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| The
Neighborhood
Lively, appealing and historic, beautiful Greenwich Village is one of the more intriguing and atmospheric neighborhoods of New York City, with it’s distinctive feel of old-world, European charm. |
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| Greenwich Village was originally home to the Wappinger Indian tribe, who named the island Manah(island)- Alin(hill), or Island of hills, and the area was a village called Sapokanikan(tobacco field). They maintained large tobacco farms here, hunted, and fished trout from Minetta
Brook (now Minetta Lane). Dutch settlers arrived and re-named the area Nordwyck. When later the English arrived they forced the Dutch to leave and re-named the area Grin’wich. The area was a pastoral village south of rapidly growing New York City, and grew mainly when wealthy residents of the city fled to the open air and cleanliness of Grin’wich during a severe outbreak of yellow fever and cholera in 1822, eventually annexing the area into the larger city of New York. After the first World War the area became a haven for avant-garde artists and writers, cultural progressives, small-press literary magazines, and galleries. Sculptor & society member Gertrude Whitney Vanderbilt opened a studio/salon dedicated to modern American art in the 1930’s(now located uptown and called simply The Whitney) on 8th Street, and many other artists followed suit. Politically leftist, Marcel Duchamp and friends set off balloons from atop Washington Square arch, proclaiming the founding of ""The Independent Republic of Greenwich Village." |
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| During the 1950’s the area was the center of the “beat movement”, with coffee houses, poetry readings, and storefront theaters on every block. Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, and Allen Ginsburg called the village home. In the 1960’s the area was the “Haight-Ashbury” of the east coast, where Bob Dylan lived and sang about, Jimi Hendricks had his famous Electric Lady studio, the mammas and the pappas formed, and student riots proliferated. This was also the locale of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, regarded by many as the starting point for the nationwide movement for gay and lesbian rights. Over the years Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Eugene O’Neil, Louisa May Alcott, Edna St. Vincent Millay, e.e. Cummings, Winslow Homer, Henry James, Isamu Noguchi, Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollack, Isadora Duncan, Willem de Kooning, O. Henry, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allen Poe, and countless other notables have lived or maintained studios here. In the words of former village resident Genovese Family godfather Vincent Gigante, now interred in federal prison, “Greenwich Village is the greatest place in the U.S.A.” The neighborhood has been featured in countless film scenes, as well
as serving as the home residence (s) of the characters on the network/HBO series’ ‘Sex in the City’, ‘The Cosby Show’ and ‘Friends’. |
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Fun facts about Bank Street: Westbeth, the world’s largest artists community, was founded at #155 Bank Street in 1969. Home to many well known creative personalities, including Merce Cunningham, Gil Evans, and Diane Arbus, and home to Bank Street theatre. NBC studios original home was on Bank Street. John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived at #105 before moving to The Dakota in 1973. HB Studios, founded by the husband-wife actor team of Uta Hagen and Herbert Bergdoff, is located at #120 Bank Street. Many celebrated performers trudged the streets of neighborhood to study here, and eventually settled here, including Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, Bette Midler, Robert DeNiro, Faye Dunaway, Jack Lemmon, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Reeve, and Sarah Jessica Parker. Writer John Dos Passos lived at #11 while writing his novel “Manhattan Transfer” Willa Cather, Lauren Bacall (then known as Betty Bacall), Vin Diesel, Grace Jones, Sid Vicious and many others, famous or not, have all called Bank Street home throughout the years. |
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