New York Songlines: Waverly Place

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224: Rattlestick, Off-Broadway theater that aims to "present diverse and challenging plays that otherwise might not be produced."

222: Taim Falafel & Smoothie Bar ("Taim" is Hebrew for "tasty.")

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227: This apartment building has been home to, among others, poet W.S. Merwin, writer/director Rebecca Miller and director Mira Nair.

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193: Home to anthropologist Margaret Mead (1955-66).

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Northern Dispensary

165: Waverly splits in two here, so this three-sided building has Waverly on two sides--and both Christopher and Grove streets on the third. Poe was treated for a head cold here in 1836. Later became a dental clinic; when refused to treat a patient with AIDS in 1986, it lost a lawsuit and went bankrupt. Has been vacant ever since.

160-162: This was the residence of Carmine "The Cigar" Galante, the much-feared boss of the Bonano crime family, until he was murdered by fellow mobsters in 1979.

158: Actress Judy Holliday moved here in 1948, when she was starring on Broadway in Born Yesterday, and stayed until 1952.

148: Mary Cantwell, author of Manhattan, When I Was Young, lived here when she first came to New York in 1953.

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153: Housing for writers

149: Was Gus' Place, neighborhood Greek

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141 (corner): The espresso bar Joe has New York's best coffee, says Time Out-- plus Daniel Day-Lewis is said to be a regular.

139: A 25-year-old Edna St. Vincent Millay lived here in 1917-18, the first of four Village residences. "She lived in that gay poverty which is traditional of the Village," wrote Floyd Dell, who directed her then at the Provincetown Playhouse.

137: Edgar Allan Poe briefly lived in this building with his child bride, Virginia.

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120: Hoaxster Joey Skaggs convinced news media in 1976 that this building was to be the site of a Celebrity Sperm Bank auction.

118: Max Eastman lived here from 1909 until 1911, the year before he became the editor of The Masses. He moved back to the same apartment in 1916.

116: On this site was the house of Anne Charlotte Lynch, who hosted famous literary salons that attracted the likes of William Cullen Bryant, Horace Greeley, Margaret Fuller, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Herman Melville, Bayard Taylor. Poe debuted "The Raven" here.

112: Painter Everett Shinn, part of the "Ashcan School," lived and worked here in 1911; his Waverly Place Players, an amateur satirical troupe, performed in a theater he installed in this building.

110: Babbo, Italian owned by celebrity chef Mario Batali. Was The Coach House, a Southern restaurant that claimed the Roosevelts as customers. The building was originally a carriage house for Daniel's Department Store, and later Wanamaker's.

108: The address of journalist Richard Harding Davis, whose dispatches for the Hearst newspapers helped start the Spanish-American War.

102: Was the address of the Island Mission for Cheering the Lives of the Poor and Sick, founded 1887.

Corner (29 Washington Square W): Eleanor Roosevelt took an apartment here in 1942; it was her main residence from FDR's death in 1945 until 1949.

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115: Was Bamboo Forest, 1930s Chinese

113: The Church of Our Lady of Pompeii originally opened in a storefront at this address in 1894. Its first focus was helping Italian immigrants exploited by the padroni who financed their trip over.

111: This was Jane Fonda's and Robert Redford's apartment in Barefoot in the Park.

107: This building has been the site of several of Joey Skaggs' most famous pranks, including Walk Right! (1984), the Fat Squad (1986), Comacocoon (1990) and Sexonix (1993).

103: The Washington Square Hotel, formerly the Hotel Earle (1902); Bob Dylan stayed here in 1961, when he arrived from Minneapolis at the age of 20. The Earle became pretty grungy, but it's now a nice, affordable hotel with a great location. Includes the C3 restaurant (for CIII).

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Washington Square Park

Originally a marsh surrounding Minetta Brook, in the early years of New York this area was used as a graveyard for slaves and yellow fever victims, a dueling ground and a place of execution. Near the northwest corner can be found the Hanging Elm, perhaps the oldest tree in Manhattan. It's apparently not true that the Marquis de Lafayette on his 1824 visit to New York witnessed the festive hanging of 20 highwaymen here, but Rose Butler was hanged here in 1820, the last person in New York State to be executed for arson. In 1826 it was designated the Washington Military Parade Grounds, which soon was transformed into a public park.

Washington Square was at one point the center of New York society, later becoming the unofficial quadrangle of NYU. In 1961 it was the site of protests over a police crackdown on folksinging, and in 1963, a plan to extend Fifth Avenue through the park was defeated. The present landscaping of the park dates to 1971.

This is the park where Jane Fonda wanted to be Barefoot in the Park; it's also where the skateboarders beat up a passer-by in Kids. (The real-life skate kids are harmless.)

