New York Songlines: Bank Street

West St | Washington St | Greenwich St | Hudson St | Bleecker St | West Fourth St | Waverly Place | Greenwich Avenue
The street was named for the Bank of New York--Alexander Hamilton's bank--which opened a branch here after their downtown offices were quarantined during a 1798 yellow fever epidemic.


HUDSON RIVER

S <===           WEST STREET           ===> N

South:

166 (corner): Singer Grace Jones has lived here.














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Westbeth

155: Once the Bell Telephone/Western Electric Laboratories, this full-block complex created or help to develop some of the most important inventions of the 20th Century: the vacuum tube (1912), radar (1919), sound movies (1923) and the digital computer (1937). One of the first demonstrations of television transmission occurred here, April 27, 1927. Westbeth was also the original home of the NBC radio network.

The complex was converted to an artists' colony in 1969; photographer Diane Arbus committed suicide here, July 28, 1971, and actor Vin Diesel grew up here. The Bank Street Theatre is located here.


S <===         WASHINGTON STREET         ===> N

South:

Corner: From 1954-69 Jack's Service Station, an Esso outlet, was here.

128-130: Two notable Greek Revival townhouses from 1837.

HB Studio

120: founded by Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen in 1945, this acting school has dozens of famous alumni, including Rod Steiger, Jason Robards, Jack Lemmon, Faye Dunaway, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Sigourney Weaver, Anne Bancroft, Matthew Broderick, Al Pacino, Christopher Reeve, Bette Midler, Eva Marie Saint and Sarah Jessica Parker.

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North:

131 (corner): Automatic Slims, one of the bars I was told I should check out when I first came to New York City almost 20 years ago. It seemed pretty cool then. In 1972, the leather/western bar Cave opened here.






105: John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved here in 1971, and lived here until 1973 when they moved to the Dakota.


S <===             GREENWICH STREET             ===> N

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90 (corner): Was Trattoria da Alfredo

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99 (corner): This former General Electric warehouse was one of the Village's first conversions. Paris Commune, a longrunning Village restaurant, moved into what was Nadine's and before that K.O.'s, a steak place.





S <===           HUDSON STREET           ===> N

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Abingdon Square

Admiral Peter Warren, who owned most of Greenwich Village, gave his daughter Charlotte land in the vicinity of this square when she married Willoughby Bertie, the Earl of Abingdon. When New York was replacing royalist placenames in 1794, Abingdon Square was spared because the Abingdons in England had defended the American rebellion.

The statue in the square is of a World War I doughboy.


S <===           BLEECKER STREET           ===> N

South:

74-76: 1839-42

72: Starting in 1927, this was the home of Marion Tanner, the inspiration for the book, play, film etc. Auntie Mame.

68: 1863 Renaissance Revival townhouse










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75 (corner): A 17-year-old Betty Bacall (soon to be renamed Lauren) moved to this red-brick apartment building, just before she became Miss Greenwich Village 1942. It wasn't long before Diana Vreeland was putting her on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, leading to her Hollywood career.

69: Former Fleischman's Yeast brewery became the Bank Street School for Children--now the Bank Street College of Education, located on West 112th Street. The school was a leader in progressive education.

63: Punk rocker Sid Vicious died here of a heroin overdose, February 1, 1979.

55-57: Houses built in 1842.

51: La Focaccia, Italian


S <===           WEST 4TH STREET           ===> N

Dawn Powell's novel The Locusts Have No King starts at this intersection, with the protagonist getting into a cab and then getting out again because he has no money.

South:

48: A 1910 stable converted into a 1969 modernist townhouse.

34: Longtime home of wandering journalist Charles Kuralt.

16 (corner): Ye Waverly Inn, tiny New England-style restaurant, in the basement of an 1845 house, that's been here almost long enough to earn the "Ye."


S <===           WAVERLY PLACE          





2 (corner): Lips features drag shows.

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37: This 1837 rowhouse is "one of the best Greek Revival houses in the Village"--AIA Guide.

27: Poet Allen Hart lived in a basement apartment here in 1927, working as a janitor while writing a biography of Stonewall Jackson.

23: A boarding house here features in the Old New York novel The Alienist.

11: John Dos Passos lived here in 1924-25, working on his novel Manhattan Transfer.

9: Longtime home of James Laughlin, modernist publisher whose New Directions imprint featured writers like Dos Passos, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Tennessee Williams, Dylan Thomas, etc.

1-7: Replaced No. 5, where novelist Willa Cather lived from 1913-27, writing My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop, A Lost Lady, etc.


S <===           GREENWICH AVENUE           ===> N


Is your favorite Bank Street spot missing? Write to Jim Naureckas and tell him about it.

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