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Allen Ginsberg's East Village Apartment Renovated and Rented for $1,700 a Month

By Patrick Hedlund | September 3, 2010 1:41pm

By Patrick Hedlund

DNAinfo News Editor

EAST VILLAGE — Legendary poet Allen Ginsberg’s former East 12th Street apartment was recently renovated and rented out to a new tenant.

The building at 437 E. 12th St., between First Avenue and Avenue A, was home to the Beat Generation scribe for more than two decades from the 1970s through the ’90s.

It had been vacant for more than a year following the death of Ginsberg’s longtime partner and fellow poet Peter Orlovsky, who remained at the address after Ginsberg died in 1997, according to EV Grieve.

Word of the “Howl” author’s old digs hitting the market helped it rent just hours after the listing went up, said broker Daniel Kramp of City Connections Realty.

“She (the new tenant) loved the apartment, and the fact the he used to be there added a little bit more interest,” Kramp said, explaining that he was flooded with requests from writers and artists hoping to grab the fourth-floor space.

“She knows that the place has history.”

Ginsberg also had two other units in the building, one of which rented to another tenant a few months ago, Kramp added.

The small one-bedroom apartment — which saw luminaries like Bob Dylan and Beat author William Burroughs pass through an a regular basis — rented for $1,700 per month, the broker noted.