170 East 2nd Street | Block : 398 | Lot #53

Description & Building Alterations

Built in 1909, this brick, terra cotta, and stone new law tenement was designed in the Renaissance Revival style by architect Charles B. Meyers. The building originally had 34 apartments plus ground-floor shops. The details on the facade are stylized and geometric as trends were moving away from the exuberant, organic designs of the earlier Renaissance Revival and Second Empire styles. Machine-made decorations such as this eventually influenced the Art Deco movement.

From 1958 to 1961 beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his long-time partner, Peter Orlovsky, lived in apartment No. 16. Ginsberg wrote “Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg” in memory of his mother, in this apartment. While living here he also helped William S. Burroughs with the manuscript of his novel Naked Lunch, published in 1961.