Standish

Legends of the Literary Greats
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Of Time and the River, The Armies of the Night: a seemingly infinite trove of tomes as illustrious as the writers who penned them were borne at desks housed on the unassuming streets of Brooklyn Heights. In times gone by, esteemed residents of the Heights have included Norman Mailer, Walt Whitman, Henry Miller, W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane Bowles, Gypsy Rose Lee, Thomas Wolfe, Hart Crane, Richard Wright, and James Purdy. All drew inspiration from the dichotomy of the Heights’ calm and chaos.

Throughout changing times in Brooklyn Heights, The Standish at 171 Columbia Heights, a Beaux-Arts building head-and-shoulders above the famous Promenade, secured its own place in American fiction. From the stillness of a cul de sac tucked into a quiet corner of the Heights, Arthur Miller completed his 1949 play, Death of a Salesman. Finding stimulus in his surroundings, Miller named the scene of Willy Loman’s affair after a neighborhood landmark, The Standish Arms. Originally built in 1903 as the Standish Arms Hotel, the 12-story tower has hosted many famous faces, both real and imagined. Even the caped crusader Clark Kent took up residence in apartment 5H of the Standish Arms Hotel (with the wonders of fiction transporting the hotel from Brooklyn to Metropolis).