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Greenwich Village Historic District
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Washington Square Park, in the heart of Greenwich Village
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| Location: | Bounded by: W 14th Street on the North; W Houston Street on the South; the Hudson River on the West; Broadway on the East |
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| Built: | 1799 |
| Architectural style: | Mid 19th Century Revival, Italianate, Federal |
| Governing body: | State |
| NRHP Reference#: | 79001604[1] |
| Added to NRHP: | June 19, 1979 |
Greenwich Village,[pronunciation 1] in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families. Greenwich Village, however, was known in the late 19th to mid 20th centuries as an artists' haven, the bohemian capital, and the East Coast birthplace of the Beat movement. What provided the initial attractive character of the community eventually contributed to its gentrification and commercialization.[2]
The name of the village is Anglicized from the Dutch name Greenwijck, meaning "Pine District", into Greenwich, a borough of London.[3]
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The neighborhood is bordered by Broadway to the East, the Hudson River to the West, Houston Street to the South, and 14th Street to the North. The neighborhoods surrounding it are the East Village and NoHo to the East, SoHo to the south, and Chelsea to the North. The East Village was formerly considered part of the Lower East Side and never associated with Greenwich Village.[4] The West Village is the area of Greenwich Village west of 7th Avenue, though realtors claim the dividing line is farther east at 6th Avenue. The Far West Village is a sub-neighborhood from the Hudson River to Hudson Street. The neighborhood is located in New York's 8th congressional district, New York's 25th State Senate district, New York's 66th State Assembly district, and New York City Council's 3rd district.
Into the early 20th century, Greenwich Village was distinguished from the upper-class neighborhood of Washington Square – based on the major landmark Washington Square Park[5] or Empire Ward[6] in the 19th century.
Encyclopædia Britannica's 1956 article on "New York (City)" (subheading "Greenwich Village") states that the southern border of the Village is Spring Street, reflecting an earlier understanding (today, Spring Street might be considered the southern boundary of the neighborhood sometimes called the South Village, though some cite Canal Street as the furthest extent of the South Village). The newer district of SoHo has since encroached on the Village's historic border.
As Greenwich Village was once a rural hamlet, to the north of the earliest European settlement on Manhattan Island, its street layout is more haphazard than the grid pattern of the 19th-century grid plan (based on the Commissioners' Plan of 1811). Greenwich Village was allowed to keep its street pattern in areas west of Greenwich Lane (now Greenwich Avenue) and Sixth Avenue, which were already built up when the plan was implemented, resulting in a neighborhood whose streets are dramatically different, in layout, from the ordered structure of newer parts of town. Many of the neighborhood's streets are narrow and some curve at odd angles. In addition, unlike streets of most of Manhattan above Houston Street, streets in the Village typically are named rather than numbered. While some of the formerly named streets (including Factory, Herring and Amity Streets) are now numbered, even they do not always conform to the usual grid pattern when they enter the neighborhood. For example, West 4th Street, which runs east-west outside of the Village, turns and runs north, crossing West 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th Streets.
A large section of Greenwich Village, made up of more than 50 northern and western blocks in the area up to 14th Street, is part of a Historic District established by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The District's convoluted borders run no farther south than 4th Street or St. Luke's Place, and no farther east than Washington Square East or University Place.[7] Redevelopment in that area is severely restricted, and developers must preserve the main facade and aesthetics of the buildings even during renovation.
Most parts of Greenwich Village comprise mid-rise apartments, 19th-century row houses and the occasional one-family walk-up, a sharp contrast to the hi-rise landscape in Mid- and Downtown Manhattan.
In the 16th century, Native Americans referred to its farthest northwest corner, by the cove on the Hudson River at present-day Gansevoort Street, as Sapokanikan ("tobacco field"). The land was cleared and turned into pasture by Dutch and freed African settlers in the 1630s, who named their settlement Noortwyck. In the 1630s, Governor Wouter van Twiller farmed tobacco on 200 acres (0.81 km2) here at his "Farm in the Woods".[8] The English conquered the Dutch settlement of New Netherland in 1664 and Greenwich Village developed as a hamlet separate from the larger (and fast-growing) New York City to the south.
