A vivid memoir of life in one of New York City's most dynamic neighborhoods Growing Up Bank Street is an evocative, tender account of life in Greenwich Village, on a unique street that offered warmth, support, and inspiration to an adventurous and openhearted young girl. Bank Street, a short strip of elegant brownstones and humble tenements in Greenwich Village, can trace its lineage back to the yellow fever epidemics of colonial New York. In the middle of the last century, it became home to a cast of extraordinary characters whose stories intertwine in this spirited narrative. Growing up, Donna Florio had flamboyant, opera performer parents and even more free-spirited neighbors. As a child, she lived among beatniks, artists, rock musicians, social visionaries, movie stars, and gritty blue-collar workers, who imparted to her their irrepressibly eccentric life rules. The real-life Auntie Mame taught her that she is a divine flame from the universe. John Lennon, who lived down the street, was gracious when she dumped water on his head. Sex Pistols star Sid Vicious lived in the apartment next door, and his heroin overdose death came as a wake-up call during her wild twenties. An elderly Broadway dancer led by brave example as Donna helped him comfort dying Villagers in the terrifying early days of AIDS, and a reclusive writer gave her a path back from the brink when, as a witness to the attacks of 9/11, her world collapsed. These vibrant vignettes weave together a colorful coming of age tale against the backdrop of a historic, iconoclastic street whose residents have been at the heart of the American story. As Greenwich Village gentrifies and the hallmarks of its colorful past disappear, Growing Up Bank Street gives the reader a captivating glimpse of the thriving culture that once filled its storied streets.
Donna Florio is a lifelong resident of Bank Street in Greenwich Village. Nurtured by colorful, eccentric neighbors who taught her to "never wonder about life from the outside. Jump in!" Donna has, over the years, worked as an opera singer, a TV producer, a Wall Street executive, and an educator, and has backpacked around the world.
An absolutely delightful book about one of New York's storied city blocks. -- Graydon Carter Bank Street, which runs eight blocks through the heart of New York's Greenwich Village, is the lifelong home of Donna Florio, born to operatic parents at Number 63 between West Fourth and Bleecker. With Growing Up Bank Street Donna has done a great service to the neighborhood, bestowing great love on the colorful iconoclasts of the day. There was no one more Bohemian ("a person who lives free of conventional rules") than Marion Tanner, my Buddhist great-aunt and inspiration for my father Patrick Dennis's 1955 bestseller Auntie Mame. In the Thirties Marion knew Everyone, including George Gershwin, Martha Graham, D.H. Lawrence, Billie Holiday, and Eugene O'Neill. In the Sixties she turned Number 72 into a free boarding house and took in Anyone, to the chagrin of her Bank Street neighbors, my generous but not-infinitely-patient father, and the Internal Revenue Service. The reader of Donna's delightful pages will re-enter the Bohemian paradise of yore that has, sadly, been priced out of existence. -- Dr. Michael Tanner Bellevue Hospital, NYC An intimate and affectionate memoir that restores a vanished corner of New York to the vibrant life that nurtured the eccentricities of Upper and Lower Bohemia. Bank Street thrived for a century even though it was surrounded by a suspicious working-class conformity, but all shared a neighborhood in common humanity that was blown away by too much money. -- Lawrence Malkin, author of Krueger's Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19 I can't recall when I've had a more engrossing read. Let Donna Florio take you through several decades in the walkup building and the street in Greenwich Village where she has spent much of her life. The Village has always been a creative caldron, attracting artistic and showbiz figures, and Florio knew many of them as neighbors and friends - and she provides you with an intimate look at them and also some lesser-known figures, taking you from the Broadway of the 1920s through the Cold War through the punks of the 1970s. A former child opera singer and excellent storyteller, Florio's characters are realized on the Bank Street stage. Along the way, you'll meet some of the Village's desperate, funny, engaging personages and you'll be convinced you know them too, even if you have never come within a mile of the neighborhood. * Kevin Walsh, author of Forgotten New York: Views of a Lost Metropolis * If you love a particular New York street, if you love any city street, you will be entranced by Donna Florio's Growing Up Bank Street, her poignant, sometimes hilarious, occasionally heart-breaking memoir about coming of age on an iconic stretch of an iconic neighborhood. In a city that seemingly grows more monied and more corporate by the day, she captures a moment when a neighborhood could be defined by the human bonds and connections forged on its streets. Thanks to Florio's book, we can return, at least briefly and in memory, to a golden if sometimes tarnished era in the city's history. -- Constance Rosenblum, author of Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak and Hope Along the Grand Concourse In The Bronx
