In the years, before and after World War I Greenwich Village gained a new cultural prominence as artists and political radicals began to move to the neighborhood. The allure of the “bohemian” Greenwich Village attracted middle-class professionals which transformed the neighborhood from the working-class into a sough-after neighborhood of houses, tenements, and stylish new apartment buildings. Post World War II Greenwich Village once again become the site of cultural exchange and creativity, this time accompanied by lesbian and gay movements. The new row of tenements began to be transformed as part of the Village-wide trend of rehabilitation and modernization, otherwise known as gentrification. The Village’s affordability and its picturesque qualities attracted many new residents. The new Village catered to the young, professional, and single. As developers recognized the potential for marketing apartments based on Greenwich Village’s artistic image they began to make alterations to the exterior of buildings to conform to the bohemian vibes spreading throughout the neighborhood.

The Civil War period in Greenwich Village was marked by social turbulence and demographic change. Rioting broke out across the city in July of 1863 over efforts to enforce the first federal conscription act. Rioters, many of them working-class Irish-Americans, protested the draft and in particular the $300 exemption that created a clear division along class lines, allowing only wealthy men to avoid military service. The most brutal instances of violence, recorded in contemporary accounts and illustrations of the riots, were directed at African-American citizens, whose emancipation was viewed as a threat to the economic security of the white working class. Some of the racial violence associated with the draft riots took place in Greenwich Village, which was home in 1863 to nearly a quarter of the city‘s African-American population. Although the African-American population of the Village generally decreased from 1880 onwards, by 1920 most of Manhattan’s black citizens were concentrated in neighborhoods uptown. In 1930, many of the families settled in the Village were of Italian descent, and few first-generation immigrants from Ireland, England, and Russia. By the 20th century, the demographics of the street changed once again and the same area was now occupied by Italian immigrants.