About Truman's Place in the Heights

For years I lived in Brooklyn Heights, on the parlor floor of an 1843 red-brick row house, and though I had a lovely garden out back I loved to go walking through the neighborhood to enjoy the morning or evening air, to clear my mind, to see what people were doing with the plantings in front of their houses, and sometimes to contemplate the cultural life that had quietly enlivened the neighborhood throughout the years. Among the literary and other cultural celebrities who have lived or worked in the Heights are Henry Miller, Arthur Miller, Hart Crane, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright, John Dos Passos, and James Purdy; and also, in a now-demolished boardinghouse at 7 Middagh Street that enjoyed a reputation for somewhat louche goings-on, Carson McCullers, W.H. Auden, Paul and Jane Bowles, siblings Erika and Klaus Mann, and even Gypsy Rose Lee. It was a house that the opera singer Sir Peter Pears, who lived there briefly with his life partner Benjamin Britten, once described to me with wicked glee as “pure bohemia!” (You can read all about the Middagh Street house in Sherill Tippins’ 2006 book February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Brooklyn.)

Not to mention the great Walt Whitman, who lived close by in Brooklyn for twenty-eight years and whose first edition of Leaves of Grass was produced by the Rome Brothers Print Shop at Fulton and Cranberry Streets. Living in the Heights was like rubbing elbows with some of my idols! I mean, Norman Mailer, who lived on prestigious Columbia Heights, worked out at my gym—and though old and somewhat frail at the time he was still summoning up enough scary/sweet energy to flirt outrageously with his women trainers. I was a contributor to cultural publications during those years and often wrote about ballet, so I knew that the magnificent, four-bay-wide, 1839 Greek Revival mansion at 70 Willow Street, now owned by Grand Theft auto creator Dan Houser and his wife Krystyna (I know, I know…), was the home of scenic and interior designer Oliver Smith, a co-director of American Ballet Theater. I hadn’t realized that the “Truman Capote house” I'd heard about was Smith’s until a wise old friend put me in the picture: Between 1955 and 1965 Truman rented the basement of 70 Willow and finished Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories there and wrote much of In Cold Blood there, too. When talking about his Brooklyn Heights home Truman would refer to his basement apartment as “the first floor” and often, when Smith was away, he'd show people around the mansion, happy to let them assume that the whole place was his….

(And speaking of Brooklyn Heights, let me highly recommend Jenny Jackson's Pineapple Street, a smart and delicious contemporary tale set in the Heights....)