Growing Up Bank Street: A Greenwich Village Memoir

by Donna Florio

Overview

A vivid memoir of life in one of New York City’s most dynamic neighborhoods

Growing Up Bank Street is an evocative, tender account of life in Greenwich Village, on a unique street that offered warmth, support, and inspiration to an adventurous and openhearted young girl. Bank Street, a short strip of elegant brownstones and humble tenements in Greenwich Village, can trace its lineage back to the yellow fever epidemics of colonial New York. In the middle of the last century, it became home to a cast of extraordinary characters whose stories intertwine in this spirited narrative.

Growing up, Donna Florio had flamboyant, opera performer parents and even more free-spirited neighbors. As a child, she lived among beatniks, artists, rock musicians, social visionaries, movie stars, and gritty blue-collar workers, who imparted to her their irrepressibly eccentric life rules. The real-life Auntie Mame taught her that she is a divine flame from the universe. John Lennon, who lived down the street, was gracious when she dumped water on his head. Sex Pistols star Sid Vicious lived in the apartment next door, and his heroin overdose death came as a wake-up call during her wild twenties. An elderly Broadway dancer led by brave example as Donna helped him comfort dying Villagers in the terrifying early days of AIDS, and a reclusive writer gave her a path back from the brink when, as a witness to the attacks of 9/11, her world collapsed. These vibrant vignettes weave together a colorful coming of age tale against the backdrop of a historic, iconoclastic street whose residents have been at the heart of the American story.

As Greenwich Village gentrifies and the hallmarks of its colorful past disappear, Growing Up Bank Street gives the reader a captivating glimpse of the thriving culture that once filled its storied streets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479803200
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Series:	Washington Mews Books , #10
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,073,226
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Donna Florio is a lifelong resident of Bank Street in Greenwich Village. Nurtured by colorful, eccentric neighbors who taught her to “never wonder about life from the outside. Jump in!” Donna has, over the years, worked as an opera singer, a TV producer, a Wall Street executive, and an educator, and has backpacked around the world.

Table of Contents

Foreword Constance Rosenblum viii

My Bank Street

1 Six Blocks of America 3

2 Opera on Bank Street 18

My Building

3 The Frydels 35

4 Mr. Bendtsen 40

5 Mrs. Swanson and the Browders 45

6 John Lavery 54

7 Grace Bickers 56

8 Lena 61

9 Sabine 70

10 Sid Vicious 80

Artistic Bank Street

11 John, Yoko, Rex, and Many More 91

12 Al 98

13 John Kemmerer 108

14 George and Gloria 122

Stylish and Splendid Bank Street

15 Jack Heineman Jr. 127

16 Jack and Madeline Gilford 134

17 Auntie Mame: Marion Tanner 139

18 Bella Abzug 149

Secret Bank Street

19 The Jester, the Bishop, and the Eavesdropper 159

20 Stella Crater 163

21 Yeffe Kimball 170

The Heart of Bank Street

22 Billy Joyce 181

23 Marty, Roz, and Marty's Harem 190

24 The Many Kinds of Friendships 196

Epilogue 203

Acknowledgments 205

Works Consulted 209

Index 213

About the Author 225

Illustrations follow page 123

Editorial Reviews

01/25/2021

Florio charms in her debut memoir about a life well-lived on Greenwich Village’s Bank Street. “America would be a far better country if it were more like the old Village,” she writes of the neighborhood, which was full of artists, activists, and celebrities, and which she’s called home since the 1950s. In a series of vignettes, Florio pays homage to her neighbors including activist Bella Abzug, who was famous for her fight for women’s rights, but known to Florio as the vulnerable woman who had a strained relationship with her father, and John Lennon, whom she accidentally poured water on while watering petunias on her fire escape (“John smiled up at me. ‘No worries,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘It’s OK.’ ”). She also recounts interactions with Sid Vicious, the Sex Pistols bass player and a “vague, skinny boy who mumbled proper greetings while his eyes wandered the sky,” and recounts her sorrow at his 1979 death. Florio’s most moving recollections are of cherished friends: the upstairs family who sheltered Florio from her argumentative parents; the poet John Kemmerer, whose work inspired her own; and Broadway dancer Billy Jewell, who shared stories of friends he lost during the 1970s and ’80s AIDS crisis. This sentimental memoir will uplift any reader, no matter where they may call home. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"If you love a particular New York street, if you love any city street, you will be entranced by Donna Florio's Growing Up Bank Street, her poignant, sometimes hilarious, occasionally heart-breaking memoir about coming of age on an iconic stretch of an iconic neighborhood. In a city that seemingly grows more monied and more corporate by the day, she captures a moment when a neighborhood could be defined by the human bonds and connections forged on its streets. Thanks to Florio's book, we can return, at least briefly and in memory, to a golden if sometimes tarnished era in the city's history."

Constance Rosenblum

"A fascinating read from cover to cover, Growing Up Bank Street is an extraordinary collection of reminisces and memories."

Midwest Book Review

"Does a street that’s only six blocks long rate a whole book? I wouldn’t have thought so... But Donna Florio’s Growing Up Bank Street turned me around. The fact is that this modest strip of brownstones and smallish apartment buildings has had a monumental impact on American culture."

Air Mail

"With ‘Spaldeens’ from the five-and-dime store; the drug store’s ice cream counter; deceased Sid Vicious and oh-so-many celebrities—both notorious and infamous; the Commies; the alcoholic hoarder; the butcher shop; and Italian restaurant, Florio provides a taste of not only her building at number 63, but of a most colorful piece of Greenwich Village, Manhattan real estate, filled with eccentric and perhaps the most diverse characters in this universe."

