New York Songlines: Bethune Street

West St | Washington St | Greenwich St | Hudson St |

Named for Johanna Bethune, nee Graham, who co-founded the New York Orphan Asylum and started the city's first school for "young ladies." She gave the city the land for this street.



HUDSON RIVER

S <===                         WEST STREET                         ===> N

South:

Westbeth

77: Once the Bell Telephone/Western Electric Laboratories, this full-block complex created or helped to develop some of the most important inventions of the 20th Century: the vacuum tube (1912), radar (1919), sound movies (1923) and the digital computer (1937). One of the first demonstrations of television transmission occurred here, April 27, 1927. Westbeth was also the original home of the NBC radio network.

The complex was converted to an artists' colony in 1969; photographer Diane Arbus committed suicide here, July 28, 1971. Actor Vin Diesel grew up here.

57: Congregation Beth Simchat Torah / Gay Synagogue

55: Merce Cunningham Dance; this dance space, part of the Westbeth complex, also served as a studio for John Cage, who collaborated with Cunningham.

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North:

70 (corner): Superior Printing Ink





















S <===                         WASHINGTON STREET                         ===> N

South:

19-29: 1837 Greek Revival row houses.

27: There's a memoir by one Patrick Carroll, Notes of a Footnote, that talks in part about growing up here in the 1940s and '50s.

27: Actress Jennifer Grey has lived here, which was also the address of Howard Campbell in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night.

23: Photographer Walker Evans lived here in the early 1930s.



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North:

36: Built 1837.

24-34: Houses from 1845. No. 32 houses Michtom Vineyards.








S <===                         GREENWICH STREET                         ===> N

South:

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North:










2: City Dog Obedience School


S <===                         HUDSON STREET                         ===> N

Abingdon Square

Peter Warren, who owned most of Greenwich Village, gave his daughter Charlotte land around this square when she married Willoughby Bertie, the Earl of Abingdon. When New York was replacing British placenames in 1794, Abingdon Square was spared because the Abingdons had defended the American rebellion in England.

Statue in the square is a World War I doughboy.



Is your favorite Bethune Street spot missing? Write to Jim Naureckas and tell him about it.

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