6. Willa Cather: 5 Bank Street

A view of Willa Cather’s home on Bank Street today, where she wrote many of her greatest works

Though Willa Cather is known for the Western prairie settings of her books, she spent the last forty years of her life in New York City. She lived at four different homes in Greenwich Village over the years, in a domestic partnership with an editor named Edith Lewis. However, the most significant of the four homes was at 5 Bank Street, where she lived from 1913 to 1927 and created most of her prominent works.

In 1906, her and Edith moved to their first address at 60 Washington Square South, followed by 82 Washington Place in 1909, where there is a plaque honoring her. From 1927-1932, she lived at the Grosvenor Hotel at 35 Fifth Avenue. Until her death, she lived uptown at 570 Park Avenue.