Much of Another Country takes place in Greenwich Village, the famed bohemian enclave in New York City. Though its history was colorful throughout the centuries since its founding (it was first mentioned in New York City records in 1713), we will look at its character and culture during the 1950s, which is when Baldwin set his novel.
In the post-WWII era, Greenwich Village was a haven for beatniks and creatives of all stripes—painters, poets, jazz musicians, intellectuals, novelists, playwrights, and more all called the neighborhood home. In the 1950s it still felt like a literal village, though it exploded in wider popularity in the 1960s and received thousands of new visitors and residents.
The luminaries are legion: Jack Kerouac lived at Marlton House while writing The Subterraneans and Tritessa, Dylan Thomas died at the White Horse Tavern in 1953 after a night of binge drinking, the Abstract Expressionists—among them, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell— gathered at Cedar Horse Tavern almost nightly, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon played to small crowds at Cafe Wha?, and Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown choreographed avant-garde dances at Judson Memorial Church. The neighborhood drew many LGBTQ+ people, providing as much of a refuge as a place could during the repressive 1950s; Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, a well-known gay bar, was the site of a riot against the police in 1969 that began the Gay Liberation Movement.
Notable places included Arthur’s Tavern, nicknamed “the home of the Bird” because Charlie “Bird” Parker played there regularly until his death in 1955; the Gaslight Cafe, where Allen Ginsburg and Gregory Corso recited poetry; and Washington Square Park, which was slated to have city planner Robert Moses’s Lower Manhattan Expressway cut a swath right through it until residents, led by journalist Jane Jacobs, successfully campaigned to save it, leading the city to close it to traffic for good on June 25, 1958.
Baldwin himself lived at 81 Horatio from 1958-1961, years in which he worked on Another Country. There is now a plaque on the facade of the building commemorating Baldwin’s time there.