It officially became a village in 1712 and is first referred to as Grin'wich in 1713 Common Council records. Sir Peter Warren began accumulating land in 1731 and built a frame house capacious enough to hold a sitting of the Assembly when smallpox rendered the city dangerous in 1739. His house, which survived until the Civil War era, overlooked the North River from a bluff; its site on the block bounded by Perry and Charles Streets, Bleecker and West 4th Streets,[9] can still be recognized by its mid-19th century rowhouses inserted into a neighborhood still retaining many houses of the 1830–37 boom.
The oldest house remaining in Greenwich Village is the Isaacs-Hendricks House, at 77 Bedford Street (built 1799, much altered and enlarged 1836, third story 1928).[10] When the Church of St. Luke in the Fields was founded in 1820 it stood in fields south of the road (now Christopher Street) that led from Greenwich Lane (now Greenwich Avenue) down to a landing on the North River. In 1822, a yellow fever epidemic in New York encouraged residents to flee to the healthier air of Greenwich Village, and afterwards many stayed. The future site of Washington Square was a potter's field from 1797 to 1823 when 10 to 20,000 of New York's poor were buried here, and still remain. The handsome Greek revival rowhouses on the north side of Washington Square were built about 1832, establishing the fashion of Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue for decades to come. Well into the 19th century, the district of Washington Square was considered separate from Greenwich Village.
Greenwich Village is generally known as an important landmark on the map of American bohemian culture. The neighborhood is known for its colorful, artistic residents and the alternative culture they propagate. Due in part to the progressive attitudes of many of its residents, the Village has traditionally been a focal point of new movements and ideas, whether political, artistic, or cultural. This tradition as an enclave of avant-garde and alternative culture was established during the 19th century and into the 20th century, when small presses, art galleries, and experimental theater thrived.
The Tenth Street Studio Building was situated at 51 West 10th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, the building was commissioned by James Boorman Johnston[11] and designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Its innovative design soon represented a national architectural prototype,[12] and featured a domed central gallery, from which interconnected rooms radiated. Hunt's studio within the building housed the first architectural school in the United States.[13] Soon after its completion in 1857, the building helped to make Greenwich Village central to the arts in New York City, drawing artists from all over the country to work, exhibit, and sell their art. In its initial years Winslow Homer took a studio there,[14] as did Edward Lamson Henry, and many of the artists of the Hudson River School, including Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt. [15]
The Hotel Albert from the late 19th century through the 21st century has served as a cultural icon of Greenwich Village. Opened during the 1880s and originally located at 11th Street and University Place, called the Hotel St. Stephan and then after 1902, called The Hotel Albert while under the ownership of William Ryder it served as a meeting place, restaurant and dwelling for several important artists and writers from the late 19th century well into the 20th century. After 1902 the owner of the Hotel Albert's brother Albert Pinkham Ryder lived and painted there. Some of the other famous guests who lived there include: Augustus St. Gaudens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, Anaïs Nin, Thomas Wolfe, Robert Lowell, Horton Foote, Salvador Dali, Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and many others. [16][17] During the golden age of bohemianism, Greenwich Village became famous for such eccentrics as Joe Gould (profiled at length by Joseph Mitchell) and Maxwell Bodenheim, dancer Isadora Duncan, writer William Faulkner, and playwright Eugene O'Neill. Political rebellion also made its home here, whether serious (John Reed) or frivolous (Marcel Duchamp and friends set off balloons from atop Washington Square arch, proclaiming the founding of "The Independent Republic of Greenwich Village"). [18]
In 1924, the Cherry Lane Theatre was established. Located at 38 Commerce Street it is New York City's oldest continuously running Off-Broadway theater. A landmark in Greenwich Village’s cultural landscape, it was built as a farm silo in 1817, and also served as a tobacco warehouse and box factory before Edna St. Vincent Millay and other members of the Provincetown Players converted the structure into a theatre they christened the Cherry Lane Playhouse, which opened on March 24, 1924, with the play The Man Who Ate the Popomack. During the 1940s The Living Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd, and the Downtown Theater movement all took root there, and it developed a reputation as a place where aspiring playwrights and emerging voices could showcase their work.