New York Journal of Books

"In Greenwich Village, longshoremen drank with poets and showgirls cavorted with judges. Yet somehow, this book takes you to a street and a world that feels like home no matter where you grew up."

Joe Gilford

"A vibrant, heartfelt memoir, centered on one of Greenwich Village’s most notable series of blocks. A lifelong New Yorker, Florio combines historical context with personal experiences in her kaleidoscopic account, which spans from the Colonial era to more recent gentrification. … Florio fills each chapter with verve and colorful observations. Her decades on Bank Street gave her access to ‘every social, cultural, and economic layer of American life’—a breadth reflected in her knowledge of New York, and in her love for the city as well."

Foreword Reviews

"An absolutely delightful book about one of New York's storied city blocks."

Graydon Carter

"Evidencing the unique kinds of lives that cities can foster, Florio’s heartfelt work is like a valentine marking a place in that book’s pages, dedicated to a way of life that’s largely vanished."

The Red Hook Star-Revue

"Back in high school, there was always something a little extra cool, if hard to define, about Bank Street. Reading this book, I get it now. Donna Florio has taken a heartfelt deep dive into one of my favorite neighborhoods growing up. These pages are teeming with so many wonderful details and insights, you’ll feel like you grew up there too—or maybe just wish you did."

Paul Reiser

"Donna Florio had an eclectic Greenwich Village childhood, with opera-singer parents, neighbor John Lennon just down the street and Sex Pistols star Sid Vicious in the apartment next door. A delightful look back at a bygone neighborhood of beatniks and bohemians in a very different New York City."

New York Post

"Donna Florio’s immersive chronicle of one classic Greenwich Village street is a fascinating microcosm that opens a window onto the hopes and struggles of a family, a city, and ultimately a nation."

Eric Myers

"I can’t recall when I’ve had a more engrossing read. Let Donna Florio take you through several decades in the walkup building and the street in Greenwich Village where she has spent much of her life. The Village has always been a creative caldron, attracting artistic and showbiz figures, and Florio knew many of them as neighbors and friends — and she provides you with an intimate look at them and also some lesser-known figures, taking you from the Broadway of the 1920s through the Cold War through the punks of the 1970s. A former child opera singer and excellent storyteller, Florio’s characters are realized on the Bank Street stage. Along the way, you’ll meet some of the Village’s desperate, funny, engaging personages and you’ll be convinced you know them too, even if you have never come within a mile of the neighborhood."

author of Forgotten New York: Views of a Lost Kevin Walsh

"Bank Street, which runs six blocks through the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village, is the lifelong home of Donna Florio, born to operatic parents at Number 63 between West Fourth and Bleecker. With Growing Up Bank Street Donna has done a great service to the neighborhood, bestowing great love on the colorful iconoclasts of the day. There was no one more Bohemian (“a person who lives free of conventional rules”) than Marion Tanner, my Buddhist great-aunt and inspiration for my father Patrick Dennis’s 1955 bestseller Auntie Mame. In the Thirties Marion knew Everyone, including George Gershwin, Martha Graham, D.H. Lawrence, Billie Holiday, and Eugene O’Neill. In the Sixties she turned Number 72 into a free boarding house and took in Anyone, to the chagrin of her Bank Street neighbors, my generous but not-infinitely-patient father, and the Internal Revenue Service. The reader of Donna’s delightful pages will re-enter the Bohemian paradise of yore that has, sadly, been priced out of existence."

Dr. Michael Tanner Bellevue Hospital

"An intimate and affectionate memoir that restores a vanished corner of New York to the vibrant life that nurtured the eccentricities of Upper and Lower Bohemia. Bank Street thrived for a century even though it was surrounded by a suspicious working-class conformity, but all shared a neighborhood in common humanity that was blown away by too much money."

Lawrence Malkin

2021-01-07
A native Greenwich Villager shares her intimate memories of Manhattan’s bohemian paradise.

Florio, a former TV producer, Wall Street executive, and opera singer, has spent the majority of her life as a resident of one of the nation’s most eccentric and colorful communities. “My childhood neighbors,” she writes, “were painters, social activists, writers, longshoremen, actors, postmen, musicians, trust-fund bohemians, and office workers. Some were born here; others came because our street let them live and think as they liked. I listened to debates on socialism, reincarnation, vegetarianism, and politics on stoops and in grocery stores.” As “the offspring of free-spirited artists,” the author has always been in tune with the vibrancy of her neighborhood. With rich detail and compassion, Florio takes us into her world, sharing many of the poignant memories of her life among “the neighbors who became my allies and surrogate family.” Some of the more memorable anecdotes include the author’s early visit to the Amato Opera on Bleeker Street, where she “toddled around a warm backstage world of Egyptian slaves, French courtesans, and Spanish gypsies”; and reminiscences of an eccentric babysitter, the “real-life aunt of the author Patrick Dennis, who wrote the best-selling novel Auntie Mame, which would spawn a Broadway play, a Hollywood movie, and a Broadway musical.” Florio also shares stories of resident spies and “high-ranking Communists,” the disco era, the frenzied media response to the death of Sid Vicious in 1979, and the humiliating moment when, watering her plants, she accidentally poured water on a passing couple, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Most touching of all are the many warm (and sometimes heartbreaking) memories of her neighbors opening their homes and hearts to each other. Thanks to Florio, as the Village continues to face gentrification, like many neighborhoods across America, we will never forget Bank Street.

A charming stroll down Memory Lane and a tribute to a vanishing culture.

Kirkus Reviews