The Narrowest House in the Village

Between Commerce and Morton Streets, 75½ Bedford Street is just under ten feet wide, about nine and a half feet across its front and narrower still inside. It was built in 1873 on what had been a carriage alley beside its neighbor, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission considers it the city's narrowest townhouse. In 1923 the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay moved in with her new husband, Eugen Jan Boissevain. They had it remodeled, adding a skylit studio on the top floor and the stepped, Dutch-style gable that still faces the street. They stayed only about a year. Later residents included the cartoonist William Steig and the anthropologist Margaret Mead, and the children's author Ann McGovern, who wrote a picture book inspired by the house. A plaque beside the door remembers Millay's time here.