Jack Kerouac as photographed by Allen Ginsberg on East 7th Street in New York City's East Village in the September of 1953.

Kerouac on Ginsberg's third floor fire escape. (206 East 7th Street, 3rd Floor) (click to enlarge)

Ginsberg lived in apartment 16 in the back of the building from October 1952 through the end of 1953 paying $33.80 a month. (According to The Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac's City,a guidebook by Bill Morgan, City Lights, SF, 1997)

Allen Ginsberg's handwritten caption reads:

Jack Kerouac, railroad brakeman's rule book in pocket, couch pillows airing on fire escape overlooking backyard clothesline south view three flights up, my apartment 206 East 7th Street between Ave B and Ave C Lower East Side, Manhattan. He'd completed On The Road, Visions of Cody, Dr. Sax, he'd begun Book of Dreams and Pic, was in midst of Subterraneans affair with "Marlow Fox," that novel completed same year along with his romance Maggie Cassady. Burroughs then in residence edited Yage Letters and Queer mss., Gregory Corso visited that season probably September, 1953. -- Allen Ginsberg

Where the first escape is behind Ginsberg's apartment.

The book Kerouac had in his right side coat pocket was a timetable and brakeman's rule book for the Central Railroad of New Jersey / Central Division which was published in 1952 and 1953 (so it could be either edition.)

Kerouac had been a brakeman in 1952 and 1953 in San Luis Obispo, California for the Southern Pacific Line. He was probably studying the rules for the Jersey Central Lines to possibly get a job there.

(That information about the rule book came, after a long search by PopSpots, from the expert staff of the Californaia State Railroad Museum in Sacremento, California. in 2026, 73 years after the photo was taken.)

ThIs is a photo of the book. This is from 1952. Kerouac made have had one from 1953. It would look virtually the same.

This one measures 41/4 inches wide and 9+1/4 inches tall. it has 146 pages and is softcover.

The first part of the book is filled with train timetables.

The back part of the book contains rues for working on the trains.

Kerouac and Ginsberg later (or before) left the apartment and walked a block west, where they would cross the street at the southwest corner of Avenue B and East 7th Street.

Kerouac passing outside Vazac's Bar at 108 East 7th Street and Avenue B. The bar is sometimes known a 7B or Vazac's Horseshoe bar because of the "u" shape of the bar.

Passing outside of Vazac's.

CLOSER - Passing outside of Vazac's.

What Vazacs looks like inside. The movies Crocodile Dundee and The Godfather, Part II, among others were filmed inside here around the horseshoe-shaped bar.

Further west down the block, across from the park, Kerouac look's into a store window.

I copied the reflection of Kerouac's head and the steeple, put it on the left, and then flipped it to make it easier to see that it's tone of the two steeples that used to be on St. Brigid's Church in the background across from the park on Avenue B.

Based on the reflection of the steeple of St. Brigid's* Church in the background (a block north of East 7th Street on Avenue B), here is where that window would have been. The original building has been replaced.

*Full name: Church of Saint Brigid - Saint Emetic located at 119 Avenue B at the corner of East 8th and Avenue B.

Here's a photo of the group of tenements that was there back in 1939 from the New York Municipal Archives. Based on this, Kerouac would have been looking into the window of the "pool room" / "Billiard Academy" to the left of the Tompkins Square Tavern.

Here's a close up of the billiard hall front window into which Kerouac was looking. It's called the Park Circle Billiard Academy.

Notice how the shape of the white ceiling lamp is the same in the close up of Kerouac and in the old photo.

In this photo I've put Kerouac where he would be standing, looking into the window of the pool hall. (click on photo to enlarge it)

In the Kerouac photo taken years later, it still seems to have the white curtain on the brass railing in the front window; and it also has the turned wood columns in the exact places. (as discovered by Marie Fotini PopSpots Chief European correspondent)

Here's the old group of buildings overplayed on the new apartment house.

That photo of Kerouac was used on the cover of a book that went along with an exhibition of the manuscript for On the Road.

This is a statue that can be found at the southwest corner of Tompkins Square Park - on East 7th Street near Avenue A. It was placed there in 1891

Here's Ginsberg's 1953 photo of Kerouac across the street from the statue.

Ginsberg's caption reads: "Jack Kerouac wandering along East 7th Street after visiting Burroughs at our pad, passing statue of Congressman Samuel "Sunset" Cot, "The Letter-Carrier's Friend" in Tompkins Square toward corner of Avenue A, Lower East Side; he's making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian be-bop Om, first walking around the neighborhood, then involved with the Subterraneans, pencils & notebook in wool shirt-pockets, Fall 1953, Manhattan."

(Cox was influential in getting a 40-hour work week for postal workers, who raised money for the statue.

Now and then.

Panoramic view of the same spot.

Kerouac and Ginsberg then crossed Avenue A and kept walking west on East 7th Street.

Kerouac walking west across from St. Stanislaus Church on 7th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A. (The full name is Saint Stanislaus Bishop & Martyr Roman Catholic Church. The exact address is 101 East 7th Street)

St. Stanislaus front.

Now and then, with Kerouac.

Map of the route.

ADDENDUM A: from POPSPOTS FACEBOOK PAGE

This is what I wrote on the "single" PopSpot of this entry that I put on Facebook on Sept. 4, 2026.:

For #Jack Kerouac / #Allen Ginsbeg fans - a 73-year mystery - solved! . . . For 73 years, since 1953 when beat poet Allan Ginsberg took a photo of Jack Kerouac on Allan's fire escape in the East Village of New York City, Kerouac fans have wondered about the title of the small paperback "rule" book Jack was carrying in his pocket.

. . . In Ginsberg's caption for the photo, he wrote: "Jack Kerouac, railroad brakesman's rule book in pocket, couch pillows airing on fire escape, south view 206 E 7th Street, New York. . . . probably September 1953."

. . . Because Keraouc had worked on the Southern Pacific railroad in San Luis Obispo at various times between 1952 and 1963, people have often assumed, and written, that it was a Southern Pacific railroad rule book in the picture.

. . . (A railroad rulebook is a manual issued to railroad employees explaining the rules and procedures for operating trains safely and doing their jobs properly. A brakeman is a railroad crew member whose original job was to manually turn hand brakes on individual railcars to slow or stop a train.)

. . . But, over the years, in looking through Ebay at dozens of Southern Pacific rule books from the 1940's and 1950's, and on railroad history websites, we could not find a match for the five blurry words that made up the title.

. . . In addition, the logo for the Southern Pacific railroad line is round, and the logo on the Kerouac book, through round, also had something protruding from it at about the 10 o'clock position. . . Eventually, we got in touch with the Californai State Railroad Museum in Sacremento, California and asked them if they had a matching Southern Pacific rule book in their files.

. . . Our contact, Claire, "put her best volunter to work on it" and within hours got back to us with the news that it wasn't a Southern Pacific rule book after all, but a rule book/timetable for the Central Railroad of New Jersey. (And from there we figured the two words under it were Central Division (as opposed to - Southern or Pennsylvania Division.) .

. . . Claire directed us to Ebay where we bought a copy of the 1952 version, that came out one year before the Kerouac photo) for $17.95 (there might be a 1953 version, we're not sure) . . . . . In addition to the five words fitting the blurry spaces in size (and you can kind of make out the "J" in New Jersey, the logo was a circle - just like the Southern Pacific - but with the Statue of Libery torch sticking out of it - which matches the blurry logo on the book.

. . .To see some other shots of Kerouac by Ginsberg taken that same day as they walked through the East Village, go to: https://www.popspotsnyc.com/kerouac_7th_street/ Thank you, Marie Fotini, for additional research and to Clair and her team.