Exploring Thomas Merton's New York
As a taster check out Fr. James Martin's introduction to
the Church of Corpus Christi
and, where Merton lived for a time, 35
Perry Street, Greenwich Village:
A Merton Pilgrimage with James Martin, S.J.
Articles about Thomas Merton and New York:
| Ingrid Cohen - The Jenkins House and Zion Episcopal Church in 1990. Douglaston, Long Island, New York. | Robert Lax - Remembering Merton and New York. | Michael N. McGregor - The Persistence of Harlem in the Life and Legacy of Thomas Merton. | ||
| Raymond M. Rafferty - Font of Grace Revisited: The Corpus Christi Baptistry. | Sheila Rosen - Hunting the Unicorn: Thomas Merton’s New York. | |||
| Renovating 35 Perry Street: Thomas Merton Lived Here. |
Photographs of Thomas Merton's New York
(Click on righthand photograph for a link to their map location)
 |
I was glad to move from Flushing to my
grandparents’ house at Douglaston. There I was allowed to do more or
less as I pleased, and we had two dogs and several cats to play
with… I was content to run in the woods with the dogs, or climb
trees … … I remember those winter days, at the end
of 1937 and the beginning of 1938, peaceful days when I sat in the
big living room at Douglaston, with the pale sun coming in the
window by the piano, where one of my father’s water-colors of
Bermuda hung. |
 |
|
50 Rushmore Ave Douglaston, Long Island (Grandparent's Home) |
||
 |
 |
The old |
| Zion Episcopal Church 243-01 Northern Blvd, Douglaston |
||
 |
The big, ugly buildings faced the world
with a kind of unpretentious purposefulness, and people hurried in
and out the glass doors … this big sooty factory was full of light
and fresh air. There was a kind of genuine intellectual vitality in
the air. |
 |
| Columbia University 116th and Broadway |
||
|
(Herb) drove me and all my bags, and books and my portable vic and all my hot records, uptown to a rooming-house on 114th Street, just behind the Columbia library….It was shiny and clean and filled with new furniture and had a big view of a pile of coal, in a yard by the campus tennis courts, with South Field and the steps of the old domed library beyond… it was there that I started to pray again, and it was there that I added, as Bramachari had suggested, The Imitation of Christ to my books, and it was from there that I was eventually to be driven out, to go and look for a priest. |
 |
 |
| 548 114th St. Merton's Rooming House Behind the Columbia's Butler Library |
||
 |
How bright the little building seemed.
The sun shone on the clean bricks. People were going in the wide
open door, into the cool darkness and, all at once, all the churches
of |
 |
|
Corpus Christi Church
West 121st St. |
||
 |
 |
I went to Greenwich Village and signed a lease for a one room apartment and started work on my Ph.D. I suppose the apartment on Perry Street was part of the atmosphere appropriate to an intellectual such as I imagined myself to be and, as a matter of fact, I felt much more important in this large room with a bath and fireplace and French windows leading out on a rickety balcony than I had felt in the little place ten feet wide behind the Columbia Library… |
| 35 Perry St. Greenwich Village, New York |
||