One Drunk to Another Where it happened
Watch The Kitchen Table

Who, What, When and Where

Where it happened

Every place the deep dives name at the top of their parts, on one map.

Tap a pin to see what happened there and the parts set there. In the deep dives, tap a place at the top of a part to see the same card.

The close-ups below the map show the places that crowd together: around New York, the city itself, Vermont and around Albany, and Akron and Cleveland. A few parts name only a state; those states are shaded on their cards, and every place is listed after the maps.

Map of the United States and nearby Canada, with the places the deep dives namePacific OceanAtlantic OceanGulf of MexicoCANADAMEXICOAround New York ↓Vermont and around Albany ↓Akron and Cleveland ↓RochesterRochesterBostonBostonNew BedfordNew BedfordLewisburgLewisburgAtlantic CityAtlantic CityBaltimoreBaltimoreMontrealMontrealTorontoTorontoOak ParkOak ParkSlingerSlingerIndianapolisIndianapolisLexingtonLexingtonFlorissantFlorissantMemphisMemphisMinneapolisMinneapolisNew OrleansNew OrleansMiami BeachMiami BeachDaytona BeachDaytona BeachSan QuentinSan QuentinSan DiegoSan DiegoSan FranciscoSan FranciscoSouth BendSouth BendOneidaOneidaLagunaLagunaAlkali LakeAlkali LakeState CollegeState CollegeStockbridgeStockbridgePeace DalePeace DaleProvidenceProvidenceLa LuzLa LuzHoustonHoustonBinghamtonBinghamtonDwightDwightDurhamDurhamAustinAustinAtlantaAtlantaMiamiMiamiLong BeachLong BeachEastonEastonDetroitDetroitSt. PaulSt. PaulLittle RockLittle RockDallasDallasWaterburyWaterburyVirginia BeachVirginia BeachNew HavenNew HavenPhiladelphiaPhiladelphiaChicagoChicagoWashingtonWashingtonLos AngelesLos AngelesSt. LouisSt. Louis
Off the map Honolulu Hawaii · London England · Winchester England · Sydney Australia · Dublin Ireland · County Mayo Ireland · Oslo Norway · Mexico City Mexico · Keswick England · Oxford England · Freudenstadt Germany · Bermuda The Atlantic · Zurich Switzerland · Arusha Tanganyika, now Tanzania · Nairobi Kenya · Paris France · Edinburgh Scotland · Küsnacht Switzerland

Around New York

Map: Around New YorkLong Island SoundAtlantic OceanHudson RiverNEW JERSEYCONNECTICUTNEW YORKIn the city ↓MontclairMontclairPleasantvillePleasantvilleCornwallCornwallGreenwichGreenwichNewarkNewarkBedford HillsBedford HillsNew YorkNew York

In the city

Map: In the cityHudson RiverNEW JERSEYEast RiverQUEENSTHE BRONXManhattanMANHATTANBrooklynBROOKLYNCalvary MissionCalvary MissionKnickerbocker HospitalKnickerbocker Hospital30 Vesey Street30 Vesey StreetThe Union ClubThe Union ClubWall StreetWall StreetGramercy ParkGramercy ParkBellevueBellevueTowns HospitalTowns Hospital182 Clinton Street182 Clinton Street

Vermont and around Albany

Map: Vermont and around AlbanyLake ChamplainVERMONTNEW YORKNEW HAMPSHIREMASSACHUSETTSEmerald LakeEmerald LakeBenningtonBenningtonNorwich UniversityNorwich UniversityGalwayGalwayNiskayunaNiskayunaEast DorsetEast DorsetSt. JohnsburySt. JohnsburyAlbanyAlbanyManchesterManchester

Akron and Cleveland

Map: Akron and ClevelandLake ErieCuyahoga RiverOHIORosary HallRosary HallSt. Thomas HospitalSt. Thomas HospitalClevelandClevelandAkronAkron

Outlines from the U.S. Census Bureau’s cartographic boundaries (2017), Natural Earth, and New York City’s borough boundaries (NYC Open Data), all free to use. The lower Hudson is traced by hand. Pins mark where each place is, not an exact address.

In New York City

182 Clinton StreetBrooklyn Heights

Lois W.’s family home, where Ebby T. sat at Bill W.’s kitchen table in 1934; then drunks lived there rent-free, meetings filled the parlor and Bill wrote the Twelve Steps.

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30 Vesey StreetLower Manhattan

AA’s one small office, run by Ruth Hock, where in 1941 a member brought in the Serenity Prayer, cut from a newspaper, and it went out on wallet cards.

