In New York City, your neighborhood is not just where you live: It represents who you are. “People are community beings. And while you can think of the entire city as your community in abstract terms, you can’t really enact that,” says the writer Susan Minot, who has lived on West Ninth Street in Greenwich Village since 1991. Throughout its many lives — as a rural hamlet in the 17th century, a bohemian haven for much of the 20th and, more recently, home to a seven-block stretch that real-estate agents sometimes refer to as Manhattan’s Gold Coast — the Village has remained essentially residential and thus never without community.

Within this neighborhood is West Ninth Street. It runs for a single block — between Fifth and Sixth Avenues — and has a sort of companion block in East Ninth Street between Broadway and University Place. Together, these two blocks, lined with ginkgo trees (“Greenwich” came from Groenwijck, which is Dutch for “Green District”), stately apartment buildings and the occasional restaurant, can feel like a world apart, one that, despite the inevitable closures and transformations, has proved relatively immune to change. It’s not just the landscape that recalls old New York, though. Even in 2020, when artists and writers are more likely to live in Brooklyn, or maybe upriver in Hudson, these two blocks are occupied by an outsize number of creative people — including the actors Lee Pace and Amy Sedaris, and the artist Helmut Lang, as well as the people pictured here — just as they were 70 years ago. In Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” (1954), the photographer L.B. Jefferies looks out from his perch on West 10th Street onto the buildings of an imagined West Ninth, observing as their tenants, who include a dancer, a sculptor and a composer, go about their daily routines. The film’s genre aside, there is an undeniable coziness to their setup — clearly these are characters who are gambling on their talents, without doubt or apology.

The same could be said of Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell, who were among the artists who lived in derelict Greenwich Village lofts and showed work in the watershed 1951 exhibition “The Ninth Street Show,” held in a rented storefront at 60 East Ninth Street (Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney had opened her museum just a couple blocks away, at 8 West Eighth Street, 20 years prior). “If artists were drawn here, they just had good taste,” says Minot. “The buildings aren’t too high, you’re kind of near the river, the streets go this way and that — it’s got a human scale to it.” But with that human scale comes actual humans, the people you live alongside, and all the better if they’re as interesting as these neighbors are. — KATE GUADAGNINO

Kate Guadagnino is the deputy digital editor of T Magazine. Sean Donnola works in photography, film and video. His work is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Sean Donnola

Here, residents share how they ended up on Ninth Street and what’s kept them there. Read a behind-the-scenes account of the making of the group portrait, taken on a sunny morning in January.

JAY McINERNEY

Writer, on Ninth Street since 2001.

At the end of 2001, I was living in Chelsea, and I’d just watched the Twin Towers fall from my apartment. It was too depressing to stay there. I’d always loved this stretch of the Village and was visiting a friend near here when I saw a “For Rent” sign outside of 20 Fifth Avenue. I was recently divorced and kind of at loose ends, and I just impulsively decided to do it. My friend Candace Bushnell moved to Ninth Street not long after. We’d often get together at my place or hers, where there was a rotating cast of characters. It was pretty raucous. I remember Candace once throwing some glasses out the window because, she said, they were misbehaving. Before all that, Marylou’s, the Italian restaurant on the north side of Ninth, was one of my hangouts. I hesitate to mention it — it was a real den of iniquity. If you got there at 11 and stayed till 2, you would see tout le monde — movie stars, writers, gangsters. I miss it, but my life span will probably be longer because it closed. Still, Ninth Street feels like a bit of a time capsule. I like to think it looks something like it did when the poet Marianne Moore lived here in the 1960s.

TERRENCE McNALLY

Playwright, on Ninth Street since 1996.

Ninth Street always struck me as very lovely, and I’d think, “Gee, one day I’d like to live there.” I fell in love with my apartment the moment I opened the door. I didn’t know at the time that it had so many theatrical reverberations: Jed Harris, a very controversial producer in his day, is said to have lived in the building; Agnes de Mille, too. I often call this neighborhood “Lower Fifth.” It’s a unique part of New York, these few little blocks. They have this elegance, and I’ve always loved seeing the older women, who I’m sure are widowed by now, on the street. They’re always made up and beautifully dressed — some of them still wear gloves — and at Christmas, they make cookies for all the doormen. They’re the women of the old Peter Arno New Yorker cartoons, the women who wouldn’t be caught dead on the street in slacks or with their hair in a scarf. There are very few of them left; each year, there’s one fewer. It’s very contemporary, too, though. It’s New York as a place for doers, achievers, people who are involved. Not nostalgic. Not lazy. There’s a briskness to everybody’s step. I feel at home here — you know it when you’ve found a place you belong.

EDITORS’ NOTE: Mr. McNally died on March 24, 2020, the day before this issue went to press.

Terrence McNally chatting on set. Nina Westervelt

WENDY GOODMAN

Writer and editor, on Ninth Street since 1997.

