Description
Greenwich Village is the Manhattan neighborhood west of Broadway and south of 14th Street, centered on Washington Square Park and New York University: crooked lanes, brick townhouses, little theaters, jazz and folk clubs, cafés and trees. Locals call it simply "the Village".
Start at Washington Square Park, the neighborhood's living room, with its fountain, its chess players and street musicians. Then wander the west part, where the streets have names and wind: Bleecker Street, Christopher Street, Greenwich Avenue, and the Jefferson Market Courthouse, saved by citizens in the 1960s and now a library.
Music and theater are everywhere. Club names from the folk boom of the 1960s, Cafe Wha? and The Bitter End among them, are still on the map, and the Cherry Lane Playhouse has been staging plays since 1924. On Christopher Street stands the Stonewall Inn, a National Historic Landmark.
Just look at the street signs: born as a country hamlet, Groenwijck to the Dutch, it kept its crooked lanes when the rest of Manhattan was squared into a grid. Here streets have names, not numbers, and West 4th Street even manages to cross West 10th.
In 1917 Marcel Duchamp and a few friends climbed the Washington Square Arch, let off balloons and proclaimed "The Independent Republic of Greenwich Village". It was a joke. But for a century this neighborhood really did play by its own rules.
Artists, writers and rebels made it America's bohemian capital. The Beat Generation gathered here, then the folk scene: Bob Dylan was photographed on Jones Street for the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. In 1969 the Stonewall riots launched the modern gay rights movement.
When planners wanted to bulldoze old neighborhoods, Jane Jacobs held up the Village as the model of a living city. Many of its Italian-American families came from Naples and Sicily, and still keep their bakeries around Bleecker and Carmine Streets.
Start at Washington Square Park, the neighborhood's living room, with its fountain, its chess players and street musicians. Then wander the west part, where the streets have names and wind: Bleecker Street, Christopher Street, Greenwich Avenue, and the Jefferson Market Courthouse, saved by citizens in the 1960s and now a library.
Music and theater are everywhere. Club names from the folk boom of the 1960s, Cafe Wha? and The Bitter End among them, are still on the map, and the Cherry Lane Playhouse has been staging plays since 1924. On Christopher Street stands the Stonewall Inn, a National Historic Landmark.
Just look at the street signs: born as a country hamlet, Groenwijck to the Dutch, it kept its crooked lanes when the rest of Manhattan was squared into a grid. Here streets have names, not numbers, and West 4th Street even manages to cross West 10th.
In 1917 Marcel Duchamp and a few friends climbed the Washington Square Arch, let off balloons and proclaimed "The Independent Republic of Greenwich Village". It was a joke. But for a century this neighborhood really did play by its own rules.
Artists, writers and rebels made it America's bohemian capital. The Beat Generation gathered here, then the folk scene: Bob Dylan was photographed on Jones Street for the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. In 1969 the Stonewall riots launched the modern gay rights movement.
When planners wanted to bulldoze old neighborhoods, Jane Jacobs held up the Village as the model of a living city. Many of its Italian-American families came from Naples and Sicily, and still keep their bakeries around Bleecker and Carmine Streets.