14 Gay Street: NYC, Myself and Eileen

An Argosy find

I had walked past this place many an evening on the way to Ty’s, my favorite Greenwich Village watering hole. This time, though, it was mid-afternoon and I turned left, leaving Christopher for Gay Street. I had come here specially to take a picture of number 14, the former residence of two sisters who, for about a quarter of a century or so, were household names across America. Ruth and Eileen McKenney had been on my mind ever since I saw that production of Wonderful Town on a visit to Manchester, England—and the gals, whose misadventures are tunefully related in said musical, seemed determined to stay there. On my mind, that is, not up in the Salford docklands; though, judging from their experience way down here on Gay Street, they might not have minded the docks.

A few days earlier, I had happened upon a copy of Ruth McKenney’s All About Eileen (1952) in the basement of the Argosy, one of my favorite antiquarian bookstores in town. I hadn’t even been looking for it at the time. In fact, I had been unaware that such an anthology of McKenney’s New Yorkerstories existed.

Eileen was lying there all the same—prominently if carelessly displayed, draped in a flashy, tantalizingly torn jacket that stood out among the drab, worn-out linen coats of a great number of unassuming second-hand Roses about to be put in their place—waiting to be picked up. I don’t flatter myself. My company was of no consequence to Eileen. If I was being lured, it was no doubt owing to an itch Eileen had to get out of yet another basement.

Not straight ahead

Thinking of the case I had to lug to the airport before long—and the less than commodious accommodations that would await Eileen in my study—I had hesitated and walked out alone; but I soon changed my mind, returned to the Argosy, and, to my relief, found Eileen still there, though shifted a little as if to say “I’m not thateasy” and to make me suffer for waffling.

14 Gay Street

And here I was now, a week later. 14 Gay Street. It’s an unassuming walk-up, next to a scaffolded shell of a building that, a friend told me, had been on fire a while ago. Walk-up! More like a step-down for Ruth and Eileen. The two had been naïve enough to rent barely-fit-for-living quarters below street level, unaware that the construction of a new subway line was going to rattle their nerves and rob them of what one of their first visitors, a burglar, could not readily bag: their sleep.

“[W]e lived in mortal terror falling into the Christopher Street subway station,” Ruth recalled, making light of her darksome days in their damp “little cave.”

Every time a train roared by, some three feet under our wooden floor, all our dishes rattled, vases swayed gently, and startled guests dropped drinks.

Wisteria on Gay Street

From the outside, at least, 14 Gay Street looked perfectly serene on that quiet, sunny afternoon. I was not the only one stopping by, though. I walked up to what I assumed to be a fellow admirer of Eileen’s; as it turned out, he was oblivious that the very spot had given rise to such lore as was retold on page, screen and stage. He only had eyes for the wisteria that had taken its chances—and its time—to sidle up to and ravage a neighboring property.

Imposing as that looked, I had my heart set on those small dark windows peering from behind the pavement like a pair of Kilroy peepers. Eileen was here, I thought, and was glad to have seen what seemed too little to look at. Indifference, after all, is in the passerby’s eye.

I wonder now: How many sites of the city—fabled but forsaken—are daily escaping the sightseer’s gaze?

2 Replies to “14 Gay Street: NYC, Myself and Eileen”

I recall that on one of your NYC visits you visited the Algonquin. Did you think of Dorothy Parker? Oh, the thought of all those wits at one table. It must have been something wonderful.

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I remember you asking whether I’d go and telling me that you’d love to visit; but, so far, I have never set foot in the Algonquin. I hear it has changed since the Crash. The Vicious Circle has been broken by too many square pegs.

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2 Replies to “14 Gay Street: NYC, Myself and Eileen”

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