Current residentCastle Village since 2017Hudson Heights
Lin-Manuel Miranda
The creator of In the Heights lives in Hudson Heights: in 2017 he and his wife, Vanessa Nadal, bought co-op units at Castle Village on Cabrini Boulevard. He grew up just north in Inwood and wrote parts of Hamilton at the Morris-Jumel Mansion.
Castle Village, Cabrini Blvd
Lin-Manuel Miranda is a Hudson Heights resident. According to StreetEasy, in 2017 he and his wife, Vanessa Nadal, bought a pair of co-op units at Castle Village, the 1939 complex of five towers on Cabrini Boulevard overlooking the Hudson. StreetEasy also notes that Fort Tryon Park, a few blocks north, is a long-time favorite of his.
He has been uptown most of his life, though not always in the Heights. The New York Times reported in 2008 that he grew up in Inwood, just north, and that as a kid he studied piano at 181st Street and Cabrini Boulevard. He set In the Heights here because, as he put it, Washington Heights “sings better.”
His other documented ties to the neighborhood: in 2014, the Morris-Jumel Mansion says, he sat in Aaron Burr’s bedchamber and wrote songs for Hamilton there, which he describes in a PBS clip as being “artist-in-residence literally.” In 2018, NBC New York reported that he and his family helped broker a deal to keep Coogan’s, the Broadway pub at 169th Street, open after it announced it would close over rising rent. Coogan’s closed for good in April 2020.