May 11, 2010

Capote’s Willow Street House

“I live in Brooklyn. By choice…” Truman Capote lived in 70 Willow Street in Brooklyn and penned A House on the Heights while in residence there. willow street1From The Guardian:

The Brooklyn Heights home where Capote lived in the 1950s and 1960s - a five-storey, 11-bedroom townhouse built in 1839 - went on sale with Sotheby's International Realty yesterday for the first time in 70 years. Capote wrote his 1959 essay about Brooklyn, A House On the Heights, while living in the property, describing the splendour of its "beautiful staircase floating upward in white, swan-simple curves to a skylight of sunny amber-gold glass", willow street2 its walls "thick as a buffalo, immune to the mightiest cold, the meanest heat" and its "porch canopied, completely submerged, as though under a lake of leaves, by an ancient but admirably vigorous vine weighty with grapelike bunches of wisteria".willow street 6Capote rented the Willow Street house from the stage designer Oliver Smith, living in two basement rooms. However, George Plimpton writes in his introduction to A House on the Heights: "when friends came to call, he often took them on a tour of the entire house (when Smith was not at home) and said it was his house, all his, and that he had restored and decorated every room ... willow street 5 One of them (which Truman does not mention) contained Smith's mother's favourite furniture - old beaded lampshades, rocking chairs - indeed, a room whose decor must have given Truman pause to explain to his friends on his tours."willow street 3The author describes in A House On the Heights how, after a run of Martinis on the porch of the house with Smith, he eventually convinced his friend to rent him a few rooms in the property.willow street 8 "It got to be quite late, he began to see my point: yes, twenty-eight rooms were rather a lot; and yes, it seems only fair that I should have some of them."willow street 7 For more information about this one-of-a-kind house, now available for the first time in 70 years, click here.

14 comments:

  1. Too bad I don't have 18 mil lying around. Otherwise, I'd snatch this puppy up in a hearbeat!

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  2. A charming house. Thank you for sharing. I do believe Capote could talk himself into anything. He even died in a "borrowed" house.

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  3. Thanks for this write up...Mr Capote has always been a favorite of mine and this house and the stories surrounding his stay there make so much sense.

    Knowing about his life, reading his stories it all adds to his childlike demeanor.

    I adore him for all of it.

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  4. meh. i guess it's ok- i mean if you actually *like* a home with a drop-dead gorgeous staircase...

    ;-) (yes, i'd kill for it- such amazing potential, even being in brooklyn)

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  5. Funny Maison21, I adore it as well!! That staircase....to heaven!

    Karena

    Art by Karena

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  6. Just beautiful. And Capote, what a lovely mess he was! Hope you are well.

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  7. loved reading about this house - and that porch - everything looks just right - and thanks for the blogging - i agree it is hard , takes time but it is a wonderful community and I have learned so much - i too will miss aesthete's lament... maybe he will come back again; he did once before.

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  8. I don't think I'm the first to notice, but Truman had some mental issues, reality being one of them. But what an amazing house. And immortalized by Capote.
    Thank you for showing it. Amazing.

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  9. Great post! Thanks for sharing. Huge fan of Capote...who doesn't love Breakfast at Tiffany's?? Even though the novella was completely different from the movie, it was still great.

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  10. The pig is beautiful! And so appropriate. Thank you.

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  11. I LOVE that house! I especially love how country-house the yard and porch look for a city house. The best of both worlds. And Brooklyn would be a great place to live.

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  12. I'm sure you have read this book, but if not, "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" is a definite must for Pigtown.

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