Greenwich Village

People are surprised that the Hudson Park Library is not landmarked nor is it in a historic district.

The line of townhouses just across the street are most definitely landmarked. Afterall, one of New York's most famous mayors lived there.

But, no, Hudson Park has not been so designated.

True, the building is 103 years old and was designed by Carrere and Hastings, the architects of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (aka the library with the Lions out front). It is a Carnegie Library, one of dozens in the city, so called because it was funded by Andrew Carnegie. Shouldn't it be landmarked? Or, at least, in a historic district?

Well, now, progress is being made in designating Hudson Park's neighborhood a historic district -- The South Village Historic District. Check out this map and send in your comments. Do you ever use "South Village" as a name for this neighborhood? What do you call it? I've heard West Soho.

View South Village Historic District in a larger map
(Personally, I say that Hudson Park is in the Village or the West Village but this historic district goes well south of the West Village.)

Who are these people?

From Adela Lintelmann paintings

The work of Adela Smith Lintelmann (1902 - 1996) is currently on display in the Hudson Park Reference Room Gallery. Adela Smith Lintelmann's art career spanned nearly seventy years and she was a role model for both artists and feminists.

In her native British Columbia, she established herself as a mathematician and then, on attending a lecture by an established Canadian artist, she was inspired to paint. With her characteristic adventurous spirit and armed with only her degree, a teaching certificate and a course in typing, she left Vancouver for New York and the Art Students League. To support her dream she worked her way up at the New York Stock Exchange to become one of the first women stock brokers on Wall Street.

During her art career 'Linty', as she became known, studied with such luminaries as Kimon Nicolaides, Robert Brackman, Robert Phillip, Robert Beverly Hale, Xavier Gonzales, Daniel Dickerson and IIona Royce-Smithkin. She became a trustee of the American Fine Arts Society, a member of Artists Equity, Artists Fellowship, National Arts Club, American Artists Professional League, Salmagundi Club and the Pen and Brush.

Linty specialized in floral and still life arrangements but on display at Hudson Park are some fine portraits. Unfortunately the subjects of the paintings are not identified, so if you are a long-time Village resident or if you knew Linty, perhaps you can help us out. Come by and identify the subjects of our portraits.

Want to breakfast with Theodore Dreiser?

Grab a cup of coffee at Grey Dog Coffee or Out of the Kitchen and mosey on down to 16 St. Lukes Place.

Hey, you’re right across from the Hudson Park Library! And just down the street at 14 and 12 St. Lukes Place are the former homes of Marianne Moore and Sherwood Anderson. They all lived here in the 1920s.

View Greenwich Village Writers in a larger map
Use this map (I'll continue to add to it) to create your own coffee jaunt or late night crawl. You’ll be inspired by walking the streets of the literary greats. You might even write something! Or at least, stop by the Hudson Park Branch and take out one of their books, grab that coffee, and relax knowing that you’ve found yourself in the center of the world.

Poets named for hospitals is a very short list.

In fact, Edna St. Vincent Millay is probably the only major poet who would be on such a list. Frankly, I can't think of anyone else named for a hospital, let alone a poet, and if you know of one, please let us all know in a comment.

Edna's uncle's life was saved by the staff of St. Vincent Hospital shortly before Edna's birth in Rockland, Maine -- consequently, Edna's middle name. Somehow this still seems odd. What if her uncle had been saved at Mt. Sinai? Columbia-Presbyterian?

Appropriately, Edna, or Vincent, as she liked to be called, came into her own in the Village, living in the famous narrowest house of the city at 75 1/2 Bedford Street, about a three minute walk from Hudson Park. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the first woman to do so.

Hudson Park is currently hosting a display about the life of Vincent in its Reference Room Gallery. April, aka National Poetry Month, is a great time to check it out!

I suppose April is National Poetry Month because it's the cruellest month. I don't know if that's true but I've planted some seeds and hope to have flowers for summer. Am I deluded by this into believing in a spring resurrection? Perhaps, but what's the alternative? I'll take my morning glories and moon flowers and if they smell sweet I'll try not to think of funerals.

April is a great time to drop by the Hudson Park Library and take out some poetry. Take your book, walk a couple of blocks to the Hudson River and doze off in the sun between lines by such great Village poets as Marianne Moore, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Stanley Kunitz. April will not seem cruel.

Marianne Moore worked at the Hudson Park Library in the 1920s, commuting 42 steps (I counted! If she had a long stride - 39!) from her home at 14 St. Lukes Place. Great, huh? Oh, but the hazards of too short a commute - no calling out sick and going to the beach for her.

What do William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson and Kahlil Gibran have in common?

The all lived in the Village!

They may be the native sons of Mississippi, Ohio and Lebanon respectively, but for a time each of them called a piece of rarified Manhattan real estate south of 14th and north of Canal Street home.
In this blog I'll visit some of the places where Village writers hung their hats and maybe throw in some comments about their work and their lives (Of course, I'll sprinkle in some library stuff, too).
Also, more importantly, I invite you to comment on Village writers and add your own stories, observations and self promotions if you're a writer living in the Village or who has lived in the Village. Faulkner has made my list of Village writers for having lived here a couple of months before taking a postmaster gig back home in Mississippi, so if you've lived in the Village at all, it counts. You're a Village writer!
It's the desire to live here and having made that desire a reality that counts.
But really, what was Faulkner thinking when he moved here? What would have happened if he had settled in? The obstacles facing a poor family trying to bury the matriarch in Green-Wood Cemetery would be greater than those the Bundren family faced taking Addie to Jefferson. How would he have made that play? For literature's sake, it's probably best that we can only conjecture.