Talk:Greenwich Village

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1 unsorted topics
2 Village vs. West Village
3 Request clarification of Villages
4 East vs West vs "The" Village
5 Historical main roads?
6 Alexander Hamilton
7 famous residents
8 Organization
9 Gentrification and commercialization ironic?
10 Category

[edit] unsorted topics

I fleshed out the "History" section (for example, differentiated between the Beat movement and the later folk movement (Bob Dylan), as well as rearranged some of the wordings to make sentences clearer.--PolPotPie 00:29, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Random User with a question: how can their be a West Village when your Greenich Village boundaries go all the way to the Hudson? I don't know if this is the right place to put this.

This is how: Greenwich Village contains the West Village. The West Village is sometimes considered a subsection of Greenwich Village, and other times used as a synonym for all of Greenwich Village to distinguish it from the East Village, which is on the Lower East Side.

maps of each area in relation to the rest of the city would be nice. — Omegatron 22:30, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be a good idea to include the pronounciation of "Greenwich"? Rmisiak 07:10, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Sapokanikan = "tobacco field": http://www.nyc.com/arts__attractions/Washington_Square_Park/editorial.aspx

In the first sentence it is said that Greenwich Village is also referred to as the West Village; isn't the East Village also part of Greenwich Village and thus this excludes it improperly? Fuhghettaboutit 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Wherever the facade shots of the Friends building were taken, isn't the show set on the Upper West Side? I always took for granted that the coffee shop was called Central Perk because it faced, you know, Central Park. --69.219.54.199 01:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Village vs. West Village

I was born and raised in "the village" (right smack in the middle, neither East nor West), and am a 4th generation native-born Manhattanite. I have never once heard "West Village" used to mean "all of the village". There is no way anyone familiar with the neighborhood would cite, say, Washington Square Park as being in the West Village. This portion of the entry is incorrect

161.185.1.100 20:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Feel free to edit the article and make the change, as well as any other improvements. -Aude (talk | contribs) 20:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request clarification of Villages

OK, I'm slightly confused by the differences between "(The) Village", "East Village", "West Village", and "Greenwich Village". Could someone clarify this? Currently there's a contradiction of definitions. In the Japanese Wikipedia article (which I want to update), it says "the Village = West + Greenwich + East Villages", while the English Wikipedia article says "the Village = Greenwich Village", while "West Village" is left undefined.—Tokek 08:43, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

That's because Manhattanites love to argue over silly things. :) Everyone agrees that "the Village" and "Greenwich Village" are synonyms. Everyone also agrees that the upper and lower bounds are Houston St and 14th St. The problem is that, historically, Greenwich Village only went as far east as Broadway (which is where 4th Ave would be in this part of town). When Greenwich was this small, anything west of maybe 7th Ave wasn't really "west". The area to the East was Bowery and Alphabet City (plus some gated communities in the far northeast that no one thinks of as in the Village). Some people go so far as to say that both of these neighborhoods were sub-neighborhoods of the Lower East Side. In the 80's, real estate developers started referring to Bowery & Alphabet City as "East Village". Here's where it gets nasty: the city government now considers EVERYTHING between Houston & 14th to be Greenwich Village, with the area that the irate person in the post above thought of as central Greenwich (AKA Washington Square) now being considered in the West part of Greenwich Village. --M @r ē ino 14:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I've only lived here a year, but here's how I view the whole situation. Greenwich Village & the West Village = The Village, while the East Village would never be referred to as simply "the Village". Again, I haven't lived here for that long, so what do I know? Alexandrewb 18:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] East vs West vs "The" Village

I think maybe I'm the person being referred to as "irate" (which I'm not, so forgive me if my tone suggested otherwise) so maybe I can clarify or confuse things further.

As I said, I was born and raised there, so this is the source of my authority, FWIW. In my experience, most long-term residents and natives understand "the village" to mean the superset, i.e. everything between Houston and 14th Street. Some people, though, view the "East Village" as being a distinct neighborhood, with some dispute about its western boundary. Some say Broadway, some say the Bowery, some say it depends on latitude. For instance, 4th Ave is east of Broadway, but its feel has always been pretty different from, say, St. Marks Pl. Lots of peope would think of, say 4th Ave and 9th St. as "the Village", and not the "East Village". There's no "official" answer to these conundrums (as there would be with, say borough boundaries, community districts, and police precincts, all of which were established by official legislative processes) because neighborhoods have no official meaning in New York City. They're just commonly (mis)understood areas. For pretty much any nabe in the city, there's disagreement about its borders, whether it's really part of something else, etc.

