Did you know that Glenn Close's fictional loft in Fatal Attraction was located on Gansevoort Street? We did. The downtown landscape is littered with stories — some known, some not-so-known, some criminally neglected. So Standard Culture put together its personal panoply for your perusal. Lonely planet this is not. So while the less informed tourist will trek to Times Square (the horror!), we encourage you to strap on some sneakers or a late summer sandal, and strike out from The Standard, High Line or The Standard, East Village in search of our great city’s more mysterious, alluring, and lesser-known landmarks.
1. Five 9th Avenue RuPaul’s place in the early ‘80s
2. 25 Gansevoort Street Glenn Close’s fictional Meatpacking loft in Fatal Atraction (1987)
3. 222 Bowery A converted YMCA, home to William Burroughs’ infamous “Bunker”
4. 61 Carmine Street Where Edgar Allen Poe, at the height of his opium addiction, wrote "The Raven"
5. 46 East Houston Street Former site of Nikola Tesla’s Lab
6. 98 3rd Avenue Former home of The Nursery (1978-84), a notorious after-hours bar where John Belushi and Anita Pallenberg hung out
7. 325 Broome Street Keith Haring’s old apartment
8. 57 Great Jones Street Jean Michel-Basquiat’s studio, where he OD’d in 1988. Andy Warhol, who passed away a year earlier, had been his landlord
9. 103 Avenue A Convicted Russian spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s apartment
10. 13 St. Mark’s Place Where Lenny Bruce lived after his obscenity trial
11. 77 St. Mark’s Place Offices of Novy Mir, the lefty newspaper where Leon Trotsky worked in 1917 just before the revolution; also the longtime home of W.H. Auden
12. 44 St. Mark’s Place Former residence of “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz
