EAST SIDE STORY At left is the block where Dottie lived in 1932 and wrote many short stories. Today a large apartment building was built over the spot (and the FDR Drive which goes underneath it). At right, the river view Dottie would have had. The East River Esplanade is a nice walk in the neighborhood.

While living at the Algonquin Hotel in February 1932, Dorothy Parker attempted suicide by swallowing barbiturates. She was distraught over the breakup with her young playboy boyfriend, John McClain. It was the same year she published her collection of verse, Death and Taxes, but she also called it "this year of hell" to her friends.

To turn her life around she left the Algonquin and took a furnished apartment at the Lowell, at 28 E. 63rd Street. This would be another one of her many residential hotel-apartments, which Parker always enjoyed living in because she had absolutely no domestic skills, possessed no furniture, and was frequently traveling.

RIVER VIEWS This apartment that juts over the FDR Drive is on the same spot where Dottie wrote the classic "Dusk Before Fireworks" about a notorious bachelor

After the failed suicide attempt, Parker started to come around, break her writer's block, and actually produced some of the best short stories of her career. While living at this address, she asked friends to come over and sit with her for three or four hours and force her to stay focused and keep on writing. While the friends occupied themselves in the apartment, Dottie banged away on her typewriter. Among the classics from this year were, "Lady With a Lamp" (April '32, Harper's Bazaar), "Dusk Before Fireworks" (Sept. '32, Harper's Bazaar), "Horsie" (Dec. '32, Harper's Bazaar), "The Waltz" (Sept. '33 New Yorker) and many others.

Dottie had to keep writing because she was broke. She was living beyond her means in the Lowell, a great Art Deco building that was fairly new, and let her live there because they liked the publicity of having a famous writer in the place. While there she lost her beloved dachshund, Robinson, the one that is in the famous full-length portrait by Edward Steichen that is on the cover of "What Fresh Hell is This?" by Marion Meade.

Dottie's publisher was eager for a second collection of work to be published, but she had to get the stories written. It was while living here that she cranked out some gems, and burnished her legend as a short story author. While at the Lowell she met Alan Campbell, who would be her second husband. She left the Lowell and moved 11 blocks south, to 444 E. 52nd Street.

Today the Lowell is only memory, if anyone remembers it. There is no more Lowell, and no more 28 E. 63rd Street. Between York Avenue and the Esplanade on the south side of the street is a mammoth structure built by Rockefeller University as housing for "Scholars and Faculty" that takes up the whole block. Since the school also owns the "air rights" next to it, they built the building right over the FDR Drive and the cars cruise underneath. There are sweeping views of the East River and the 59th Street Bridge is nearby. Take a walk on the beautiful Esplanade, and bring a book of Parker short stories that were written on the street.