• A good sources for finding details about Greenwich Village buildings is “The Greenwich Village Historic District Designation Report,” written to support historic designation for Greenwich Village and published in 1969. According to most recorded material about Jane Street, a cow path (rather than a cobblestone road) led to a farm owned by Mr. Jaynes (or possibly Mr. Jayne). Tobacco was grown in the area. The street’s name might have been altered from Jaynes or Jayne to Jane by a Villager, Mrs. Jane Gahn. Later along the street one could find carriage houses, coachmen’s quarters, stables, and a stoneyard.

• The oldest house was constructed in 1828 at 34 Jane. A one-story extension at the rear was a later 19th century addition, replacing a stable at the back of the lot.

• Alexander Hamilton died at a physician’s home close to the middle of the area between 81 Jane and Horatio Street. A plaque installed in 1936 erroneously states that he died at 82 Jane after his fatal duel across the Hudson River in Weehawken with Aaron Burr. He had been brought, still alive but paralyzed from the waist down, to the William Bayard House, close to what is now 81 Jane; the street then was curved in the direction of Horatio Street. According to Greenwich Village and How It Got That Way, by Terry Miller, the William Bayard House never stood at 82 Jane but, instead, was “just below the present Gansevoort Street, close to the present Horatio Street—possibly even in its path, as Horatio wasn’t mapped until 1817 or opened until 1835.”

• The oldest Janestreeter is nonagenarian Jean Verral, who once was an editor for pulp magazines such as Police Blotter. She remembers that silent movies were shown for a time in a lot, now numbered 69 Jane, at the corner of Jane and Greenwich Street. If a movie were to be shown on any day, a red light announced it. No red light, no movie! Much later, at the same site, was “a pig place.” The street’s second oldest longtime resident, Lenny Rutkowski, 87, remembers it as a place where workers obtained gelatin, or animal jelly, the foodstuff obtained from hoofs and other animal parts. It now is a design studio adjacent to the Furniture Company, with an entrance on Greenwich Street. The garage, a workshop on the corner, is owned by painter Jasper Johns in partnership with Julian Lethbridge.

• After returning from serving in the Army in France, Lenny Rutkowski obtained the same room he had in 1938. Because he was in uniform, he got the place at 47 Jane for less than $25/month; he smiles that his rent now is only about five times that amount, not 100 times the sum some Janestreeters are paying. In the 1940s when the building was taken over by “bums” who paid no rent, it was renovated; the bums left. A retired roofer, he remembers the train tracks leading to the waterfront, where supplies traveled back and forth on boats. His friends in Pennsylvania “could not believe it when I told them that boxcars floated on the Hudson River.”

• When The New Republic published his 1st story, writer John Cheever (1912-1982) was a teenage dropout who lived where #61 now is.

• A Russian-born sculptor who had studied in Paris, Gleb W. Derujinsky, resided at 31 Jane and became known for his busts of Lillian Gish, Mrs. Henry Hammond, and Theodore Roosevelt. Novelist and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Ed Hoagland, author of Cat Man, lived at 31 Jane Street, as did Robert McKinley, an eminent maker of dolls, who died at the site in 1994. The building was constructed in 1962 at a site where a Chinese laundry used to operate.

• At 16 Jane Street, the artist Tony Sarg (1880-1942) lived. At one time, two of his murals decorated the building’s entrance hall. When the entrance was repainted, only a small part of the murals was saved. Sarg was a producer of puppet shows and, with his wife Margo Sarg, created “Howdy Doody.” One of his students was Bil Baird, the famed puppeteer. Pictured is Sarg’s “Fish Footman” from a 1930 production of “Alice in Wonderland.” It has been described as “almost too proud to speak to anyone.