CHARLOTTE'S PLACE

Living with the ghost of a cinéma-vérité pioneer.

- BY MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Charlotte Zwerin's status as the "third Maysles" was both her calling card and her curse.

My husband and I landed here eight years ago, in this airy, crooked apartment on the top floor of an eighteen-thirties town house in Greenwich Village, on a quiet street shaped like a bent elbow. Up a narrow staircase is a loft, with a skylight over the desk where I work. The place came with the landlord's cast-off green divan and giraffe-print armchair; it feels like a stage set of old Greenwich Village, a bohemian garret with a fireplace. When we moved in, the neighbors called it “Charlotte’s place.” Whoever Charlotte was, we had her dining-room table.

Every home is haunted by its previous residents, but prewar apartments in the Village have particularly colorful ghosts. The neighborhood still trades on its beatnik associations, although hedge-funders have long since replaced the likes of Frank O’Hara, Lorraine Hansberry, and Jane Jacobs. If Charlotte was haunting us, it was a friendly haunting. But who was she? From neighbors’ descriptions, she sounded like a classic Village crank who had holed up here for decades. Eventually, I put the pieces together. Above the building’s front door is a plaque that reads “OWNER MICHAEL L. ZWERIN.” Some Googling brought me to the name Charlotte Zwerin. The person I uncovered was neither an obscure oddball nor a downtown luminary but someone in between: an undersung heroine of documentary film.

The first thing I found was a