James Baldwin’s Greenwich Village
James Baldwin saw New York as it really was, not as it aspires to be. Through his writing, he laid bare the thoughts of strangers passing each other on crowded streets, illuminating internal judgments more vividly than any streetlight could. I read his “Another Country” last month and couldn’t help but observe was how little America has changed when it comes to addressing the deep scars of systemic racism. This sad and beautiful novel follows five sad and beautiful people traversing 1960s New York. Baldwin explores the deep scarring of racism and the complexity of sexuality from the perspective of a bisexual Black man. While writing this book, Baldwin lived at 81 Horatio Street, which is now a very beautiful townhouse.
The plaque here reads:
“James Baldwin (1924-1987) The great American writer James Baldwin lived in an apartment here from 1958 through 1961. The power and eloquence of Baldwin’s varied works impacted ideas about race, class, sexuality, and morality, and played an important role in the civil rights movement. The Village is reflected in the bestselling novel, “Another County,” which he worked on while residing here. Placed by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation with the generous support of the Two Boots Foundation.”
81 Horatio street is just a few blocks from the White Horse Tavern, self-proclaimed as New York City’s second oldest continuously running tavern, established in 1880.* The White Horse is distinguished for its link to another famous patron, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who supposedly drank himself to death. Ending his life with 18 straight whiskeys at the White Horse. In addition to probably not being true, I don’t think the White Horse of today would let someone order 18 straight anything. Look at the pretty flowers it has up for it’s outdoor COVID-safe dining!
Baldwin was one of the White Horse Tavern’s few Black patrons. He was also one of the Village’s few Black residents. “Another Country” explores the isolation of being Black in mainly white spaces. In Baldwin’s New York, Harlem is as far away culturally and emotionally from the Village as Paris. I couldn’t help but wonder how biographical the novel was.
“He had often thought of his loneliness, for example, as a condition which testified to his superiority. But people who were not superior were, nevertheless, extremely lonely—and unable to break out of their solitude precisely because they had no equipment with which to enter it. His own loneliness, magnified so many million times, made the night air colder. He remembered to what excesses, into what traps and nightmares, his loneliness had driven him; and he wondered where such a violent emptiness might drive an entire city.”
Another regular spot for Baldwin and his contemporaries was the San Remo Cafe on the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker. A bubble tea establishment is currently there, but that is only the current occupant. When I moved to the city in 2011 it was a chain coffee shop with too white walls, uncomfortable egg chairs and soulless track lighting. This bubble tea place seems equally lacking in charm, though I do like the comically huge bubble tea sculpture. It’s a tragedy that such an important cafe—a place where everyone who was anyone in the Beat poet and painters crowd of the post-war New York, has devolved into just a plaque:
“Site of the San Remo Cafe (1925-1967) In its post-war heyday, the San Remo was a meeting place for an unparalleled array of figures from the Beat movement, the New York School of poets and painters, and the Living Theater. Regulars included Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Miles Davis, Frank O’Hara, Judith Malina, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, and Gore Vidal, several of whom first met here. Many of them immortalized the San Remo in their writings. These literary and artistic icons became the voice of their generation, and their impact still resonates today. Placed by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation with the generous support of the Two Boots Foundation.”**
Please, if you are a developer reading this, buy this site and bring back a place that is reminiscent of the San Remo of the Beat poets. I think it would do very well. Writers everywhere would flock to buy one small coffee every 90 minutes while hunkered over their Macbooks, just to soak up such storied air as an aid in creation. Believe me.
The most disappointing spot on my literary tour took place not in the Village, but on the Upper West Side. Baldwin bought a rowhouse on 137 W 71st St. and lived there from 1967 until his death in 1987. Not only is it an ugly building, but there is shockingly no plaque. Nothing to tell passersby that the great American poet, novelist, playwright, and icon spent his days there. Do the people that live there now even know what hallowed ground they pace?
Baldwin’s New York has changed in some ways—for one thing, the Village is much more expensive now. The only people who could afford 81 Horatio St today are A-list actors who spend one week there every two years, or Russian Oligarchs who let their influencer daughters use it as a TikTok factory—but in other ways the city feels very much the same as the one portrayed in “Another Country.” The heartbroken sister Ida, who let’s her anger over her brother’s death feed her own complicated tension between being Black and having white men profess to love her, shatters her white friend’s illusions about what it feels like to be Black here:
“‘But, Cass, ask yourself, look out and ask yourself—wouldn’t you hate all white people if they kept you in prison here?’ They were rolling up startling Seventh Avenue. The entire population seemed to be in the streets, draped, almost, from lampposts, stoops, and hydrants, and walking through the traffic as though it were not there. ‘Kept you here, and stunted you and starved you, and made you watch your mother and father and sister and lover and brother and son and daughter die or go mad or go under, before your very eyes? And not in a hurry, like from one day to the next, but, every day, every day, for years, for generations? Shit. They keep you here because you’re black, the filthy, white cock suckers, while they go around jerking themselves off with all that jazz about the land of the free and the home of the brave. And they want you to jerk yourself off with the same music, too, only keep your distance. Some days, honey, I wish I could turn myself into one big fist and grind this miserable country to powder. Some days, I don’t believe it has a right to exist. Now, you’ve never felt like that, and Vivaldo’s never felt like that. Vivaldo didn’t want to know my brother was dying because he doesn’t want to know that my brother would still be alive if he hadn’t been born black.’”
New York, we’ve got a lot of work to do.
*I can’t see something like this and not wonder what the first oldest is, so I’ll save you some search time: The Fraunces Tavern has been in operation since 1762. Some honorable mentions: McSorely’s is NYC’s oldest Irish pub (est. 1854); and the Ear Inn was built in 1817 but closed a bunch of times for various reasons. Neir’s Tavern in Queens opened in 1829 as The Blue Pump Room and was in almost continuous operation except for Prohibition. So maybe the idea of oldest or second oldest is more of a state of mind.
**The Two Boots Foundation has little web presence that I could find, but my best guess is that it is a charitable arm of the Two Boots Pizza chain that started in the Village. Their primary charitable function appears to be installing these historical plaques. Really quality plaques though. First rate.
