Buddy Holly's New York apartment

In October 1958, Buddy Holly and his wife Maria Elena Santiago moved into Apartment 4H at The Brevoort, 11 Fifth Avenue, in Greenwich Village — a recently built residential building that had replaced the old Brevoort Hotel on the same site. Holly was paying around $1,000 a month for the corner unit, which came with a wraparound terrace looking out over lower Fifth Avenue. He was 22 years old, newly married, and at the peak of his commercial success after a string of hits including 'That'll Be the Day', 'Peggy Sue', and 'Oh, Boy!'.

In December 1958 and January 1959, before leaving on the fateful Winter Dance Party tour that would claim his life, Holly set up an Ampex tape recorder in the apartment and recorded a series of home demos: 'Crying, Waiting, Hoping', 'Peggy Sue Got Married', 'That Makes It Tough', and 'The Learning Game', among others. These recordings — raw and intimate, made in an apartment in Greenwich Village on a winter afternoon — became known as the Apartment Tapes and were released posthumously, offering a glimpse of where Holly's songwriting was heading. He died in the plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 3, 1959, just weeks after making them.

The Brevoort still stands at 11 Fifth Avenue, a mid-century residential building in one of Greenwich Village's most desirable blocks. Apartment 4H has changed hands several times over the decades, listed at various points for over $1.5 million. There is no plaque on the building to mark what happened in that apartment in the winter of 1958-59, but Village Preservation has documented the address thoroughly, and for those who know the Apartment Tapes, the building carries a particular weight.