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BellevueBellevue Hospital, Manhattan

New York’s public hospital, where Dr. William D. Silkworth saw alcoholics up close as a young doctor, and where Marty M. spent about six months sober in 1938.

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BrooklynNew York City

Home to Lois W. from childhood and to Bill W. through his drinking; once he was sober, their house filled with drunks and meetings, and he wrote the Steps there.

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Calvary MissionEast 23rd Street, Manhattan

A rescue mission for homeless men run by Calvary Church, where Ebby T. lived and worked from the fall of 1934, and a still-drinking Bill W. turned up one night.

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Gramercy ParkManhattan

Calvary Church stood here, at Fourth Avenue and 21st Street, with Calvary House beside it from 1928: the Oxford Group’s American home, where Sam Shoemaker was rector.

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Knickerbocker HospitalHarlem, Manhattan

A general hospital where Dr. William D. Silkworth, in his seventies, helped open a ward for alcoholics in 1945, run on AA’s ideas; one six-bed room was nicknamed Duffy’s Tavern.

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ManhattanNew York City

Between homes, Bill W. and Lois W. lived above AA’s clubhouse on West 24th Street, where Bill took what he called his Fifth Step with Father Ed Dowling.

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New YorkNew York City

Where Bill W. got sober and began working with drunks, and where AA later kept its office, answered its mail, started its magazine and drafted its Traditions.

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Towns Hospital293 Central Park West, Manhattan

A private hospital for alcoholics, where Dr. William D. Silkworth told Bill W. he was sick, not weak, and where Bill’s last stay, in December 1934, ended his drinking.

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The Union ClubManhattan

Scene of John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s February 1940 dinner for AA, where about 75 wealthy guests heard his son, Nelson Rockefeller, say AA should pay its own way.

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Wall StreetLower Manhattan

Bill W. made a fortune on paper here in the late 1920s, drinking after the closing bell, and lost it when the market broke in October 1929.

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Around New York

Bedford HillsWestchester County, New York

Site of Stepping Stones, Bill W. and Lois W.’s home from 1941, where Lois began an office for the family groups and Bill wrote Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

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CornwallNew York

The Big Book was printed here on credit in 1939, on paper thick enough to give it its name, while Hank P. and Bill W. corrected galleys.

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GreenwichConnecticut

Blythewood, the private sanitarium here, took Marty M. as a charity patient in 1938; she read a loan copy of the Big Book there and started meetings on its grounds.

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MontclairNew Jersey

A psychiatrist here, Dr. Howard, read a loan copy of the Big Book early in 1939, found it too full of commands, and the tone was softened throughout.

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New JerseyThe state

After losing their Brooklyn house in 1939, Bill W. and Lois W. stayed in a borrowed bungalow at Green Pond, one of about fifty places they lived in two years.

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NewarkNew Jersey

In Hank P.’s office here, Bill W. dictated most of the Big Book’s chapters to Ruth Hock in 1938, and the new book company tried to sell it through 1939.

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PleasantvilleWestchester County, New York

Home of the Reader’s Digest, where in 1939 Hank P. and Bill W. learned that the piece on their book, which they had counted on, had been turned down.

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Akron and Cleveland

AkronOhio

Where Dr. Bob S. practiced surgery, met Bill W. in 1935 and took the last drink AA dates its start from; members there helped shape the Big Book and sponsorship.

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ClevelandOhio

Members who had gone to Akron’s meeting started their own in 1939; a newspaper series brought a flood of newcomers to sponsor, and a 1950 convention adopted the Traditions.

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Rosary HallCleveland, Ohio

An old wing of St. Vincent Charity Hospital that AA members rebuilt for Sister Ignatia in 1952; she ran the ward there until 1965, and Rosary Hall still treats patients.

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St. Thomas HospitalAkron, Ohio

A Catholic hospital where, from 1939, Sister Ignatia and Dr. Bob S. took in alcoholics, the first in a bed wheeled into the flower room; thousands passed through.

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New England and upstate New York

AlbanyNew York

Ebby T.’s hometown, where he drank from his school days, and where he came back sober in 1936, the year before he drank again.

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BenningtonVermont

The county seat, where Ebby T. was taken before a judge in 1934 and, by his own account, feared prison; he came back sober on Monday and was released to Rowland H.

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BinghamtonNew York

New York’s inebriate asylum took its first patient on a hill here on July 3, 1864, the first hospital in the country built to treat alcoholism as a disease, its landmark nomination says.

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BostonMassachusetts

Paddy started AA here in the early 1940s and never got sober himself, yet kept carrying the message; his first two successes were still at it in 1957.

