647 Hudson St. “Almanac House”

Phillip Buehler

Singer, songwriter, and activist Woody Guthrie as well as Pete Seeger lived there around 1942 along with other members of the Almanac Singers. It was known as Almanac House, as were other places in the city at different times because the Almanac Singers lived or worked there.

When people think of the Meat Packing District, they either think of the meat sheds and its prior role in New York or as the hip bar district it has become. There’s also the story of the people that lived there and were connected to the waterfront and New York life, such as Guthrie (who would also enter the Merchant Marine during World War II). Guthrie lived here about the time his autobiography “Bound for Glory” was released in 1943.

It’s an otherwise unremarkable tenement building but is probably a good example of the kinds of apartment buildings that artists as well as the working class lived in at this time. The building is somewhat unique in the neighborhood, which to one side was meat packing businesses and the other side was West Village townhouses. (February 2007)