Truman Capote rented a 5-room basement apartment on Willow Street in 1957. While there, Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood.

Arthur Miller lived at 151 Willow Street before his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. He probably first met Marilyn at a cocktail party she attended in Brooklyn Heights.

On the corner of Willow Street and Middagh Street once stood a dwelling which was home at one time to more artistic individuals than any other Brooklyn residence. The writer Anais Nin called it "the February House" because she and three other residents were all born during that month. Her roommates included the poet W. H. Auden and novelist Carson McCullers.

In 1944, the playwright Arthur Miller lived at 102 Pierrepont Street. He wrote: "Norman Mailer lived upstairs, but much of the time he was away at war." Miller was influenced by that same war and wrote All My Sons there.

Norman Mailer wrote Barbary Shore about a writer and a group of spies. After publishing the book, he worked for a while at a studio at 246 Fulton Street. Ironically, Nazi spy Rudolph Abel was renting a room at the same address.