In one of the many Manhattan properties Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and her husband owned, Gertrude Whitney established the Whitney Studio Club at 8 West 8th Street as a facility where young artists could exhibit their works in 1914. By the 1930s the place would evolve to become her greatest legacy, the Whitney Museum of American Art, on the site of today's New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. The Whitney was founded in 1931, as an answer to the then newly founded (1928) Museum of Modern Art's collection of mostly European modernism and its neglect of American Art. Gertrude Whitney decided to put the time and money into the museum after the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art turned down her offer to contribute her twenty-five-year collection of modern art works.[19] In 1936, the renowned Abstract Expressionist artist and teacher Hans Hofmann moved his art school from E. 57th Street to 52 West 9th Street. In 1938, Hofmann moved again to a more permanent home at 52 West 8th Street. The school remained active until 1958 when Hofmann retired from teaching.[20]
The Village hosted the first racially integrated night club in the United States,[21]when the nightclub Café Society was opened in 1938 at 1 Sheridan Square [22] by Barney Josephson. Café Society showcased African American talent and was intended to be an American version of the political cabarets Josephson had seen in Europe before World War II. Notable performers there included among others: Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Burl Ives, Leadbelly, Anita O'Day, Charlie Parker, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Paul Robeson, Kay Starr, Art Tatum, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Josh White, Teddy Wilson, Lester Young, and The Weavers, who also in Christmas 1949, played at the Village Vanguard.
The Village again became important to the bohemian scene during the 1950s, when the Beat Generation focused their energies there. Fleeing from what they saw as oppressive social conformity, a loose collection of writers, poets, artists, and students (later known as the Beats) and the Beatniks, moved to Greenwich Village, and to North Beach in San Francisco, in many ways creating the east coast-west coast predecessor to the Haight-Ashbury-East Village hippie scene of the next decade. The Village (and surrounding New York City) would later play central roles in the writings of, among others, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Marianne Moore, Maya Angelou, Rod McKuen, and Dylan Thomas, who collapsed at the Chelsea Hotel and died at St. Vincents Hospital at 170 West 12th Street, in the Village after drinking at the White Horse Tavern on November 5, 1953.
Off-Off-Broadway began in Greenwich Village in 1958 as a reaction to Off Broadway, and a "complete rejection of commercial theatre".[23] Among the first venues for what would soon be called "Off-Off-Broadway" (a term supposedly coined by critic Jerry Tallmer of the Village Voice) were coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, in particular, the Caffe Cino at 31 Cornelia Street, operated by the eccentric Joe Cino, who early on took a liking to actors and playwrights and agreed to let them stage plays there without bothering to read the plays first, or to even find out much about the content. Also integral to the rise of Off-Off-Broadway were Ellen Stewart at La MaMa, originally located at 321 E. 9th Street and Al Carmines at the Judson Poets' Theater, located at Judson Memorial Church on the south side of Washington Square Park.
