Walt Whitman

Listing photos courtesy of Douglas Elliman

February 11, 2021

Asking $750K, this 316-year-old Colonial in Huntington was home to Walt Whitman’s ancestors

In 1705, this home was built for Nehemiah Whitman, great-grandfather to Walt Whitman. It's also where the poet's grandfather, Jesse Whitman, was born. And in 1881, according to Douglas Elliman, Walt Whitman himself visited the property, stopping at its private cemetery where he "composed a lament on the graves of his ancestors." Since its construction, the Colonial has had only four owners, and after last selling in 1995, it's now on the market for $750,000. Known as the Whitman-Rome house, it retains tons of original details like pine-floorboards, ceiling beams, wooden doors, and four fireplaces.
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A Clinton Hill intersection will honor Walt Whitman near the poet’s onetime home

Walt Whitman Way, image via Google Street View.

July 30, 2019

A Clinton Hill intersection will honor Walt Whitman near the poet’s onetime home

By Michelle Cohen

The corner of Dekalb Avenue and Ryerson Street in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn will be named Walt Whitman Way following a City Council vote on July 23, the Brooklyn Eagle reports. The intersection is a few avenues from 99 Ryerson Street, where the modest home in which the poet–a former Brooklyn Eagle editor–penned "Leaves of Grass" still stands. May of this year saw the the 200th anniversary of Whitman's birth, and several efforts have also been underway to landmark the house as well.
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History

Walt Whitman’s New York City: 10 sites where the poet left his mark

Walt Whitman (1881) courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution

March 20, 2019

Walt Whitman’s New York City: 10 sites where the poet left his mark

By Lucie Levine

In his famous 1856 Poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Walt Whitman writes to future New Yorkers, “I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, just as you feel when you look on the river and the sky, so I felt,…I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan Island.” Whitman, who so deeply captured the experience of living in this city, left his mark not only on Brooklyn and Manhattan, but also on the world as the father of free verse poetry, and one of America’s greatest artists. Since this year marks Whitman’s 200th birthday, we're joining the ongoing celebration of his life and work by returning to the streets he walked, following in his footstep to 10 sites across New York associated with the poet.
Walk With Whitman

History

Preservationists, LGBT groups push Landmarks to designate Walt Whitman’s Clinton Hill home

Photo of Whitman via Wikimedia; Photo of 99 Ryerson Street via NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

July 16, 2018

Preservationists, LGBT groups push Landmarks to designate Walt Whitman’s Clinton Hill home

By Devin Gannon

A coalition of preservationists, LGBT groups and literary experts is asking the Landmarks Preservation Commission to reassess their decision last year to not landmark Walt Whitman's Brooklyn home, the last residence of the 19th-century poet remaining in New York. Located at 99 Ryerson Street in Clinton Hill, the home was where Whitman and his family lived between May 1, 1855 and May 1, 1856. While living at the home, Whitman wrote "Leaves of Grass," a collection of poems considered to be one of the most significant American works ever. The home is also one of the earliest extant buildings in NYC associated with a member of the LGBT community.
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Walt Whitman

Asking $750K, this 316-year-old Colonial in Huntington was home to Walt Whitman’s ancestors

A Clinton Hill intersection will honor Walt Whitman near the poet’s onetime home

Walt Whitman’s New York City: 10 sites where the poet left his mark

Preservationists, LGBT groups push Landmarks to designate Walt Whitman’s Clinton Hill home

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