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East DorsetVermont

Where Bill W. was born in 1895 and raised by his grandparents after his father left; he was buried there in May 1971.

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EastonConnecticut

A weekend house Marty M. and Priscilla P. bought in 1954 became their home, where Marty cared for Priscilla as her memory failed and had a fatal stroke in 1980.

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Emerald LakeVermont

Lois W.’s family summered here, and here she met Bill W.; in 1915 she ran a tea arbor that he visited many afternoons, and that summer they became engaged.

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GalwayNew York

McPike’s Farm, a rest home for alcoholics on Peaceable Street, where Ebby T., brought by Bill W. in 1964, spent his last two years and never drank.

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ManchesterVermont

Where Bill W. went to school and met Ebby T.; in 1934 Ebby, drinking alone here and due in court sober, gave away the ale in his cellar.

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New BedfordMassachusetts

Where Bill W., an officer at Fort Rodman in 1917, took his first drink, a Bronx cocktail, at a society dinner, and felt for the first time that he belonged.

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New HavenConnecticut

Yale put Marty M. on its staff in 1944, and for six months she spent her working weeks here, living with the Jellineks and learning the science of alcoholism.

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NiskayunaNew York

When the pandemic closed meeting rooms in 2020, Suzette P., alone in the house where she had once drunk, joined a nightly AA meeting by telephone.

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Norwich UniversityNorthfield, Vermont

The military college Bill W. entered in 1914, where he felt out of place again; panic attacks sent him home, and he never finished there.

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Peace DaleRhode Island

Rowland H. was born here in 1881, in the woolen-mill village his family built, and was buried here in 1945.

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ProvidenceRhode Island

The Rhode Island Historical Society here keeps the Hazard family’s papers, where researchers from the late 1990s on looked for Rowland H.’s time with Jung.

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RochesterNew York

In 1945 the Genesee Group’s plan had sponsors take each newcomer through its booklet before his first meeting, then four talks on the Steps; the Grapevine printed objections.

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St. JohnsburyVermont

Dr. Bob S. grew up here, a probate judge’s son who swore off church, and met Anne Ripley, his future wife, at a dance at St. Johnsbury Academy.

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StockbridgeMassachusetts

The Oxford Group held its national assembly, “America Awake,” in these Berkshire hills in 1936, with thousands in a circus tent; Bill W. and Lois W. came in June.

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VermontThe state

As a girl, Lois W. spent nearly half of every year here with her family, first in Manchester, later at Emerald Lake; she climbed trees and was called a tomboy.

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WaterburyConnecticut

Rowland H. was executive vice-president of The Bristol Company, instrument makers, here from 1940, and died at his desk in December 1945.

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Across the country

Alkali LakeBritish Columbia, Canada

Phyllis C. and Andy C. quit drinking in 1972 and held AA meetings in their house; by 1979, AA’s newsletter said, 98 percent of the reserve didn’t drink.

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AtlantaGeorgia

T.B. of Atlanta wrote the Grapevine’s October 1945 editorial on Step Twelve: very few members, he said, knew the hour and date of their spiritual experience.

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Atlantic CityNew Jersey

About two weeks sober in 1935, Dr. Bob S. went to the American Medical Association’s convention here and drank from the train onward, his last binge.

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AustinTexas

Leroy Powell, a shoeshine man arrested here in December 1966, took his conviction for public drunkenness to the Supreme Court, which upheld it five to four in 1968.

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BaltimoreMaryland

Six regulars at Chase’s Tavern founded the Washingtonians here in 1840, drunks helping drunks; a century later Bill W. made their fall AA’s warning against public controversy.

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CaliforniaThe state

Lois W. and later accounts place AA’s first loner here, a drunk who got sober alone on the mailed manuscript; the Big Book printed his letter as Lone Endeavor.

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ChicagoIllinois

Dr. Bob S. finished medical school here at Rush in 1910, staying dry to graduate; Marty M. was born and grew up here and dated her drinking from seventeen.

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DallasTexas

A clinic here took in Ebby T. at Bill W.’s request in 1953, and his Texas friends saw him through about seven sober years.

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Daytona BeachFlorida

Richmond W.’s group here talked him into printing his daily readings in 1948 as Twenty-Four Hours a Day; AA declined to publish it, and Hazelden took it on.

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DetroitMichigan

The North-West Group began Monday discussion meetings here in 1943, splitting the Steps into four phases, one each week; in 1956 Mr. Hope put a meeting of masked members on the city’s television.

