Edna St. Vincent Millay, Kim Hunter, and Robert Emmett
New York, New York, New York
Marker Inscription
38 Commerce Street. In 1924 Edna St. Vincent Millay and a group of theatre artists converted a box factory into what would become The Cherry Lane Theatre. Through the years, it has become a showcase for the early works of Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Harold Pinter, and Sam Shepard, and continues to nurture emerging artists. Acclaimed actress Kim Hunter 1922-2002, lived above this theatre with her playwright husband Robert Emmett from 1954 until her death. Best known for creating the role of "Stella" in the Broadway and film version of "A Streetcar Named Desire" Kim's Academy Award-winning career spanned over 50 years of stage, screen, and television. She was a lifetime member of the BBC Block Association and a beloved citizen of Greenwich Village.
Erected by Bedford Barrow Commerce Block Association
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The Cherry Lane is one of the oldest continuously running off-Broadway theatres, a cradle of the experimental drama that reshaped the American stage.
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
- Sherman Zwicker0.9 mi away
- Cortlandt Alley1.0 mi away
- Textile building1.0 mi away
Food & drink
- Maman1.9 mi away
- Sweetgreen1.9 mi away
- Semicolon Cafe1.9 mi away
- Greene Hook Bar & Kitchen2.0 mi away
- Bluestone Lane2.0 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
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Related people
- · Edna St. Vincent Millay
- · Kim Hunter
- · Robert Emmett
Related events
- · Founding of the Cherry Lane Theatre
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Edna St. Vincent Millay
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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.
Jane Jakons Plaque
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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.
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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.
Dawn Powell
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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.