sheridan Square name. The AIA Guide to New York City, 5th Edition, sheds some light on the changing nomenclature to describe this area:
Sheridan Square, between Washington Place and W. 4th, Barrow, and Grove Streets, was scarcely a square, but an abandoned stretch of asphalt defined by strips on the pavement and guarded by NO PARKING signs. Today magnificent greenery flourishes (eyes only), created and maintained by neighborhood volunteers. Before this greening the Square was frequently confused with Christopher Park around the corner, where, confusingly, a statue of Civil War general Philip Sheridan stands. (Willensky, 178).
In searching for the office one needs to go the intersection of 4th St and Seventh Ave where there appears an interesting triangular shaped building. The front section at the intersection is one-story and the rear section fronting West 10th Street is four stories with a basement. Max Page in Reconsidering Jane Jacobs identifies 225 West Fourth St as the location of the room where Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Manhattan Land book of the City of New York. Desk and Library ed. [1956], Plate 35, G.W. Bromley & Co. (Publisher), New York Public Library
8. Stonewall Inn, 51-53 Christopher St. Around the corner from Jane’s writing room is the Stonewall Inn. A year after Jane left New York for Toronto a major disturbance broke out propelling the LGBTQ civil rights movement forward. On June 28, 1969, police raided the bar and sought to arrest over 200 people inside. As patrons were taken outside a sizable crowd formed and resisted the arrests. Confrontations continued for several nights in nearby Christopher Park and on adjacent streets. Within two years organizations were set up in major cities throughout the US advocating for gay rights.
9. St. Luke’s Church (#7 in Kanigel). This is the church where Jane Jacobs and her family worshiped. It’s also where occurred many moments significant in the struggle to keep the West Village intact. Jacobs considered how services at St. Luke’s “gave me the satisfying, in fact inspiring feeling that I was a link in a long, sinewy, living human tradition of being” (Kanigel, 201).
10. Jane’s House at 555 Hudson Street (#4 in Kanigel). This three-story house was built by a sea captain for one of his two daughters in 1849 (Kanigel, 113). When the Jacobses moved in nearly 100 years after it was built in 1947, a derelict candy store was on the first floor, a bullet hole was in the frosted glass window, and the backyard was a garbage dump. The whole place was overrun by rats. Heated by fireplaces, it was often cold in winter.The Jacobses rebuilt the foundation and installed new industrial-grade windows. They had to tear down some of the brick on the street side of the house and reface it.They bought the house for $7,000 (Kanigel, 114). Jacobs moved from this house to Toronto in 1968.
Jane Jacobs refers to her block of Hudson Street in The Death and Life of Great American Cities as follows:
My block of the street, I must explain, is a small one, but it contains a remarkable range of buildings, varying from several vintages of tenements to three- and four-story houses that have been converted into low-rent flats with stores on the ground floor, or returned to single-family use like ours. Across the street there used to be mostly four-story houses that have been converted into low-rent flats with stores on the ground floor, or returned to single-family use like ours. Across the street there used to be mostly four-story brick tenements with stores below. But twelve years ago several buildings, from the corner to the middle of the block, were converted into one building with elevator apartments of small size and high rents (Jacobs, 1961, 38).
Address plate at 555 Hudson
Fireplace in the first floor of what was once a candy store.
11. White Horse Tavern (#8 in Kanigel). This is the place where Dylan Thomas whiskied himself to death. Jacobs was grateful to have a bar on her block, and a famous one at that:
Strangers become an enormous asset on the street on which I live, and the spurs off it, particularly at night when safety assets are most needed. We are fortunate enough, on the street, to be gifted not only with a locally supported bar and another around the corner, but also with a famous bar that draws continuous troops of strangers from adjoining neighborhoods and even from out of town. It is famous because the poet Dylan Thomas used to go there, and mentioned it in his writing. This bar, indeed, works two distinct shifts. In the morning and early afternoon it is a social gathering place for the old community of Irish longshoremen and other craftsmen in the area, as it always was. But beginning in midafternoon it takes on a different life, more like a college bull session with beer, combined with a literary cocktail party, and this continues until the early hours of the morning. On a cold winter’s night, as you pass the White Horse, and the doors open, a solid wave of conversation and animation surges out and hits you; very warming. The comings and goings from this bar do much to keep our street reasonably populated until three in ‘ The uses of sidewalks: safety [ 41 the morning, and it is a street always safe to come home to. The only instance I know of a beating in our street occurred in the dead hours between the closing of the bar and dawn. The beating was halted by one of our neighbors who saw it from his window and, unconsciously certain that even at night he was part of a web of strong street law and order, intervened (Jacobs, 1961, 42).
While you’re there, consider asking for the West Village Martini. This drink of the 1960s was described as follows:
These were the days of the fabled West Village Martini, gin and a few drops of vermouth in any handy glass, an olive or a picked onion, an ice cube, and then, by Jane’s recipe, “you put your finger in it, and go swish, swish, swish”; no time for niceties.
Then reflect on the sense of urgency by those trying to keep up their West Village neighborhood, while by extension making a contribution to the understanding of other neighborhoods throughout the world. This is the profound debt that we owe to Jane Jacobs and her years spent living, writing, and advocating for great places while also living in one.
Sources
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961.
Kanigel, Robert. Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
Kremer, Isaac. (Photographer). New York, NY, July 8, 2018.
Page, Max. Reconsidering Jane Jacobs. New York: Routledge, 2017.