Greenwich Village Travel Guide

New Yorkers just call it “The Village”

When the village of Greenwich was founded in 1696, it lay far outside the city. By 1811, when the chessboard-like street grid of Manhattan was adopted, Greenwich was already a small city, whose small, winding streets had names that remain to this day. In the course of the 18th and 19th centuries the area developed into a refined residential area, to which old brick buildings bear witness. It became important when from about 1900 for about 30 years it was the living and meeting area for New York's Bohemia, who patronized the small theatres and many bars. During prohibition, bars known as speakeasies met the demand for illegal alcohol. The number of poets, authors and painters who lived in the Village is legion, and included James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Wright, Henry James, John Dos Passos, Marianne Moore, Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson, Thomas Wolfe, Hart Crane, Mary McCarthy, E. E. Cummings, William Styron and Edward Albee as well as Edward Hopper, William Glackens and Rockwell Kent. Today Greenwich Village is a respectable residential area; there are a few modern high rises, but the impression of a city with many homes with pretty inner courtyards and the winding narrow streets remains. The rents are among the highest in New York. A stroll through the historical area, whose centre lies immediately west of Washington Square, is most worthwhile. In the evening in particular it is a popular attraction with its overwhelming selection of legendary jazz clubs (among them the Blue Note and the Village Vanguard), theatres, cafés and restaurants.
Greenwich Village has its own newspaper: The "Village Voice" reports weekly on American politics and culture, as well as the nightlife in the popular area of the Big Apple – and at no charge.

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