Edna St. Vincent Millay
New York, New York, New York
Marker Inscription
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892-1950 The irreverent poet, who wrote "my candle burns at both ends" lived here in 1923-24 at the time she wrote the "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver," for which she won a Pulitzer Prize.
Erected by Historic Landmarks Preservation Center
The Story
Edna St. Vincent Millay was the free-spirited voice of Jazz Age America, famous for the lines "my candle burns at both ends." While living at this Greenwich Village address in 1923-24, she wrote "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver," which won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She was among the first women to be so honored.
Why it matters
Millay embodied the liberated, bohemian spirit of 1920s Greenwich Village and helped open the highest literary honors to American women.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early 1920s, Greenwich Village had become the beating heart of bohemian America — a warren of crooked streets in lower Manhattan where writers, artists, and free thinkers gathered in cheap rooms and lively cafés. It was a place that prized independence and self-invention, and it drew people determined to live by their own rules.
The decade itself was one of exhilarating change. The First World War was over, women had newly won the vote, and a younger generation was throwing off Victorian restraint in dress, manners, and art. The Jazz Age crackled with a sense that old certainties had loosened and something bolder was possible.
Into that moment stepped a new kind of literary celebrity — poets who were as famous for how they lived as for what they wrote. The Village was the natural stage for such a figure, and this address places its subject at the very center of that world in the years when her star was at its brightest.
People & events
Edna St. Vincent Millay lived here in 1923 and 1924, at the height of her fame. She was already known for lines that captured her generation's restless spirit — the famous image of a candle burning at both ends, giving a brilliant but fleeting light.
During these years at this address, she wrote "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver," the work for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. It was a remarkable honor, placing her among the first women recognized at that level in American poetry.
Millay's reputation rested on more than accolades. She was irreverent and independent, a public personality whose readings drew crowds and whose verse spoke directly to readers who felt the pull of freedom and the ache of impermanence. To live where she lived is to stand at the address where celebrated lines took shape.
Its place in the American story
Millay's achievement mattered far beyond her own bookshelf. Winning the Pulitzer Prize for poetry as a woman helped open the country's highest literary honors to women writers, widening the sense of who could stand at the summit of American letters.
She also came to embody an entire cultural moment. More than almost any other figure, she personified the liberated, bohemian spirit of 1920s Greenwich Village — the conviction that a life could be lived intensely, on one's own terms, and that art could be both serious and thrillingly alive.
That combination — genuine literary distinction and cultural symbolism — is why a plain doorway becomes a landmark. It marks the intersection of a great individual talent with a national turning point in how Americans thought about women, art, and independence.
If you visit
This is a stop for the imagination more than the camera. You are looking at a private residence in Greenwich Village, so admire it from the street and let the neighborhood do the rest of the work.
Wander the surrounding blocks. The Village's narrow, angled streets still carry the atmosphere that drew writers and artists a century ago, and it is easy to picture a young poet coming and going here during the two years when she wrote a Pulitzer-winning work.
Build it into a literary walking route through lower Manhattan. Read a few of Millay's lines before you go — then stand where she once stood and feel how a single address can hold the spark of an entire era.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- 81 Leonard Gallery1.0 mi away
- Gerben Fine Art1.0 mi away
- Bureau1.1 mi away · 112 Duane Street
- Cloud Gallery1.2 mi away
- Hall des Lumières1.2 mi away · 49 Chambers Street, New York, NY
- 9/11 Memorial & Museum1.4 mi away · 180 Greenwich Street, New York, NY
Attractions
- The River Project Wetlab0.5 mi away
- FDNY Ladder 80.8 mi away · 14 North Moore Street, New York
- Dream house0.9 mi away
- Cortlandt Alley1.0 mi away
- Textile building1.0 mi away
- Sherman Zwicker1.0 mi away
Food & drink
- Maman1.9 mi away
- Sweetgreen1.9 mi away
- Semicolon Cafe2.0 mi away
- Bluestone Lane2.0 mi away
- Greene Hook Bar & Kitchen2.0 mi away
- Yaso2.0 mi away · 30 Hudson Street, Jersey City, NJ
Places to stay
- Conrad1.3 mi away · 102 North End Avenue, New York
- M Social Hotel New York Downtown1.4 mi away · 55 Church Street, New York, NY
- Residence Inn New York Downtown Manhattan/World Trade Center Area1.5 mi away · 170 Broadway, New York, NY
- Holiday Inn1.6 mi away · 51 Nassau Street
- World Center Hotel1.6 mi away · 144 Washington Street, New York, NY
- Club Quarters Hotel at World Trade Center1.6 mi away · 140 Washington Street, New York, NY
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Edna St. Vincent Millay
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Kim Hunter, and Robert Emmett
New York, NY
In 1924 the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and fellow theatre artists converted a Greenwich Village box factory into the Cherry Lane Theatre, which became a proving ground for daring new American drama, staging early work by Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Harold Pinter, and Sam Shepard. Decades later the Academy Award–winning actress Kim Hunter—celebrated as the original "Stella" in A Streetcar Named Desire—lived above the theatre with her playwright husband, Robert Emmett, until her death in 2002.
Willa Cather and Richard Wright
New York, NY
Two towering American authors worked within these walls a generation apart. Here in 1912 Willa Cather, later famed for My Antonia, wrote her first novel, Alexander's Bridge. And here in 1945 Richard Wright, author of the searing Native Son, wrote his autobiography, Black Boy. The address quietly joins the prairie realism of one writer to the unflinching testimony of another.
Jane Jakons Plaque
New York, NY
In a modest 1842 rowhouse on Hudson Street, the writer and urbanist Jane Jacobs spent two decades observing the everyday life of Greenwich Village from her own front stoop. Her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, drew on that street-level view to challenge the mid-century orthodoxy of slum clearance and expressway-building, arguing that dense, mixed-use neighborhoods were assets to protect rather than blight to erase. From this address she also helped organize the grassroots campaigns that closed Washington Square to through traffic and blocked Robert Moses' proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway, a highway that would have leveled swaths of SoHo and the Village.
Dawn Powell
New York, NY
From 1931 to 1942 the novelist and diarist Dawn Powell lived at this Greenwich Village address, turning out sharp comic novels like Turn, Magic Wheel and A Time to Be Born. An Ohio transplant, she made a career of skewering both small-town Midwestern life and the glittering ambitions of New York. Nearly forgotten at her death in 1965, Powell found an ardent new readership in the 1990s.