The West Village: Then and Now

After my A train arrives at the West 4^th subway station, I walk up the stairs to end up on Waverly Place and the Avenue of the Americas. I walk westward on Waverly to Grove, and follow that for just a short while before using West 4^th to cross over onto Christopher Street. The streets of the West Village don’t conform to the rest of the New York City grid, so it’s taken me almost a dozen trips to be able to navigate the area. Once I land my feet onto Christopher Street, I’m set; I walk straight along the street towards the southwest until I’m only 2 blocks from the water. It is here that I arrive at 154 Christopher Street: the office of Chemo Comfort where I volunteer once a week. However, the West Village is much bigger than the one building I’m most comfortable with. The neighborhood is bordered by West Houston on the south, the Avenue of the Americas on the east, West 14^th on the north, and the Hudson on the west. And that isn’t even considering the entirety of Greenwich Village, which is an extension of West Village to Broadway on the east.

The current demographic of the West Village is dominantly white, rich, young people – a much different description than much of New York. With about three-quarters of households being nonfamily ones, it is easy to accept that about 69% of West Village residents are in college or graduate school. However, even without much ethnic diversity, this area has a rich history that can be related to much of the development of Manhattan itself. Everything from the Village’s wacky streets to its thriving food scene and artistic culture can be explained through an analysis of how the neighborhood became settled. There have been many changes in the socioeconomic make-up of the area; the West Village hasn’t always been a land of high rents, but its history of art, culture, and cultural diversity has been constant for the past 200 years. With a 2010 population of 66,880, the Village only contributes 4.2% of the Manhattan population and less than 1% of the total NYC population (US Census Bureau), but almost every New Yorker knows of the neighborhood. Ask someone what they think of the Village, and they’ll conjure up images of hip coffee shops, artistic endeavors, and “the area’s charms and its vivid bohemian past” (Jacobson, 2015). Paul Whitteby, a student at NYU, says that although he moved from upstate New York when he started to attend the university, he had “known about Greenwich Village forever, it always seemed so fun and exciting compared to where [he’s] from …When [he] moved here, [he] couldn’t believe all the food that was everywhere you looked. [He] went out for like, every meal.” However, even with ideas of today’s Village, not many people know the history of this section of New York dating back to the city’s first settlement.

When the Canarsee Indians still occupied current-day Manhattan, the Greenwich Village area was known as “Seppanikan” and they focused their settlement around today’s Minetta Street, where there was a small stream. When the Dutch arrived in the Americas, they decided to make the area a tobacco plantation until the British arrived and renamed the area Greenwich (The Street Necrology, n.d.). As the Industrial Era began in the 1800s, the village of Greenwich developed and became more populated as the economy in New York began to thrive. As the wealthy citizens became more established, they wanted somewhere to go to relax after the long work day. A contrast to industrial, crowded downtown Manhattan, the village of Greenwich and nearby Bowery village became suburban recluses for the downtown workers (Strykowski, Ehrlich & Greer, 2010).

As the area became more populated, structures such a prison, gallows, and potter’s field, or burial ground, were established near current-day Washington Square Park (“Village History,” n.d.). The existence of these structures, in hindsight, seem to foreshadow the next era of Greenwich Village; the future unique and unparalleled atmosphere of the neighborhood can also trace its roots to this time period. Although the rest of Manhattan had plans to come together and conform to cohesive gridded streets in 1811, Greenwich Village didn’t change because a “yellow fever and cholera epidemic in the early 1800s” kept it isolated (“The Street Necrology,” n.d.). This explains why this area of Manhattan is exceptionally hard to navigate, especially compared to the easy-to-understand streets of midtown and uptown.

Additionally, the outbreak of yellow fever led to people deciding to flee their downtown homes to more “open spaces,” such as Greenwich Village, because it was thought that yellow fever came from unsanitary conditions, rather than mosquitos (Strykowski, Ehrlich & Greer, 2010). Upon being told this tidbit of history, Steve Nicolls, a long-time employee at Pizzetteria Brunetti, told me, “I simply can’t imagine a bunch of sick folks hangin’ out around here! The place is so clean and beautiful now, I hate to think it was ever dirty.” As people flocked to the Village, merchants settled and opened stores, which led to the construction of a church and school, and suddenly, Greenwich Village was a functioning neighborhood. Even after the epidemic ended, many people stayed in the area and turned their temporary houses and shops into more permanent settlements.

At this point, it was the early 1800s and the first waves of European immigration were starting. In the 1820s and 1830s, “Greenwich Village began to be a neighborhood of extremes in wealth disparity” as freedmen from the south, free blacks from the North, Irish immigrants, and other merchant groups decided to move to the Village. Tenements were built in the neighborhood, although “antebellum, urban architecture” was the norm. Newcomers began to find permanent housing in the Village, whereas the previous residents were wealthy folks just looking for vacation homes.

