Okay, after first posting the question yesterday, I didn’t immediately expect that the location of this picture was going to be that tricky to divine. I assumed that someone would have documented the specifics (especially since the photograph features the still-feverishly-revered Patti Smith) on the `net, but if so — I’ll be damned if I could find it, let alone the name of the photographer who captured the shot.
So, as I’m wont to do, I posted a link to the question over on Facebook, and a few of the usual suspects dutifully weighed in. Obviously there are hundreds of little enclaves, mewses, lanes and gated gardens on this island — it could have been snapped virtually anywhere in Manhattan. My old high school pal Lela suggested the gated mews on West 10th Street between Sixth Ave and Greenwich Ave — specifically Patchin Place. I’ve taken a number of shots of Patchin Place over the years (most recently with my kids), but I couldn’t be sure, so I strolled back over there….
As you can tell, the entrance to Patchin Place seems far too wide for it to be the same entry Patti and Jim are obstructing. That said, there is that little place around the corner on Sixth Avenue…that being Milligan Place...
Close, but no real cigar.
Filmmaker Karen Gehres, meanwhile, suggested looking on the other side of town, specifically an address on East 12th Street just east of Second Avenue, catty-cornered to storied Italian eatery, John’s. Here’s that address….
That didn’t fit either. For some reason, meanwhile, I had a nagging feeling that it might the entrance to that little cemetery on West 21st Street, just steps to the west of Sixth Avenue…..
Nope, not it either. Maybe it was MacDougal Alley off 8th Street?
Nope, that’s also way too wide.
Earlier in the day, meanwhile, I’d trekked through the heart of the Village, thinking it might be an address on Minetta Street, specifically 19. That looked really close, but the gate didn’t match up.
At this point, I was getting frustrated. Then again, I thought, being that the photograph of Patti and Jim was most likely taken at some point in the early-to-mid 1970’s, the probability that some specifics of the location had changed over the ensuing decades was pretty high.
Bob Egan of PopSpots had the same suspicion. As such, I started scouring the `net, looking for images of some of these addresses from decades past.
I thought about maybe skimming through “Serpico,” the 1973 Al Pacino film, given that the protagonist lives in a tiny apartment down Minetta Street.
Instead, however, I wisely ignored that hunch and repaired to the photo archives of the New York Public Library. With a single search of the term “Minetta,” up came the image below, courtesy of the Brown Brothers from 1925 of 19 Minetta Street. Check out that gate.
WE HAVE A MATCH!
Case closed. Here I am this morning in front of the new gate (invariably to the chagrin of 19’s current occupants).
In my searching, I also came across this curious track by Anton Newcombe (he of the excellent Brian Jonestown Massacre). Here's a BJM demo dubbed "Jim Carroll Meets Patti Smith (as slurred by a very drunk Anton Newcombe)". Enjoy....
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