My wife often remarks while we're walking around town how I seem to have a reminiscence or anecdote attached to virtually every other block. Having grown up here, I guess that shouldn't be all that surprising. I'm guessing it's the same for many other people. We associate our personal experiences and memories with specific locations. It's just the way the mind works, I suppose.
Take, for example, 47 Irving Place. From the outside, it's an unassuming three-story building on the corner of East 16th Street and -- wait for it -- Irving Place. I spoke about it a little bit in this old post, but in the summer of 1992, my good friend Rob D. sub-letted half an apartment in 47 Irving Place's basement level. I was living up in Yorkville on East 86th Street at the time, so Rob's place became our staging point for our myriad downtown expeditions.
It was a curious little arrangement. I believe a friend of a friend of a friend of Rob's aunt, or someone, enabled the whole thing. As we understood it, the apartment was technically owned by the brother of New York actor/writer/aesthete Wallace Shawn (of "My Dinner with Andre" and "The Princess Bride" fame). As such, whenever the phone rang, we developed a juvenile habit of answering it with an emphatic "INCONTHEIVABLE!", although, disappointingly, Wallace himself was never on the other end of the line. Rob's turf was the rear of the apartment, which featured a long bedroom with a rustic, exposed brick wall and an adjoining kitchen with a large wooden table. Behind that, there was a sort of frustrating back patio, but more about that in a bit.
Meanwhile, the front end of the apartment (essentially just a bedroom with windows that faced out onto Irving Place) was rented out by some strange-albeit-amenable woman who seemed somewhat frightened of Rob -- for no readily apparent reason -- despite his tireless attempts to be friendly.
I seem to remember some random, hot Saturday that July when we'd been just hanging out in the punishing back patio. The patio, you see, was simply a perfect square, surrounded on all sides by tall facades of brick. As such, there was absolutely no breeze at all. Sitting out in it was actually kind of unpleasant. It felt like being at the bottom of a gigantic box. Anyway, to break the monotony, one of us threw on one of our two favorite albums of that summer -- namely How The Gods Kill by Danzig and Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys. Right during a high-volume airing of "Left Hand Black" off the former, Rob's phone rang. It was his apartment mate, nervously asking if it was "safe to come home." I'm not entirely sure what she thought we were up to (she probably assumed that there was a ribald amount of rough, drug-fueled gay sex going on or something), but it was almost certainly way more interesting than what was actually gong on (i.e. the consumption of a heroic amount of cheap beer and strenuous bouts of earnest air-guitaring). Rob laughed her off the phone and proceeded to put on "So What'cha Want" by the Beasties, which accordingly prompted a ridiculous amount of leaping about. The apartment-mate showed up under a minute later (she must have only called from the corner) to find us looking exhausted and sweaty, a sight that invariably confirmed her worst fears.
We ended up spending a lot of time in that apartment that summer. Towards the end of Rob's lease, I remember lamentably toying with the idea of making off with a framed print that hung in the entry way. It was a little illustration by Edward Gorey of a little boy flying a kite, if memory serves. I'd always been a huge fan of Gorey, and it seemed like such an afterthought hanging in the public space of this random building. Who would miss it? Wisely, however, I decided against it and Rob's tenure there ended shortly thereafter. I wonder if it's still there.
In any case, I always think of that summer when I walk down Irving Place -- let alone whenever I hear anything off How The Gods Kill or Check Your Head -- and wonder if the apartment still looks like how I remember it. The building was renovated not too long ago, but I always catch myself peering into the basement-level windows, hoping to catch a glimpse.
So, those are all my reminisces of the place, but what's so striking about this particular building is that it has such a rich history. The same structure wherein Rob and I spent a summer acting like a pair of drunken, rock-crazed wisenheimers was built in 1843 and even played host to Oscar Wilde during his days in New York City. Over on Shorpy, meanwhile, I found the image below -- an amazing old photograph of the corner (47 is the building with the stoop) that dates back to around 1905 ... a good eighty-seven years before its halls rang with the mellifluous strains of Danzig. Click here to see the picture blown up in amazingly-defined detail.
I have zero idea who lives there now, but it's still a covetable bit of real estate, apart from the fact that it's directly across the street from Washington Irving High School, an insitution with a somewhat nefarious (albeit well-earned) reputation.
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