Former Home Street of Terrence McNally Will Be Named in His Honor

The Terrence McNally Foundation and Tom Kirdahy Productions will unveil Terrence McNally Way this week. East 9th street between Broadway and University Place will be co-named in honor of the late legendary playwright Terrence McNally, who proudly lived on East 9th Street for 24 years. The unveiling will take place on Friday, May 30 on the corner of East 9th Street and University Place. The event is open to the public.

Terrence McNally was one of America’s great playwrights and the recipient of more Tony awards than any other American playwright in history. In a remarkably far-ranging career that spanned six decades, he wrote groundbreaking, critically-acclaimed, and widely loved plays, musicals, and operas that continue to be performed all over the world.

In attendance at the celebration will be New York City Council Members Carlina Rivera and Erik Bottcher, and Tony Award winners Jonathan Groff and Brian Stokes Mitchell. It will also feature a special performance by Tony Award winner Brandon Uranowitz and Grammy Award nominee Caissie Levy. 

“For decades, Terrence's words lit up the stages of New York and gave voice to its beating heart; now, his legacy is quite literally part of its streetscape,” says Terrence McNally Foundation Executive Director, Santino DeAngelo. “To have ‘Terrence McNally Way’ just steps from where he lived and worked, in the Village he so deeply loved, is not only a tribute to his extraordinary contributions to the American theatre, but a permanent reminder that this City was his muse, his battleground, his sanctuary, and his home.”

"Terrence died five years ago but his memory is very much alive in my heart and in the hearts and minds of theatre goers across the globe,” said Tom Kirdahy, President of Tom Kirdahy Productions and Terrence McNally’s late husband. “I can't think of a single day since he passed that I haven't received a note, a call or a message about how he changed people's lives with his words and deeds.  Terrence and I loved living together on Ninth Street, so alive with artists, students, fascinating people and true NY characters. Terrence paved the way for so many young playwrights and LGBTQ people so it seems fitting that the street where we lived and I continue to live will now be known as Terrence McNally Way.  My heart is full."

Terrence McNally was an important member of the downtown avant-garde, a longtime Village resident and a beloved member of the unique community of artists, writers, and designers on Ninth Street (as written about in the 2020 NYTimes article, “The Neighbors of East Ninth Street”). He was featured in a 2002 NYC calendar as one of the “Legends of the Village,” and received many downtown accolades, including two Lucille Lortell Awards and a star on the Lortell Walk of Fame. McNally received an honorary degree from NYU as well as from Juilliard, where he helped create the playwriting program in 1993.

McNally made his home on the corner of East Ninth Street and University Place for the last 24 years of his life. He kept a writing suite in the same building where he penned the books to Dead Man Walking, Corpus Christi, The Full Monty and many other works that have gone on to be considered modern classics. In 2008, he commemorated his love of his neighborhood in his play Unusual Acts of Devotion, which is set on the rooftop of a Village apartment not unlike his own.

Terrence in his own words: “Ninth Street always struck me as very lovely, and I’d think, ‘Gee, one day I’d like to live there.’ I fell in love with my apartment the moment I opened the door. It’s a unique part of New York, these few little blocks … It’s New York as a place for doers, achievers, people who are involved. Not nostalgic. Not lazy. There’s a briskness to everybody’s step. I feel at home here – you know it when you’ve found a place that you belong.”