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James Baldwin's House On The UWS Is Now A National Landmark
By
Zach Schonfeld
Published Sep 13, 2019
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Courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives
By
Zach Schonfeld
Published Sep 13, 2019
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Though he is more commonly associated with Harlem—where he was born, and where he famously set his 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain—James Baldwin spent much of his adulthood living on the Upper West Side, long before the neighborhood became an ocean of Starbucks and Chase Banks. Now the legendary writer’s West 71st Street residence has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The remodeled four-story rowhouse stands at 137 West 71st Street, just around the corner from the flagship Gray's Papaya location. The house served as Baldwin’s New York City residence from 1965, when he purchased it, until his death in 1987. (In his final years, the author split his time between the U.S. and France, where he ultimately died of stomach cancer.)
During this period, the residence became something of an African-American literary hub. It was visited by such cultural luminaries as Amiri Baraka, Miles Davis, and Toni Morrison, who briefly lived in an apartment there, according to a description from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
In June, the residence was officially designated a New York City landmark as one of six sites deemed significant to the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history. Scheduled to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, those designations came at the recommendation of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, which celebrated the Baldwin residence’s upgrade to national landmark status with a tweet on Thursday:
Baldwin was pioneering in his depiction of gay and bisexual relationships in profoundly influential novels such as Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Just Above My Head (1979). “Although he generally eschewed labels and did not self-identify as gay,” the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project notes, “he was open about the fact that he had relationships with men and spoke openly about various LGBT issues.”
Though Baldwin has been deceased for more than 30 years, his cultural influence is thriving as of late. His 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk became an Oscar-winning film last year, and his unfinished manuscript Remember This House was resurrected in the form of an acclaimed documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, in 2017.
His former home in the French village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, alas, has not been so lucky. Despite a spirited campaign to preserve it, that house is being converted into a luxury apartment complex.
Tagged
history
james baldwin
landmark
uws
landmarks commission
literature
Zach Schonfeld
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