393 Bleecker Street

West Village | built 1853

Open on the map3 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1. 1852

   John B. Walton, a crockery dealer, builds 393 Bleecker Street in a plain Italianate row

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   John B. Walton, a crockery dealer, built 393 through 397 Bleecker Street in 1852-53 as four-story brick houses in a simple Italianate style; 393 keeps its bracketed roof cornice and paneled double doors. Walton also owned the corner house at 399. The stores on the ground floor were later changed to apartments. The report records that the poet Mark Van Doren lived at 393 from 1929 to 1953.

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

2. 1929

   Mark Van Doren and his neighbors join their back yards into Bleecker Gardens

   In 1929 the poet and Columbia professor Mark Van Doren, who lived at 393 Bleecker Street, agreed with neighbors to take down the fences between their back yards. The result was a shared courtyard behind thirteen 19th-century townhouses on Bleecker and West 11th Streets, later called Bleecker Gardens. Writer Alfred Pommer, quoted by Village Preservation, describes it as a gathering place for writers and intellectuals for nearly thirty years, with Van Doren at the center and James Thurber and Lionel Trilling among the regulars.

   Source: Village Preservation

3. 1950

   Allen Ginsberg brings Gregory Corso to Mark Van Doren's house and is scolded over Alger Hiss

   Around 1950 Allen Ginsberg took the young poet Gregory Corso to meet his old Columbia teacher Mark Van Doren at 393 Bleecker Street. Headlines that day reported that Alger Hiss had been found guilty, and when Van Doren asked what Ginsberg thought, Ginsberg replied that the jury had decided. Van Doren exploded, as Ginsberg later recalled it, and lectured him in front of Corso about being glib and easily swayed by the press.

   Source: allenginsberg.org

Further reading

• Then & Now photos: 393 Bleecker StreetVillage Preservation: Greenwich Village Then & Now

Nearby

• 391 Bleecker Street1 entry
• 395 Bleecker Street1 entry
• 389 Bleecker Street1 entry
• 397 Bleecker Street4 entries
• Magnolia Bakery286 West 11th Street | 6 entries
• Roger and Evelyn Baldwin House282 West 11th Street | 5 entries

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