NYC 's Greenwich Village / East Village - New Yorkled - Page 1

Greenwich Village - Where radicals, bohemians, beatniks, artists, literary greats, and more once roamed and still do today. There was a time long ago when people would come down to this special part of town just to see and behold what they've heard about this area. To glance and maybe even gawk at that counter cultural side of life. Wait! Maybe they still do!???? I really can't say, since I've been down there so many hundreds of times and well, being a native New Yorker...'guess nothing fazes me.

I'll say one thing's for sure. The Village of Greenwich has certainly got it's charm! Another must for most out-of-towners to visit. Heck! not just that, but it can even be found within the Oxford English Dictionary, Encyclopedia Brittanica and other sources.

Jefferson Market Library - 6th Ave/10th St - Built from 1875-1877, this Victorian Gothic Style building is a branch of the NY Public Library, But did you know it once housed a civil court on the second floor, a police court on the first floor, and a holding area for prisoners within it's basement (now the reference room for the library)? There was even a co-ed prison next door which became the Women's House of Detention in 1929 to be torn down in 1973 and replaced by the garden which exists today.

It was here that the trial for Stanford White's murder took place (the architect of our Washington Arch). Even Mae West had to appear here for obscenity charges for her Broadway Play Sex which was the target of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

It's a beautiful building in my book and you're welcomed to stop on by and climb it's spiral staircase to the second floor of the library. Of course within library hours.

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History of Greenwich Village

To the Indians it was known as Sapokanican on the Island of Manatus. Early Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam knew it as Noortwyck. After the British took over, it was known as the Village of Greenwich, a sleepy mix of farms and estates. It was just 2 miles north of the City of New York which at the time was located in the region below Wall Street.

Around the 1820's yellow fever broke out in the city and residents fled. Overnight, Greenwich Village was over run by tens of thousands of city folk seeking refuge from the dreaded virus. It was after this epidemic that some people returned and some stayed behind.

In the 1880's people began moving into the area in increasing numbers. Many of the 19th Century Buildings still stand there today on the narrow winding streets. You can really see the vestiges of streams, and farms in these streets. That is to say, this area's roads really don't follow the boxy, rectangular form which makes up the rest of the city.

It was later after 1910 that this area became a popular meeting place for nonconformist writers, artists, students, intellectuals, beatniks, bohemians, homosexuals and anyone considered to be AT THE TIME of a deviant nature?

Today it is a joy to walk through the streets of Greenwich Village practically during any season. Ok, the City can be brutal in the January cold, but that doesn't stop us!

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