During this time between 1830 and 1850, New York University also opened and offered housing to not just the staff and students but to their friends and affiliates, such as many artists, scientists, writers like Samuel Colt, Samuel Morse, and Edgar Allen Poe (Strykowski, Ehrlich & Greer, 2010). This influx of intellectuals set the foundation for the Bohemian era and a lower cost of living in the West Village, as they established “art clubs, private picture galleries, learned societies, literary salons, … fine hotels, shopping emporia, and theaters.” Additionally, “when German, Irish, and Italian immigrants [came and] found work in the breweries, warehouses, and coal and lumber yards … [older] residences were subdivided into cheap lodging hotels and [plummeting] real estate values prompted nervous retailers and genteel property owners to move uptown” (“Village History,” n.d.).

When I chatted with Betty Calanzo, a resident of the West Village for over 50 years, she thought back to her first days here and compared them to both today and the history I told her. “You know, me and Pat came here when I was only twenty-five. Bright-eyed and scared as hell, I came here not knowin’ what to expect. We felt at home in the community here, and over the years, I’ve realized I don’t wanna be anywhere else … But what you’re tellin’ me sounds crazy: it was cheap to live there then too? I’m lucky I got here when I did, [I’ve had] the same apartment for so long, there’s no way I could buy one now!”

As the late 1800s approached, these “new waves of immigrant groups including [the] French, Irish, and Italian” settled in the Village, and “the area experienced a rise in Bohemianism,” caused also by “the departure of the upper classes” who moved more uptown near Central Park. By 1900, the area was “quaintly picturesque and ethnically diverse; … [it] was widely known as a bohemian enclave with secluded side streets, low rents, and a tolerance for radicalism and nonconformity.” This reputation led Greenwich Village to be a tourist attraction for many. Then when Prohibition began, “local speakeasies attracted uptown patrons” (“Village History,” n.d.). Furthermore, by the 1950s, the neighborhood became influential place in the Beat movement, which was a movement by “beatniks” to separate from society and strive toward “personal release, purification, and illumination” through the use of jazz, poetry, and unique vocabulary, among other things (“Beat movement,” 2016).

The next decade brought “a homosexual community [that] formed around Christopher Street.” The Village’s reputation as a gay-friendly place began in 1969 when the police and local patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay bar, got into a week-long confrontation called the Stonewall Rebellion. Following these riots, New York saw many groups form over civil rights, and on the one-year anniversary, “the first gay pride parades in U.S. history took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and near the Stonewall Inn in New York” (“Stonewall Riots,” 2009). Soon after, a movement for LGBT rights began all throughout the United States. Greenwich Village’s penchant for backlash continued has it “became a rallying place for antiwar protesters in the 1970s and for activity mobilized in response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s” (“Village History,” n.d.).

According to some residents of the West Village, the neighborhood’s past is both allowing it to continue thriving and causing it to lose some of its uniqueness. After the Stonewall Rebellion, the Village was a “cool place to live” but now that acceptance has spread, the area isn’t as concentrated with LGBT residents and it “is attracting more families … as well as “successful young people in financial services, and a lot of high-tech people.” Because “about 80 percent of the West Village has landmark status,” most of the people who live there reside in “low-rise historic buildings.”

However, because of the novelty of “the area’s charms and its vivid bohemian past,” prices are rising (Jacobson, 2015). About 27% of West Village residents have a yearly income over $200,000 and 54% have an income over $100,000, compared to only 7% over $200,000 and 25% over $100,000 in all of New York City. This is most likely due to about 72% of residents being involved in jobs in management, business, arts, and science, compared to the 39% in New York City overall. These contrasts in jobs can be traced back to 98% of West Village residents having a high school degree or higher and 84% having a bachelor’s degree or higher (US Census Bureau).

While a higher median income and younger population is good for the economy and local businesses, some long-time residents are opposed. One resident claims that the demographics have shifted from “respectable” artists to a younger, more party-loving crowd. They seem to care less about the community and its bohemian history, and more about their own personal lives (Lynne, 2013).

Overall, the West Village has faced many shifts and evolutions over time, but they all coincided and interlocked to create the current dynamic of the neighborhood. A hub for art, culture, and unique residents, the neighborhood has had an impact nationwide through the Stonewall Riots, but also on the entirety of Manhattan through its function as first a suburban recluse, then a bustling commercial center, and finally a cultural center. The demographic has been consistently shifting toward a new, younger, more wealthy crowd, but the history of the neighborhood is evident whenever you walk through the jigsaw streets or look at the old, low-rise buildings.

 

Works Cited

“Beat movement.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016.

Jacobson, A. “The West Village: Bohemian Past, Lofty Prices.” New York Times, 2 September

2015. Web.

Lynne, J. “Dorm Mentality: Trending WV Demographics.” Huffpost New York. 14 January 2013.

“Stonewall Riots: The Beginning of the LGBT Movement.” The Leadership Conference. 22 June

2009.

Strykowski, J., Ehrlich, K., Greer, R. “The Early 19^th Century.” Creating Digital History. 20

November 2010. Web.

“The Street Necrology of Greenwich Village.” Forgotten New York. n.d. Web.

United States Census Bureau. New York City: GPO, 2010. Web.

“Village History.” The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. n.d. Web.