M@rēino wrote:

"The problem is that, historically, Greenwich Village only went as far east as Broadway (which is where 4th Ave would be in this part of town)."

FWIW, Broadway is not the equivalent of 4th Ave -- 4th Ave is (above Astor Place); Lafayette St. is below Astor Pl. Park Ave was originally called 4th Ave (before Madison Ave was built and confused everybody a bit more).

How old is "East Village"; Lower East Side vs. East Village -- the term "East Village" is definitely older than the 80s. For instance, there was a well known literary/bohemian newspaper in the 60s called the East Village Other. Also, I'm pretty sure you'll find the term used by a number of Beat writers (e.g., Ginsburg, and Kerouac, though I don't have specific references). I think it's fair to say that at some point, "Lower East Side" included what today would be thought of as the East Village, and that the distinction between the two probably first appeared post-war. My immigrant forebears wouldn't have thought of their north-of-Houston tenements as any part of the village. In my youth, the East Village was where hippie/boho/outsider white people lived. The Lower East side was where Puerto Ricans (and dwindling numbers of Jews) lived. Houston St. was sort of the dividing line, but really the distinction was more cultural/ethnic than geographic.

As someone who works for city government and deals extensively with geography and geopolitical boundary issues, I think that

"Here's where it gets nasty: the city government now considers EVERYTHING between Houston & 14th to be Greenwich Village"

overstates things. I'm sure there are some documents and publications that present the Village this way for some narrow governental purposes. However, city government doesn't "officially" define neighborhoods (which don't really have any official meaning or status). Generally, city gov tries to map neighborhood boundaries where it thinks most New Yorkers would put them; it probably gets this stuff wrong a good percentage of the time.

Southern boundary of Greenwich Village - Contrary to what seems to be popular perception, the 1956 edition of Encyclopedia Britanica states that the southern border of Greenwich Village is Spring Street. Spring Street is two blocks south of Houston Street. While it is presently accepted that the "Greenwich Village" and "Chelsea" districts of New York derive their names from similarly named places in London's metropolitan area, it is claimed that New York's "Soho" was not named after London's Soho. It is claimed that New York's Soho was named solely for it's position "South of Houston". If Britanica is correct, it seems that the southern boundary of the village was moved in order to justify Soho's name.ADeC (talk) 16:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Historical main roads?

The old map is great to have, but I'm having trouble figuring out which roads correspond to modern city streets. Can anyone layout perhaps where the central part of the village was back in, say, 1730 and what's there now? Thank you! --Jolomo 00:07, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I added a citiation of why the village was referred to as Washington Square but I cannot fiture out how to mark it as the 4th citiation.

[edit] Alexander Hamilton

In Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, he writes that Hamilton was carried to a mansion that used to stand on Jane Street in the Greenwich Village, where he died on July 12, 1804. This is very important as it related to the famous death of a founding father of the country. Should it be included? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Here Comes a New Challenger!! (talk • contribs) 17:32, August 21, 2007 (UTC).

[edit] famous residents

Any objection to me scrapping the "famous residents" section of this page and replacing it with a category? --M @r ē ino 20:58, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Seeing no objections, I've made the change. --M @r ē ino 14:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've renamed it to the softer-sounding "Notable residents." I like the idea of just directing to a list but, typically, these kinds of section headings should still have some prose (even as simple as, "Several notable individuals have resided in Greenwich Village, including many writers, politicians, musicians..." or something). --Midnightdreary 15:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Good idea; I'm on it. --M @r ē ino 16:36, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Organization

I was confused when I was reading the Greenwich Village page. The some information was out of place, and, thus, made it the page somewhat hard to comprehend. I rearranged some of it and it would be nice if others reread the page and could help further organize it. Hpfa1 05:39, 6 February ~~2007~~2008 (UTC)

So just to be clear -- you were not removing or adding any information, just rearranging it? If so, I'll give you my support. There's nothing wrong with trying a new format to see if it works out. --M @r ē ino 23:14, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gentrification and commercialization ironic?

"Ironically, what provided the initial attractive character of the community eventually contributed to its gentrification and commercialization" that's not ironic, unless one deems gentrification and commercialization as a negative aspect of the community, which it is not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.186.170.167 (talk) 14:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category

The category Category:People from Greenwich Village, New York (recently deleted and now reinstated) contained the following before deletion (and now has 32).

-- roundhouse0 (talk) 13:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)