Washington Square Arch

Designed by Stanford White, it was put up in 1892 to replace a temporary plaster arch erected in 1889 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Washington's inauguration. Members of the bohemian Liberal Club, including artists Marcel Duchamp and John Sloan, climbed on top of the arch in 1917 to proclaim the Independent Republic of Greenwich Village. Buster Keaton drove a horse-drawn trolley through the arch in the silent film Speedy; Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal (looking awfully old for college kids) decide to just be friends here in When Harry Met Sally. I once had a date once where we ended up under the arch to get out of the rain, where we kissed until a pot dealer urged me to take her home.

See a 360 Degree Panorama of Washington Square.

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Richmond Hill Apartments

27-28 (corner): This 1898 building is named for George Washington’s SoHo mansion; residents have included actor James Broderick, his son Matthew Broderick and acting teacher Uta Hagen.

21: Used as the house in the Jennifer Jason Leigh film version of Washington Square.

20: Built 1829, oldest building on block

17: Address of William Rhinelander, who helped finance the Washington Square Arch.

14 (corner): When built in 1952 as part of the behemoth 2 Fifth Avenue, it destroyed Henry James' grandmother's house, inspiration for and setting of his Washington Square.

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7-13 (corner): Originally separate townhouses, built in 1836 by Sailors Snug Harbor, these have been combined into one apartment building with an entrance on Fifth Avenue. No. 12 was from 1879-1905 the home of Edward Cooper, son of Peter Cooper and mayor of NYC (1878-80). No. 11 was the home of department store owner John Wanamaker; it's also Will Smith's address in I Am Legend. Alexander Hamilton lived at No. 7, as did Edith Wharton in 1882, when she was 20 years old.

3: The Studio Building, now the NYU School of Social Work, was the home of several artists, including Edward Hopper, who lived here from 1913 until his death in 1967. Critic Edmund Wilson lived here 1921-23. John Dos Passos lived in a back apartment in 1922, where he began mapping out Manhattan Transfer. E.E. Cummings' first wife, Elaine Orr, lived here before and during their marriage; "Those of us who weren't in love with Cummings were in love with Elaine," wrote Dos Passos.

2: Architect Richard Morris Hunt, who designed Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the base of the Statue of Liberty, lived here from 1887-95.

1 (corner): Novelists Henry James, William Dean Howells and Edith Wharton are all said to have lived and worked here at some point. (I suspect none of them actually did.)

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NYU Main Building

Corner (100 Washington Sq E): Also known as Hemmerdinger Hall. Built in 1895, the first seven floors originally housed the American Bank Note Co.

Building replaced NYU's Old Main, a gothic tower completed in 1835; the use of prison labor from Sing-Sing sparked the Stonecutter's Riot in 1834, the first labor riot in NYC. In the old building, Samuel Colt developed the revolver and Samuel Morse invented the telegraph; John William Draper in 1840 took one of the first photographs of a person on the roof. Walt Whitman taught poetry here, Winslow Homer painted here, and architects Alexander Jackson Davis and Richard Morris Hunt had offices here. Despite this incredible history, NYU tore down the building because it decided it could make more money with a new building whose lower floors could be commercially rented.

33: Grey Art Gallery, part of NYU's Main Building.

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Corner (1 University): Clifford Odets moved to a sparsely furnished room in this building in 1935, just before the opening of his first play, Awake and Sing!. He stayed here even though the play was a success, explaining: "All I wanted was two clean rooms to live in, a phonograph, some records, and to buy things for a girl. Nothing more I wanted."

Poet Elinor Wylie moved to a previous building at this address after her divorce in 1922. (The current building was completed in 1930.) Critic Edmund Wilson moved here in 1923 (from No. 3 Washington Square) after marrying actress Mary Blair. British occultist Aleister Crowley lived here in 1918. Notables who have lived here more recently include Ricky Lake, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Calista Flockhart.

The White Turkey Town House, a restaurant, used to be on the ground floor. "They used to give out molded-wax white turkeys at the end of the meal that, if you could bear to crack off the wax, had solid chocolate insides," a reader recalls. More recently there was Posman Books, which I miss.

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Corner (246 Greene): NYU's gloomy Kimball Hall (1890)

18: Torch Club

10 (corner): Cafe Pane e Cioccolato ("Bread and Chocolate")

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21: Caliente Cab Co., fratty Mexican

17: Apple Restaurant & Bar seves Vietnamese and vegan food in a vast dining room.

11 (corner): Pizza Mercato, which claims to be the choice of Italian diplomats. Below is the pub Josie Wood's, an NYU hangout. Formerly Boo Radley's, noted for crayon drawings by patrons.

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Corner (715 Broadway): NYU school named for media mogul Laurence Tisch. Arguably the country's top film school; among its alums are directors Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Joel Coen, Jim Jarmusch, Ang Lee and George C. Wolfe, actors Alec Baldwin, Billy Crystal, John Leguisamo and Adam Sandler, and playwright Tony Kushner. Built on site of the New York Hotel, which was believed to be a hotbed of Confederate spies during the Civil War. Bookseller August Brentano got his start with a newsstand here in 1853.

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