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DurhamNorth Carolina

Joe Driver of Durham County had been convicted of public drunkenness more than 200 times when a federal appeals court ruled in 1966 that a chronic alcoholic couldn’t be convicted for being drunk in public.

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DwightIllinois

Dr. Leslie Keeley opened his first institute here in 1879 and sold a gold cure, by needle and by tonic; in the early 1890s a graduate counted about a thousand drunkards in the village.

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FlorissantMissouri

Father Ed Dowling entered the Jesuits at St. Stanislaus Seminary here, just outside St. Louis, in 1919, and made the Spiritual Exercises in full as a novice.

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HoustonTexas

Larry J. wrote six articles condensing the Big Book for the Houston Press here early in 1940, and the first meeting in Texas met at the YMCA that March.

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IndianapolisIndiana

Doherty S., who brought AA here, told Bill W. that the custom of giving chips began in this city; AA’s archives think it started in 1942.

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KansasThe state

Father Ed Dowling studied theology at St. Mary’s College here, and in his second year failed his Latin oral exam on whether angels have bodies.

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La LuzNew Mexico

Rowland H. bought about a thousand acres here in 1929 and built a house and a tile and pottery works; in 1935 ten or twelve neighbors came to an Oxford Group meeting on his patio.

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LagunaNew Mexico

About sixty members from Albuquerque visited a small, newly formed Pueblo group on the reservation here in 1959.

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LewisburgPennsylvania

Judith H. had never heard of virtual meetings before AA’s rooms closed in 2020; within a month they were her near-daily link to her groups, sponsees and friends.

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LexingtonKentucky

The U.S. Public Health Service ran a hospital for narcotic addicts here, and in 1947 patients formed a group like AA, naming it Addicts Anonymous.

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Little RockArkansas

Two drunks here sent away for the Big Book; in 1940 they and a third man met as a group, which AA remembered as the first formed by mail alone.

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Long BeachCalifornia

AA’s office registered its first group of non-alcoholics here on March 1, 1945, and in 1960 Al-Anon members at AA’s convention here voted for a World Service Conference of their own.

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Los AngelesCalifornia

Where Marty M. was treated for tuberculosis as a girl, where Moral Re-Armament filled the Hollywood Bowl in 1939, where Bill W. tried LSD in 1956, and where Gamblers Anonymous held its first meeting in 1957.

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MemphisTennessee

Father Ed Dowling flew here for a Cana conference on April 2, 1960, and died in his sleep at the house where he was staying.

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MiamiFlorida

An AA member here went into the hospital with pneumonia on Easter Sunday 1958; his account of the night he nearly died ran in the Grapevine that December.

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Miami BeachFlorida

Bill W.’s wheelchair was lifted onto the stage at AA’s 1970 convention here, and with oxygen tubes in place he spoke for four minutes.

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MinneapolisMinnesota

Ed W. taught the Steps to beginners at the Nicollet Group here, and with Barry C. self-published his notes in 1946, the book later called The Little Red Book.

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MinnesotaThe state

Three treatment programs began here between 1948 and 1950, Pioneer House, Hazelden and Willmar, building the Steps into a stay of weeks; together they became the Minnesota Model.

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MontrealQuebec, Canada

After the 1929 crash a friend gave Bill W. a job here; by spring he had an expensive apartment above the St. Lawrence, and by fall he was let go.

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New MexicoThe state

Rowland H. had a ranch and pottery here from 1929; in the summer of 1936 he drank again here, and his family brought him back east.

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New OrleansLouisiana

The city where Marty M. had eloped, and where in 1980, weeks before she died, she was a main speaker at the first AA convention to feature women alcoholics.

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Oak ParkIllinois

Anne S. came from here and taught school here while Dr. Bob S. courted her, by letter and on business trips to Chicago.

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OklahomaThe state

In Tulsa in 1977, Joe McQ. and Charlie P. were asked to take a home group through the Big Book; by one account, their first weekend study was in Lawton.

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OneidaWisconsin

The first all-Indian AA group in the U.S. is believed to have started here in 1953.

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PhiladelphiaPennsylvania

George S. wrote to AA from here after the Liberty article and hosted the city’s first meeting in 1940; members here got a drinking Ebby T. into a psychiatric ward.

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San DiegoCalifornia

A Young Men’s Group, for men under forty, held its first meeting here on Halloween 1946, with six young men and twenty older members on hand.

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San FranciscoCalifornia

Gay members started a meeting of their own here about 1967 or 1968 and listed it outside AA’s directory; in 1976 about 200 came to the Gay AAs Western Roundup.

