Heres your walking tour guide of Woody Guthrie’s old Greenwich Village and East Village haunts, as documented in the three-disc set, My Name Is New York: Ramblin Around Woody Guthries Town.’ The tour starts at his first apartment on Charles Street and ends at his last in the East Village.
74 Charles Street, Apartment 5FE – Nicknamed El Rancho Del Sol, Woody Guthrie recorded Im a Child to Fight at this then-$27-a-month, fourth floor walk-up apartment – the first where he alone signed the lease and paid the rent.
130 West 10th Street – Dubbed Almanac House #2, this creative co-op was the spot where Guthrie wrote The Sinking of the Reuben James when not performing at the informal, basement concerts he and the Almanac singers hosted in order to pay rent.
148 West 14th Street, 3rd Floor, Room 14 – In 1942, Guthrie took a break from writing songs to write his autobiography, Bound for Glory in this Greenwich Village apartment. Its rumored that Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and even Joe Strummer carried the book in their back-pockets, intrigued by the story of the Dust Bowl Balladeer.
70 East 12th Street, 5th Floor After hitchhiking from Oregon to NY, Guthrie ended up at this now defunct loft building where he spent his time socializing with NYCs political progressives including artist Rockwell Kent, writer Dashiell Hammett, poet Walter Lowenfels, and composer Mark Blitzstein.
**517 East 5th Street, Apartment 14 – Guthries last NYC apartment before he was admitted to Brooklyn State Hospital with a diagnosis of Huntingtons chorea. While in the hospital, Sunday visits with Woody were common. Peter Seeger, Cisco Houston, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Ramblin Jack Elliott all visited and would play the songs they had learned from him.
**Pictured above
Places To Buy ‘My Name Is New York’:
Woody Guthrie Website: http://tinyurl.com/MyNameIsNY-WG
Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/MyNameIsNY-AZ
CD Baby & Digital Download: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mynameisnewyorkdeluxeaud
‘My Name Is New York’ on the Web:
http://woodyguthrie.org/MyNameIsNY/index.htm
