James Baldwin's Former Home In Greenwich Village

Last month, I went to Film Forum to see I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck's extraordinary Oscar-nominated feature-length documentary. It is based on James Baldwin's outline for a book that was never completed. The book was to be about the civil rights movement, American race relations, and the assassination of his friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

After seeing  I Am Not Your Negro, I went to the men's room. On my way out, I saw several pieces of film-related literature. The only exceptions were some cards distributed by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. In the center of each card was a color photograph of the bronze plaque placed by this organization on the facade of 81 Horatio Street. The plaque commemorates James Baldwin, who lived in the building from 1958 to 1961.

One of Baldwin's biographers, W.J. Weatherby, mentioned this residence in the biography and wrote that "Baldwin's apartment was two flights up in a rather drab building." Despite the building's drabness, this was one of the places where he wrote the novel, Another Country, published in 1962.

This townhouse, noted the card, "is a touchstone to Greenwich Village's history as an artist incubator, a progressive refuge, and an inclusive haven."

There is a Google map on the reverse side that has a long red line that extends from Film Forum's location on Houston Street to the Horatio Street building."Visit today," encouraged the historic preservation society via the message on the card, "and pay your respects to one of the Village's greatest and most influential residents." (www.gvshp.org)

I haven't visited the site yet, but I intend to when the weather gets warmer.