The Village had a cutting-edge cabaret and music scene. The Village Gate, the Village Vanguard and The Blue Note (since 1981), hosted some of the biggest names in jazz on a regular basis. Greenwich Village also played a major role in the development of the folk music scene of the 1960s. Music clubs included Gerde's Folk City, The Bitter End, Cafe Au Go Go, Cafe Wha?, The Gaslight Cafe and the Bottom Line. Three of the four members of The Mamas & the Papas met there. Guitarist and folk singer Dave Van Ronk lived there for many years. Village resident and cultural icon Bob Dylan by the mid-60s became one of the foremost popular songwriters in the world, and often developments in Greenwich Village would influence the simultaneously occurring folk rock movement in San Francisco and elsewhere, and vice versa. Dozens of other cultural and popular icons got their start in the Village's nightclub, theater, and coffeehouse scene during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, notably besides Bob Dylan, there were Jimi Hendrix, Barbra Streisand, Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Lovin' Spoonful, Simon & Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Eric Andersen, Joan Baez, The Velvet Underground, The Kingston Trio, Richie Havens, Maria Muldaur, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, and Nina Simone among others. The Greenwich Village of the 1950s and 1960s was at the center of Jane Jacobs's book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which defended it and similar communities, while critiquing common urban renewal policies of the time.
Founded by New York based artist Mercedes Matter and her students the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture is an art school formed in the mid 1960s. The school officially opened September 23, 1964, it is still currently active and it is housed at 8 W. 8th Street, the site of the original Whitney Museum of American Art.[24]
Greenwich Village was also home to one of the many safe houses used by the radical anti-war movement known as the Weather Underground. On March 6, 1970, however, their safehouse was destroyed when an explosive they were constructing was accidentally detonated, killing three Weathermen (Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton).
In recent days, the Village has maintained its role as a center for movements that have challenged the wider American culture, for example, its role in the gay liberation movement. It contains Christopher Street and the Stonewall Inn, important landmarks, as well as the world's oldest gay and lesbian bookstore, Oscar Wilde Bookshop, founded in 1967. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center – best known as simply "The Center" – has occupied the former Food & Maritime Trades High School at 208 West 13th Street since 1984. In 2006, the Village was the scene of an assault involving seven lesbians and a straight man that sparked appreciable media attention, with strong statements both defending and attacking the parties.
At the current time, artists and local historians mourn the fact that the bohemian days of Greenwich Village are long gone, because of the extraordinarily high housing costs in the neighborhood.[25][26][27] The artists fled first to SoHo then to TriBeCa and finally Williamsburg[26] and Bushwick in Brooklyn, Long Island City,[26] and DUMBO. Nevertheless, residents of Greenwich Village still possess a strong community identity and are proud of their neighborhood's unique history and fame, and its well-known liberal live-and-let-live attitudes.[27]
Greenwich Village is still home to celebrities, including many actresses/actors Emma Stone, Julianne Moore, Uma Thurman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, Leontyne Price, Amy Sedaris, and Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of former U.S. President George W. Bush; Thurman and Bush both live on West Ninth Street.[28] American designer Marc Jacobs[29] and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper[30] live in the neighborhood. Alt-country/folk musician Steve Earle moved to the neighborhood in 2005,[31] and his album Washington Square Serenade is primarily about his experiences in the Village. The Village serves as home to Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue Magazine and Calvin Trillin, a feature writer for The New Yorker magazine.
Greenwich Village includes several college or post-baccaulaurate institutions. Since the 1830s New York University (NYU) has had a campus there. In 1973 NYU moved its main campus from University Heights in the West Bronx to Greenwich Village. In 1976 Yeshiva University's established Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in the northern part of Greenwich Village. In the 1980s Hebrew Union College built in Greenwich Village. The New School, with its Parsons The New School for Design, a division of The New School, and the School's Graduate School expanded in the 2000s, with the newly renovated, award winning design of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at 66 Fifth Avenue on 13th Street. The Cooper Union is also located in Greenwich Village, at Astor Place, near St. Mark's Place on the border of the East Village. Pratt Institute established its latest Manhattan campus in an adaptively reused Brunner & Tryon designed loft building on 14th Street, just east of Seventh Avenue. The university campus building expansion was followed by a gentrification process in the 1980s.