I was raised on the Upper East Side, but I always said to myself, “When I grow up, I’m moving downtown.” And that’s what I did — I’ve lived in the Village most of my adult life, though I didn’t move to Ninth Street until 1997. I’d just split up with my boyfriend and was desperate for an apartment. So that was the situation as I stood in a phone booth and called a friend who told me I had to see this place on Ninth. The catch was it wasn’t available yet, but as soon as I saw it from the outside, I knew I’d wait it out no matter what. It turned out to be one of those marvelous places in the Village with a fireplace, but the best thing about it were the landlords. The place belonged to the artist Sarai Sherman and her husband, David Jaffe, a psychiatrist, and they lived upstairs. My apartment faces north, so I can see into the gardens and kitchens of the brownstones behind our building, including, I realized after moving in, that of my friend, the writer Andrew Solomon. We could have used tin cans and a string to talk. Ninth Street is one of those magical blocks, and thankfully the neighbors are banding together to ward off encroaching development.

SIMON DOONAN

Writer, on Ninth Street since 1994.

When I was a kid, I went to see “Rosemary’s Baby” and fell in love with the apartment in the movie, which was filmed at the Dakota on Central Park West. It was seared into my head as some sort of optimal living experience. Later, I used to walk by 35 East Ninth Street and think of it as the “downtown Dakota,” because it had a little of that same mystique — it’s somber looking but also fabulous. When I met Jonny [Jonathan Adler, a designer and Doonan’s husband], I had just decided to buy an apartment in that building. I think he took one look and thought, “Oh, this is a good proposition. A nice bit of real estate is a good aphrodisiac.” Not long after, Jonny moved in. He was 28 (to my 42) and was just starting to get some recognition. He was essentially a production potter and would Rollerblade into the apartment with lumps of clay cascading off him. Eventually, he bought the apartment next door, and we combined them to create one sprawling unit. I was born after the war in a two-room flat with no kitchen or bathroom, so the idea that I ended up here, it’s sort of a dream. I think I’ll be carried out of my apartment in a box. And I love the block. Everybody walks their dog, and there are so many people that I stop and kibbitz with — I always run into the art director Sam Shahid and the jewelry designer Ann Dexter-Jones when I’m out picking up poop.

SUSAN MINOT

Writer, on Ninth Street since 1991.

I’d just gotten a book contract and bought my place by the skin of my teeth. I completely don’t belong on this street. It’s so far beyond and I can’t really afford the restaurants around here. Somehow, though, I’ve managed to hang on. Even when I spent a chunk of the aughts living on an island in Maine, I kept my apartment and was so grateful to have it to come back to. It’s in a building built in 1885 with units intended as “gentleman’s quarters” and was a crumbling wreck when I got it, but to me it was heaven. I turned the small back room that was once the kitchen into my office, and then it became my daughter’s bedroom. As in any urban spot, the construction can drive you crazy. But then you remember the things that are wonderful here. For a little while each afternoon, sunlight comes in from the south, though it’s mainly the variety of the people and the depths of the friendships. You can spend a long time not knowing your neighbors, and then start to. One of the things I love about New York is that you don’t have to put on a face — you know you’re just going to be one in the stream. I let people in slowly, and having that familiarity, it’s comforting. After 30-some years of thinking, “Well, I’m just passing through and I don’t really live here,” I will admit that oh yeah, this is my neighborhood.

FABIEN BARON

Creative director, on Ninth Street since 2014.

Right before we bought a building on Ninth Street, my wife and I had been living on Bond Street in NoHo. We’d always had lofts and apartments up until that point, so we were excited to be in a brownstone. Usually, I go all the way in and make my place either all classical or all modern. With this one, though, the exterior is completely classic while inside it’s very modern. We put in oak floors like you might find in Paris, and a Louis XVI fireplace, which is not in tune with, and really not respectful of the Village — it’s too elevated and European. Ninth Street is very private, and I don’t go out much or see anyone — I was surprised to learn just how creative my neighbors are. But I do like that I can walk to work, and to Washington Square. You have everything in this neighborhood — if you want a lightbulb, you got it. You need a grapefruit, you can find it. It’s all right here.

Not Pictured:

AMY SEDARIS

Actress, on Ninth Street since 2007.

For 18 years I’d been living in the area around Christopher and Bleecker Streets, but then I moved here, where it just feels a little different. The moment I saw my place, I knew that was it — it was the sense that this was a real neighborhood with Christmas decorations and everything. I grew up in North Carolina, so community is important to me, and Ninth Street proves you can have that even in New York City. It’s the sort of street where if you go for a walk (sometimes I make it all the way down to Astor Wines and Spirits, in the De Vinne Press Building), you run into people you know. There are lots of therapists on the block, too, so that’s why you always see a lot of celebrities on the street — they’re going to see their shrinks. There are block parties, and the Knickerbocker on University and Ninth is a really great place to go, especially on Saturday nights after 10. There’s great jazz, and you can always get a table. Over the years, I’ve had plenty of big parties, but mostly I like to entertain smaller groups of friends now. The people in my building get together every once in a while; we have a dinner party and everybody brings something.

