149 Second Avenue; 147-149 Second Avenue | Block : 465 | Lot #53

Description & Building Alterations

This four story Greek Revival row house is the oldest on its block front and one of the only early houses on the avenue to retain its original stoop, and entryway with pilasters and entablature. The ground and parlor floors were originally used for commercial purposes and have been altered with the addition of a two-story projecting bay to the left of the stoop. The building was “tenementized,” heightened and converted to house multiple families, during the era of heavy immigration to the neighborhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sir Roderick Cameron, a prosperous merchant on South Street who ran a fleet of clipper ships in commerce with Australia, lived in this house in the late 1800s. In the 1890s through 1915, the house became the House of the Holy Comforter, aimed to care for Protestant women and children with incurable diseases. From 1963 until 1965, the building housed Café Le Metro, an antique furniture store and coffee house. Poet Paul Blackburn organized many poetry readings here, and many other notable poets read at this site: John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Frank O’Hara, Robert Duncan, Anne Waldman, Kenneth Koch, Ted Berrigan, Denise Levertov, Miguel Algarín, Diane di Prima, Ed Dorn, Edwin Denby, Patti Smith, and Allen Ginsberg. In 1977, Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell shared the stage here for the first and only time.