They may not look like ballet dancers

[555 Hudson Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

“The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and any one place is always replete with new improvisations”: Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961).

Having hit the halfway point (no. 40) in the Penguin Little Black Classics box set, Elaine and I are taking a break to read Jane Jacobs. And so I thought to look up her Greenwich Village address. Jacobs and her husband Robert Hyde Jacobs Jr. bought this 1842 building in 1947 and lived there from 1947 to 1968. Jacobs wrote elsewhere. But she lived above a candy store. I like knowing that, and I like seeing that this tax photograph has people on the sidewalk.

Further reading
555 Hudson Street (City Lore)
Virtual Plaque Unveiling: The Home of Jane Jacobs, 555 Hudson Street (Village Preservation)

You can see a photograph of Jacobs (and her husband and a son) at the second link. There’s still a Hoffman sign on the candy store in that photograph, dated “about 1950.”

Thanks to the anonymous reader who pointed out two typos — or is it dictos? Someday I’m going to learn to stop trusting dictation.

Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard) : Jacobs on cities destroyed by their success : Jacobs on credentialing vs. educating : Jacobs on cultural xenophobia