Audre Lorde Residence
207 St Pauls Avenue | Stapleton | built 1898
Open on the map4 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1898
Architect Otto Loeffler designs a neo-Colonial house here for harbor pilot Andrew Jackson
The prolific Stapleton architect Otto Loeffler designed this house in 1898 for Andrew Jackson, a harbor pilot, as previously empty tracts in the neighborhood filled with Queen Anne, Shingle-style and Colonial homes. Its open porch has turned columns and a closed pediment with a sunburst, set beneath a gabled roofline, and the house still stands as a well-kept neo-Colonial design.
“…designed by the prolific Stapleton architect Otto Loeffler and built in 1898 as the residence of Andrew Jackson, a harbor pilot…”
- 1972
Poet Audre Lorde and her partner Frances Clayton buy the house for $37,750
After a year of house hunting, Audre Lorde and Frances Clayton bought 207 St. Paul's Avenue for $37,750 and moved in with Lorde's two children. Lorde called it a diamond in the rough; Clayton called it a money-guzzler. Lorde made her study on the second floor, and she said the house let her keep trees, a garden and a water view while raising her children in the city. The family also faced repeated racism while living here.
- 1978
Living here, Lorde is diagnosed with breast cancer and turns the ordeal into The Cancer Journals
Lorde wrote and published nine books while she lived in this house, including The Black Unicorn in 1978. That same year she learned she had breast cancer and began chronicling it in The Cancer Journals, her first work of nonfiction, published in 1980. In it she faced the prospect of her own death and argued for women's right to make their own health decisions.
- 1987
Lorde decides to sell the St. Paul's Avenue house and leave Staten Island for St. Croix
In 1987 Lorde chose to sell the house, saying that to change her life she had to change her surroundings. Now focused on her new relationship with Gloria Joseph, she ended her 17-year relationship with Frances Clayton, who moved to California. The house was sold in 1988, and Lorde spent the rest of her life in St. Croix with Joseph.
“In 1987, Lorde decided to sell the house at 207 St. Paul's Avenue for many reasons…”
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