© Bill Wolak 2016

Dylan stayed at this hotel during his first reading tour of America in spring 1950. It was close to many of his favourite bars and restaurants, and suited Dylan well as it was a somewhat well-worn hotel and the staff had an easy-going attitude. He also spent time there with his wife Caitlin in 1952.

I am writing this in bed, at about seven in the morning, in my hotel bedroom, which is right in Washington Square, a beautiful Square, which is right in the middle of Greenwich Village, the artists’ quarter of New York. (Letter to Dylan’s parents, May 22nd 1950)

It is now the Washington Square Hotel.

©Beyond My Ken licensed for reuse under this creative commons license.

At the end of February 1950, during his first tour of America, Dylan stayed at Midston House.

I am staying right in the middle of Manhattan, surrounded by skyscrapers infinitely taller and stranger than one has ever known in pictures. I am staying in a room, a hotel room as the promised flat did not come off, on the 30th floor: and the noise all day and night: without some drug, I couldn’t sleep at all. The hugest, heaviest lorries, police cars, fire brigades, ambulances, all with their banshee sirens wailing and screaming, seem never to stop (Letter to Caitlin, Saturday February 25th 1950)

The building has had a number of guises. It became Midston House in the 1930s, Hotel Lancaster in the 1960s, then Madison Towers, and is currently the Jolly Madison Towers.

© Jazz Guy licensed for reuse under this creative commons license.

On the 22nd February 1952 Steinway Hall was the venue for a recording session that was to lead to the founding of Caedmon Records and the beginning of the spoken word recording industry. Dylan recorded a number of his poems and his short story A Child’s Christmas in Wales. A long-playing record was released on 2nd April 1952. The recording was the launch of Caedmon, a company formed by two enterprising women and funded with their own money. It became one of the leading spoken-word recording labels and is now part of HarperCollins.

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You can read and hear more about the founding of Caedmon here.

The Minetta Tavern was a much-loved bar of Dylan’s. It had been a ‘speakeasy’ during Prohibition and was known as the Black Rabbit until 1929. Its relaxed atmosphere not only appealed to Dylan Thomas but also Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O’Neill and E.E Cummings. At the Minetta, Dylan became a good friend of Joe Gould, who was known as Professor Seagull. Gould was a Harvard graduate who claimed to understand the language of sea gulls and wrote several hundred thousand pages of his imaginary great work, An Oral History of Our Time. It’s claimed that Reader’s Digest originated in the basement in 1923. Minetta was featured in the film ‘Jimmy Blue Eyes’.

© Bill Wolak 2016

This was a regular haunt of Dylan’s in New York. Chumley’s was a speakeasy in the Prohibition era and it still keeps its mysterious quality. It has no sign, and as well as its main entrance, it offers a ‘secret entrance’ on 58 Barrow Street through the backyard called Pamela’s Court. Dylan’s portrait now hangs on the wall and is joined by other famous clientele including: John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald.

© Bill Wolak 2016

During Dylan’s time, The Grand Ticino was one of the finest Italian restaurants in Greenwich Village. On his second day in America in February 1950 he had a meal there with John Malcolm Brinnin before being taken on a whistle-stop tour of the city. He also spent time in the restaurant with his friends, the poets, Ruthven Todd and Allen Curnow.

It was The Dove, though this has closed recently.

© Yair Haklai and licensed for reuse under this creative commons license.

John Malcolm Brinnin was a poet and critic who in 1949 became director of the Poetry Center at the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association. He sent Dylan an invitation on 14th April 1949 to ask him to come and read at the Center and told him he would also arrange other readings.

…accept with great pleasure the invitation of the Poetry Center of your institution to come to the United States to give a reading of my poems…I feel extremely honoured to be the first poet to be invited from abroad, who was not already a visitor, and delighted too. I’ve wanted, for some time, to come to the States, and there couldn’t be a pleasanter way of coming than this…I should be only too glad to accept your sponsorship and to read in other places, including California. ” (Letter to John Malcolm Brinnin, May 28th 1949)

Though in typical Dylan fashion he nearly didn’t make the flight.

I deserve to be hung up by my feet and flogged with bottles. I didn’t remember till I was in the bloody train that I’d left both my chequebook (with only one cheque in it) in the desk, and my passport in the hut. Here is the hut key. The passport is, I believe on top of the bookshelves on the right of the hut as you enter. Please, darling, send it at once… (Letter to Caitlin February 1950)

Dylan read at the Kaufmann Auditorium twelve times during his four tours, including directing and performing in the premiere of Under Milk Wood on May 14th 1953. Five performers and Dylan took forty-four parts making up the entire cast. There were no scenes, no sets, no acting except for voices and gestures and the actors sat on high stools against a plain dark background, their scripts on lecterns in front of them. The Under Milk Wood actresses Sada Thompson and Nancy Wickwire commented that as a director Dylan asked just one thing. “He just wanted us to love the words”.

© Bill Wolak 2016

In 1952, on his second visit to America, Dylan did a special reading for the artistic community at Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village. Tickets were sold at $1 a head. According to Dylan’s friend Oscar Williams it was the only reading he ever gave in New York City where he read only his own poems.

Cherry Lane Theatre is New York’s oldest theatre outside of Broadway. It was founded by the poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay, in 1924 and has showcased early plays of Edward Albee and premiered Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Its list of renowned performers include Gene Hackman, Bob Dylan, and, of course, Dylan Thomas. Barbra Streisand was once an usher there.

© Chris Silver Smith and licensed for reuse under this creative commons license.

Parties were held here for Dylan during his first reading tour in 1950, and a reception was held in his honour on May 1 1952 during his second reading tour; Dylan signed copies of his books and vinyl recordings.

Dylan pictured at a book signing in 1952.

© Daniel Case and licensed for reuse under this creative commons license.

In January 1952, Dylan and Caitlin spent a weekend at photographer Rollie McKenna’s house in the country. It was an exceptionally cold few days and the ground was covered in snow. They arrived with John Malcolm Brinnin and Caitlin could hardly see, so swathed was she in a fur hat, coat and boots. Dylan wore a brown parka. Rollie took many iconic photos that weekend including Dylan amongst the branches of a wisteria tree, reclining on a mound of straw and standing tall in his heavy tweeds.

Rollie’s photos are under copyright but you can find examples of them at Center for Creative Photography at Arizona university.

Please see contacts for copyright details.