Willa Cather and Richard Wright
New York, New York, New York
Marker Inscription
Willa Cather / Richard Wright 1873-1947 / 1908-1960 Willa Cather, author of My Antonia, wrote her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, here in 1912. Richard Wright, author of Native Son, wrote his autobiography, Black Boy, here in 1945.
Erected by Historic Landmarks Preservation Center
The Story
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.
Why it matters
That two such different giants of American letters found workspace in the same Greenwich Village building underscores the neighborhood's outsized role as a home for the nation's literary imagination.
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 Art1.1 mi away
- Bureau1.2 mi away · 112 Duane Street
- Hall des Lumières1.3 mi away · 49 Chambers Street, New York, NY
- Cloud Gallery1.3 mi away
- MĒRCER LABS1.6 mi away · 21 Dey Street
Attractions
- The River Project Wetlab0.8 mi away
- FDNY Ladder 80.9 mi away · 14 North Moore Street, New York
- Dream house1.0 mi away
- Cortlandt Alley1.0 mi away
- Textile building1.1 mi away
- Chinatown1.1 mi away
Food & drink
- Maman2.1 mi away
- Sweetgreen2.1 mi away
- Semicolon Cafe2.2 mi away
- Bluestone Lane2.2 mi away
- Greene Hook Bar & Kitchen2.2 mi away
- Yaso2.2 mi away · 30 Hudson Street, Jersey City, NJ
Places to stay
- Conrad1.4 mi away · 102 North End Avenue, New York
- M Social Hotel New York Downtown1.5 mi away · 55 Church Street, New York, NY
- Residence Inn New York Downtown Manhattan/World Trade Center Area1.6 mi away · 170 Broadway, New York, NY
- Holiday Inn1.7 mi away · 51 Nassau Street
- World Center Hotel1.7 mi away · 144 Washington Street, New York, NY
- Club Quarters Hotel at World Trade Center1.7 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
- · Willa Cather
- · Richard Wright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Marian Anderson
New York, NY
The great contralto Marian Anderson lived here from 1958 to 1975, by then already an American icon. In 1939, after the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from Constitution Hall because of her race, she sang instead before 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in a landmark moment for civil rights. She was the first African American to perform at the White House in 1936 and the first to become a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera in 1955, and she later served as an alternate delegate to the United Nations.
Rosa Parks
Newark, NJ
This monument honors Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 helped ignite the modern civil rights movement. The quotation carved here distills the quiet conviction that made her act of defiance so powerful — a stand rooted not in anger but in a steady sense of what was right. Newark, a city with its own deep African American history and civil rights struggles, claims her legacy as part of the national story it shares.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
New York, NY
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.
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.