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San QuentinCalifornia

California’s maximum-security prison, where Warden Clinton T. Duffy let AA inside the walls in 1942, the first prison to try it, with members driving in from around the bay.

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SlingerWisconsin

Ruth H. and her husband set up online meetings for their home groups here in 2020, coaching old-timers and newcomers through technology they were still learning.

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South BendIndiana

Two Black alcoholics told in 1948 that AA had no “set-up for colored people” sat in a white member’s kitchen to listen, and about 1950 started the Interracial Group.

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St. LouisMissouri

Father Ed Dowling was born here and helped start its first AA group in 1940; by 1945 one group here took newcomers through four Thursday nights, and at AA’s 1955 convention here Bill W. said the Steps were suggestions nobody had to accept as written.

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St. PaulMinnesota

A 1945 plan here gave newcomers four talks, held side by side in four rooms on Wednesday nights; a group begun here in 1966 later became Emotions Anonymous.

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State CollegePennsylvania

At Pennsylvania State College, from 1909, Frank Buchman ran the YMCA and began the one-to-one work the Oxford Group built its method on; the campus bootlegger, Bill Pickle, gave up drinking.

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TorontoOntario, Canada

In 2011 the Intergroup here dropped two agnostic groups from its meeting list, one of which had posted the Steps without God; a human rights complaint was settled in 2017.

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Virginia BeachVirginia

Al-Anon’s World Service Office has been here since June 1996, in a building of its own on Corporate Landing Parkway; and on the day of its open house that October it put up a public website.

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WashingtonDistrict of Columbia

Where Jim B. heard the message in 1938 from Jackie, a sponsor who soon drank, and where Marty M. testified to a Senate subcommittee on alcoholism in 1969.

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Off the map

ArushaTanganyika, now Tanzania

On a hunting trip, Rowland H. lay in a hospital here with dysentery from December 1927 into January 1928.

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BermudaThe Atlantic

On a vacation here in March 1926, Rowland H.’s drinking apparently got away from him, and his wife sent him home alone.

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County MayoIreland

Della Gavin, later Sister Ignatia, was born here in 1889; in 2017 plaques to her were unveiled at the ruins of her family’s cottage and in Castlebar.

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DublinIreland

Conor F., sober in Philadelphia, came home on vacation in 1946 and helped start AA here; Ireland dates its first meeting to November 1946.

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EdinburghScotland

William James gave his lectures on religion at the university here in 1901 and 1902; they became The Varieties of Religious Experience, the book that reached Bill W. at Towns Hospital.

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FreudenstadtGermany

Walking in the woods above this Black Forest town in 1938, Frank Buchman thought of “moral and spiritual re-armament”; he died here in 1961.

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HonoluluHawaii

A small-boat builder here found AA’s address at the library in 1943; his letters, printed in the Grapevine’s first issue, told of a first meeting of five.

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KeswickEngland

At the Keswick Convention in 1908, after hearing a woman preach about the Cross in a little stone chapel, Frank Buchman wrote letters of apology to the six men he blamed in Philadelphia.

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KüsnachtSwitzerland

Carl Jung died at home here on June 6, 1961, at 85, without answering Bill W.’s question about LSD.

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LondonEngland

Marty M. moved here in 1930 and lost control of her drinking; in 1938, at East Ham Town Hall, Frank Buchman launched Moral Re-Armament.

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Mexico CityMexico

An English-speaking group met here by 1946, at the YMCA on Tuesday nights; its first Mexican member was a lawyer, Fernando I.

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NairobiKenya

Rowland H. was brought here by ambulance in January 1928, and his brother came out to take him home.

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OsloNorway

A Norwegian sober in Greenwich, Connecticut, came here in 1947 to help his brother, a typesetter, who then ran a notice in his own paper every day for a month.

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OxfordEngland

Turned away from Princeton, Frank Buchman worked among students here; in 1928 six Oxford men went to South Africa, and the newspapers called them the Oxford Group.

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ParisFrance

A few days after Joseph Kessel’s first article on AA appeared in France-Soir in July 1960, the English-speaking group here received some thirty letters in French.

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SydneyAustralia

A psychiatrist and a priest here wrote to AA in New York late in 1942; after two years with no results, a group formed in 1945.

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WinchesterEngland

Held at a camp near here in 1918, Bill W. felt a presence in the cathedral, then read an old soldier’s gravestone that blamed his death on beer.

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ZurichSwitzerland

Rowland H. saw Carl Jung here from May to July 1926, writing from the Dolder Grand Hotel on the hill above the town.

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Printed from One Drunk to Another, an independent AA history · onedrunktoanother.org/where/