LIFE THERE

GREENWICH VILLAGE IS NOT A VILLAGE

Manhattan is the central borough of New York, and it is now officially divided into uptown, midtown and downtown.

Greenwich Village today is in downtown occupying an area west of Broadway between 14th Street in the north and Houston Street in the south with Washington Square and Washington Square Park as its centre. But it has not always been so.

The Dutch who came and stole the settlement Sapokanican from the Indians found the area that became Washington Square full of woods surroundings the brook which came to be called Minetta Brook. However, it was soon subdivided into farms, and its value so increased that by the time the British arrived in the early 1700s, it was renamed Greenwich (Green Village). Later in the century, downtown residents headed north to the healthy country air of Greenwich Village to avoid the raging yellow fever and smallpox epidemics. Wall Street banks from the centre of downtown, also relocated on what became known as Bank Street.

Thus in 1844 Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village was considered uptown and the city of New York ended at 42nd Street.

By the late 1880s, the population increased significantly with the arrival of Irish and Italian immigrants. Local landlords turned houses into tenements and hotels into sweat shops. On the heels of such oppression came activists, radicals who, by this time, even had a middle-class American culture against which to rebel. Attracted to this hotbed of anarchists and suffragettes were artists and writers who were immediately attracted by the beauty of the area. Since that time the village has been attracting a more prominent list of creative talent, than anywhere else in the city.

It was here that playwright Eugene O’Neill got his break at the Provincetown Playhouse. The artist Diego Rivera, most jazz greats, almost all comedians, and even later folk music heroes such as Bob Dylan, rushed into the Village.

Today’s main residents are members of the gay community, who fought long and hard for their rights in private and then in public life. The village, with its history of artistic and social passions, has been supporting the “gay pride movement” for all these years.

The Village, at first glance, has both a nonconformist geography and nonconformist residents. Many famous people used to live there, like writers Edgar Allan Poe (85 West 3rd Street), James Fenimore Cooper (145 Bleecker Street), Mark Twain (14 West 10th Street), John Reed (42 Washington Square South), Eugene O’Neil (38 Washington Square), Theodore Dreiser (165 West 10th Street), Thomas Wolf (263 West 11th Street), Sinclair Lewis (37 West 10th Street), John Dos Passos (3 Washington Square) and Edward Albee (50 West, 10th Street).

So the best way to enjoy the place is to walk along Bleecker Street, named for the 19th century scholar Anthony Bleecker who gave the land for the street to the city.

If en route you take a few steps into the cross streets (among the most interesting in the Village, you’ll experience enough to know how much exploring you want to do).

Bank Street is the financial intersection and there you’ll find some of the Village’s nicest homes – 19th century row houses.

Washington Square Park is recognised generally as the heart of the Village. It is the centre of street life on weekends. You can find mimes, artists and drug dealers there – seeking voluntary and involuntary compensation. In the area you will also see a Memorial Arch designed by Stanford White which was built in 1876 for the Nation’s Centennial. The arch was significant also as being the standard bearer for a City Beautiful Movement staged by architects who fought the concept that big is beautiful. They argued that American cities should offer more than size: scale and neoclassical ideals were cited in this first push toward an American Renaissance. New York University is also in this area. Its complex consists of a number of skyscrapers made of red brick which totally disregard the cultural and historical environment.

However, crowds of students, who adore cafes and teashops, pizzerias and small restaurants, as well as the small second-hand book-shops and wonderful antique shops of Greenwich Village love the place with its outdoors music and jazz bands playing at night.

Many University Professors buy or rent flats in the area – thus making Greenwich Village a cultural and educational heart of New York downtown.

I. Read the text and answer these questions:

1. Where is Greenwich Village located?
2. Why is it called Greenwich?
3. What is the place famous for?
4. What writers used to live there?

II. Make up a summary of the text.

By Natalia Predtechenskaya