38 Commerce Street @ 7th Avenue

The building that now houses the Cherry Lane Playhouse was built in 1817 as a farm
silo; later it was used as a box factory. After being abandoned for many years, it became
the Cherry Lane Theater in 1924 when a group of actors and writers, headed by Edna
St. Vincent Millay, bought the building and turned it into a performance space. It quickly
became a downtown institution, presenting works by Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, and
other literary stars of Bohemian New York.