Famous Greenwich Village Residents

Urban writer and activist Jane Jacobs penned The Death and Life of Great American Cities, while living in Greenwich Village. Her work and activism helped to halt the construction of a highway through Washington Square Park. Jacobs’ commitment and protest even led to her arrest and her work has since inspired generations of community-based urban activism.

You can visit her residence here.

Lorraine Hansberry was the first African American woman to write a play performed on Broadway; it was met with great success. She wrote A Raisin in the Sun, a play about a struggling Black family. Hansberry was the first Black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award. Throughout her life she was heavily involved in civil rights. She died at the young age of 34 due to her ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer.

You can visit her residence here.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the longest serving First Lady. While her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was in office she became active, engaged, and outspoken on controversial issues, including race and women’s rights.

Roosevelt remained active in politics following her husband’s death, becoming a delegate to the United Nations—including as Chairperson of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—and chairing President John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. Listen to her speech in honor of Human Rights Day.  

You can visit her residence here.

Political activist and writer Emma Goldman lived in Greenwich Village from 1903-1913. Goldman, a Jewish immigrant, became known by the FBI as “one of the most dangerous women in the country” for her controversial stances on issues like free speech, birth control, labor unions, women’s rights, and her anarchist philosophy. She published her magazine Mother Earth on site while living here.

You can visit her residence here.

Most well-known for her novel Little Women, Louisa May Alcott was an astounding writer. Her passion was heavily motivated by her desire to bring her family out of poverty. Louisa vowed that she would “…do something by and by.  Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!”

Louisa’s career as an author began at the age of eight with poetry, and later short stories that appeared in popular magazines. Her first book, Flower Fables, was published in 1854. In all, she published over 30 books and collections of short stories and poems.

You can visit her residence here.

Prior to moving to the Bronx with his wife and mother-in-law, Edgar Allan Poe lived in Greenwich Village. Known for his macabre poems and short stories, he revised and published The Raven at his address. While his works were not conspicuously acclaimed during his lifetime, Poe did earn due respect as a gifted fiction writer, poet, and man of letters, and he achieved a measure of popular success.

You can visit his residence here.

Edward Estlin (E.E.) Cummings decided to become a poet in his early childhood. His first book was published in 1922; The Enormous Room, a fictionalized account of his French captivity. E.E. Cummings then went on to publish collections of poems, such as Tulips and Chimneys and XLI Poems.

Cummings is also known for his Him consisted of a sequence of skits drawing from burlesque, the circus, and the avant-garde, and jumping quickly from tragedy to grotesque comedy.

You can visit his residence here.

Samuel Clemens went by his pen name “Mark Twain” during his biggest writing years, and his pen name is how most people remember him now. Oftentimes, Mark Twain wrote about his personal life events through the lens of historical growth and change when he was growing up in the mid 1800s. Some of his most notable books are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) Life on the Mississippi (1883) The Prince and the Pauper (1881) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

You can visit his residence here.

White wrote books, essays, and poems for both children and adults. He was offered a teaching position, but turned it down because his goal was to become a writer. E.B. White joined The New Yorker magazine as writer and contributing editor, a position he would hold for the rest of his career. Two classic children’s books he wrote are Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web.

You can visit his residence here.

Influential abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, whose drip style of painting received critical acclaim, lived in Greenwich Village. He came to New York in 1930 with his brother to study at the Arts Students League. Pollock had a troubled life, battling alcoholism and possibly bipolar disorder. Despite this, his unique painting style won him considerable praise and following his death in 1956 the Museum of Modern Art featured a memorial retrospective exhibition of his work.

You can visit his residence here.

Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explored the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture.

You can visit his residence here.