Audre Lorde Residence

Audre Lorde — "Black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet warrior," in her own famous self-description — lived in this 1898 frame house on Staten Island's St. Paul's Avenue from 1972 to 1987, with her partner of two decades, psychology professor Frances Clayton, and her two children. The fifteen years at this address were the most consequential of her writing life. Coal (1976), The Black Unicorn (1978), The Cancer Journals (1980) and her "biomythography" Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) were all written here, while Lorde taught at John Jay College and Hunter College and helped found Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 — the first US publisher run by and for women of color. Lorde spoke at the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979, and in 1991 was named New York State Poet Laureate, a post she held until her death in 1992. The Audre Lorde Project, the NYC organizing center for LGBTQ people of color founded in 1994, carries her name forward. The house was designated a New York City Individual Landmark in June 2019, part of the Landmarks Preservation Commission's Stonewall-50 group of LGBTQ designations, and stands within the St. Paul's Avenue–Stapleton Heights Historic District. What you see today: a private single-family home — please view from the street only. There is no plaque on the house itself, but the corner of St. Paul's Avenue and Victory Boulevard nearby carries an "Audre Lorde Way" street co-naming sign, installed in 2019. The site is a short ride from the Staten Island Ferry, and combines well with the Alice Austen House on the same island.