Recently updated

Larry David’s notebook Now with a link to a new source for little brown notebooks.

Charles Reznikoff, CH3-0065

This listing for the poet Charles Reznikoff comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory. Yes, it’s the poet: Selected Letters of Charles Reznikoff, 1917–1976 (1997) includes several letters from 1939 and 1940 written from this West 24th Street address. By October 1940, Reznikoff had moved to West 18th Street.

A related post
Milk bottles (with a Reznikoff poem)

[Is anyone else playing? If so, whom have you found?]

John Hammond, GR7-7967

John Hammond (John Henry Hammond Jr. or John Henry Hammond II) was a critic and music producer who played a significant role in the careers of Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Bob Dylan, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and many other musicians. From his 1977 autobiography John Hammond on Record: “Living on Sullivan Street I found myself in a circle of young people concerned with all sorts of causes, prepared to involve themselves at any risk.”

This listing comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

A related post
Demythifying John Hammond

Billie Holiday, ED4-4058

This listing comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940. Stuart Nicholson’s 1997 biography Billie Holiday confirms that Holiday and her mother Sadie lived for a time together at 286 West 142nd Street, in Apartment 2E.

Related posts
Billie Holiday, 1957
Portrait of Billie Holiday and Mister

Rudy Burckhardt and Edwin Denby, CH2-5097

The photographer Rudy Burckhardt and the dance critic and poet Edwin Denby moved into 145 W. 21st (a warehouse building) in 1935. Willem de Kooning lived nearby. Denby lived at this address until his death in 1983. These listings come from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

Related reading and viewing
“[A]s Edwin Denby would / write” (on lines in a Frank O’Hara poem)
“The Climate of New York” (Burckhardt–Denby collaboration)
Feature: Edwin Denby (Jacket 21)

Helen Cornell, FL7-7653-J

Mrs. Helen S. Cornell: the mother of the artist Joseph Cornell. Cornell lived for most of his life at 37-08 Utopia Parkway in Flushing, Queens. This listing comes from the 1940 Queens telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

[If I had an address on Utopia Parkway, I wouldn’t move either. If I had a J at the end of my number, I would wonder what it meant.]

Coleman Hawkins, ED4-2697

St. Nicholas Place, once the home of the tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, is up on Sugar Hill in Hamilton Heights in Harlem. Number 80 was and is an apartment building. This listing comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

Dwight Macdonald, GR3-0835

Yes, it’s “the” Dwight Macdonald who lived at this address. This listing comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

Thomas Merton, CH2-0476

Looking for musicians and writers in 1940 New York City telephone directories, I have had almost no luck. Did these people not have telephones?

But I have made one find. In 1939 and 1940, Thomas Merton, then a graduate student, lived in Greenwich Village at 35 Perry Street. And he had a phone. By September 1940 he was living at St. Bonaventure University. In December 1941 he left for the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky.

A related post
Thomas Merton and a snapshot

[The Perry Street address is well known to readers of Merton’s work. By the way: you don’t have to be Catholic or Christian or even a theist to love Thomas Merton.]

Billy Wilder in an Eames chair

[“Multiple exposure of film director Billy Wilder sitting in chair designed by Charles Eames made of plastic; one can easily jump around while watching television.” Photograph by Peter Stackpole. United States, August 1950. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
All Eames-related posts (via Pinboard)
Elizabeth Taylor (a Peter Stackpole photograph)
Olivetti showroom (a Peter Stackpole photograph)