HELMUT LANG

Artist, on Ninth Street since 1996.

I had been traveling back and forth between New York and Austria for many years, but I bought my place on Ninth Street in the summer of 1996 and settled there for good at the end of 1997. Before, I’d always stayed in hotels, but when I found my current spot, which is a rooftop apartment with a big terrace, the living situation felt similar to what I’d had in Europe. I wasn’t aware at the time that Ninth Street has a such a particular history — my building is full of artists, writers and creatives, but I had no idea this was true of the whole street. Over the years, the neighborhood hasn’t changed much optically, and the relaxed feeling retains a “New York meets Paris” vibe. These days, I run into my neighbors on the street or in the elevator more than working a proper social schedule. Jenny Holzer used to live for a while on Ninth Street, and we became very close friends, visiting each other regularly.

MAGGIE BETTS

Filmmaker, on Ninth Street since 2006.

My place on Ninth Street is the first place I ever bought, and I think it might also be my last. It’s a townhouse that’s part of a pair of matching buildings dating from the 1860s built by a father for his twin daughters. My property hadn’t been changed much at all, so over the years I’ve been able to restore it, rather than renovate it. It has nine original marble fireplaces, which is a massive amount. An antiques dealer once told me if I’m ever facing financial ruin, I could sell them off one by one. When I moved here, there was a super cool vibe in the neighborhood. Lots of artists were around, like Ross Bleckner, and Patricia Clarkson lived down the street. There were lots of chichi restaurants back then, too, and while New York has changed over the years, as you get older, you change, too. Though I still spend far too much time at the Knickerbocker. I’ve also gotten really into landscaping from May to October, when the front garden is filled with flowers and I can create my own aesthetic. I would say I have no block envy for any other block in the city.

As told to Merrell Hambleton and Samuel Rutter. Quotes have been edited and condensed.

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A behind-the-scenes account of the making of the group portrait:

On a mild, bright morning at the end of January, Casa Apicii, a restaurant on West Ninth Street in downtown Manhattan, was open early for a neighborhood reunion of sorts. One by one, and in pairs, people descended from street level. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, the guests warmed with recognition, and a feeling of neighborly intimacy pervaded the space. “Are the renovations going well?” inquired one in between sips of coffee. “I was in Paris for a while,” said another, explaining a recent absence. “I still have your pot!” said a third, in reference to a not-long-past dinner party.

The group, composed of Ninth Street residents gathering for a photo shoot for T’s Culture issue, was casually dressed. But though it might not have been immediately apparent, its members are, in a way, the heirs of the artistic sorts who lived and worked and gathered along this stretch of Greenwich Village in eras past. As early as the mid-1800s, the Hotel Griffou, a boarding house at 21 West Ninth Street, drew a literary crowd — Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde dined there. In the 1950s, the Cedar Tavern, around the corner on University Place, was a haunt for artists like Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, and thus an incubator of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Decades later, the Italian restaurant Marylou’s played host to the debauchery of Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro and actual gangsters. And long before 62 West Ninth housed Casa Apicii, it was a gay bar where a then unknown Barbra Streisand once won a weekly talent contest.

The street is still home to artists and writers, though they tend to be already established talents, from the writer Michael Wolff to the designer Jonathan Adler. Once everyone had arrived on this Friday morning, it was difficult to usher the group, now 23 strong and knotted together in ardent conversation, back out to the street for a photograph. Some started calling out the years they arrived on Ninth Street — “ninety-seven,” “ninety-two,” “eighty-seven” — enthusiastic as alumni at a homecoming bonfire. As they stood together on a south-facing stoop, the neighbors reflected on the magic of their spot in the city. “It had some sizzle, that old New York glamour,” said the writer Simon Doonan, recalling his early impressions of Ninth Street. “It does seem to have an inordinate number of people involved in the arts,” said Jay McInerney, who moved to Ninth Street in 2001. “I guess like attracts like.”

For Terrence McNally, the beloved playwright who died of coronavirus complications last month, the pleasures of Ninth Street were simple. He described a favorite photograph of his block, taken in spring, that he kept as a screen saver on his computer. “Our building fills the planter boxes with tulip bulbs — tulips are my favorite flower — and for one week each year, it’s the most brilliant blaze of color,” he said. “You can see someone walking their dog, a truck delivering a washing machine, someone with a baby carriage. I don’t know anyone in the picture. It’s just home to me. It’s New York to me.” — MERRELL HAMBLETON