The historic Washington Square Park is the center and heart of the neighborhood, but the Village has several other, smaller parks: Father Fagan, Minetta Triangle, Petrosino Square, Little Red Square, and Time Landscape. There are also city playgrounds, including Desalvio, Minetta, Thompson Street, Bleecker Street, Downing Street, Mercer Street, Cpl. John A. Seravelli, and William Passannante Ballfield. Perhaps the most famous, though, is "The Cage", officially known as the West Fourth Street Courts. Sitting on top of the West Fourth Street – Washington Square subway station (A B C D E F M trains) at Sixth Avenue, the courts are easily accessible to basketball and American handball players from all over New York. The Cage has become one of the most important tournament sites for the city-wide "Streetball" amateur basketball tournament. Since 1975 New York University's art collection has been housed at the Grey Art Gallery bordering Washington Square Park at 100 Washington Square East. The Grey Art Gallery is notable for its museum quality exhibitions of contemporary art.
The Village also has a bustling performing arts scene. It is still home to many Off Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theaters; for instance, Blue Man Group has taken up residence in the Astor Place Theater. The Village Gate (until 1992), the Village Vanguard and The Blue Note are still presenting some of the biggest names in jazz on a regular basis. Other music clubs include The Bitter End, and Lion's Den. The village also has its own orchestra aptly named the Greenwich Village Orchestra. Comedy clubs dot the Village as well, including The Boston and Comedy Cellar, where many American stand-up comedians got their start.
Each year on October 31, it is home to New York's Village Halloween Parade, the largest Halloween event in the country, drawing an audience of two million from throughout the region.
Several publications have offices in the Village, most notably the citywide newsweekly The Village Voice, and the monthly magazines Fortune and American Heritage. The National Audubon Society, having relocated its national headquarters from a mansion in Carnegie Hill to a restored and very green, former industrial building in NoHo, relocated to smaller but even greener LEED certified digs at 225 Varick Street,[32] a short ways down Houston Street from the Film Forum.
Historically, local residents and preservation groups, including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), have been concerned about development in the Village and have fought to preserve the architectural and historic integrity of the neighborhood. In the 1960s, Margot Gayle led a group of citizens to preserve the Jefferson Market Courthouse (later reused as Jefferson Market Library)[33] while other citizen groups fought to keep traffic out of Washington Square Park[34] and Jane Jacobs, using the Village as an example of a vibrant urban community, advocated to keep it that way.
Since then, preservation has been a part of the Village ethos. Preservation success stories abound in the neighborhood, which was landmarked in 1969 by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Victories for preservationists, oftentimes spearheaded by GVSHP, include the preservation of the Greenwich Village waterfront and Meatpacking District; the inclusion of the Far West Village in the Greenwich Village Historic District;[35] the creation of the Weehawken Street Historic District;[36] and the downzoning of the Far West Village.[37] Additionally, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission began the process of landmarking the South Village in June 2009.[38]
More recent and on-going preservation issues in the Village include: New York University's (NYU) expansion into the neighborhood;[39][40] St. Vincent’s Hospital’s rebuilding plans;[41] overdevelopment in the Far West Village;[35] and threats to local theaters,[42] including the Provincetown Playhouse,[43] the Yiddish Art Theater,[44] and the Variety Theater.
Greenwich Village residents are zoned to two elementary schools: PS3 Melser Charrette School and PS41 Greenwich Village School. Residents are zoned to Baruch Middle School 104. Residents apply to various New York City high schools.
Greenwich Village is home to New York University, which owns large sections of the area and most of the buildings around Washington Square Park. To the north is the campus of The New School, which is houses in several buildings that are considered historical landmarks because of their innovative architecture.[51] New School's Sheila Johnson Design Center also doubles as a public art gallery.[52] Cooper Union, one of the most selective art schools in the world, is located in the East Village.
Greenwich Village has long been a popular neighborhood for countless artists and other notable people.
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