Greenwich village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families. Greenwich Village, however, was known in the late 19th to mid 20th centuries as the bohemian capital and the East Coast birthplace of the Beatmovement. What provided the initial attractive character of the community eventually contributed to its gentrification and commercialization.

Location
The neighborhood is bounded by Broadway on the east, the Hudson River on the west, Houston Street on the south, and 14th Street on the north. The neighborhoods surrounding it are the East Village to the east, SoHo and Hudson Square to the south, andChelsea to the north. The East Village was formerly considered part of the Lower East Side and never associated with Greenwich Village.[5] The West Village is the area of Greenwich Village west of 7th Avenue, though realtors claim the dividing line is farther east at 6th Avenue. The neighborhood is located in New York's 8th congressional district, New York's 25th State Senate district, New York's66th State Assembly district, and New York City Council's 3rd district.
Into the early 20th century, Greenwich Village was distinguished from the upper-class neighborhood of Washington Square – based on the major landmark Washington Square Park or Empire Ward in the 19th century.
Encyclopædia Britannica's 1956 article on "New York (City)" (subheading "Greenwich Village") states that the southernborder of the Village is Spring Street, reflecting an earlier understanding. The newer district of SoHo has since encroached on the Village's historic border.

Map of old Greenwich Village. A section of Bernard Ratzer's map of New York and its suburbs, made circa 1766 for Henry Moore, Royal Governor of New York, when Greenwich was more than two miles from the city.

History
In the 16thcentury, Native Americans referred to its farthest northwest corner, by the cove on the Hudson River at present-day Gansevoort Street, as Sapokanikan ("tobacco field"). The land was cleared and turned into pasture by Dutch and freed African settlers in the 1630s, who named their settlement Noortwyck. In the 1630s, Governor Wouter van Twiller farmed tobacco on 200 acres (0.81 km2) here at his "Farm inthe Woods". The English conquered the Dutch settlement of New Netherland in 1664 and Greenwich Village developed as a hamlet separate from the larger (and fast-growing) New York City to the south.
It officially became a village in 1712 and is first referred to as Grin'wich in 1713 Common Council records. Sir Peter Warren began accumulating land in 1731 and built a frame house capacious enough tohold a sitting of the Assembly when smallpox rendered the city dangerous in 1739. His house, which survived until the Civil War era, overlooked the North River from a bluff; its site on the block bounded by Perry and Charles Streets, Bleecker and West 4th Streets, can still be recognized by its mid-19th century rowhouses inserted into a neighborhood still retaining many houses of the 1830-37 boom.The oldest house remaining in Greenwich Village is the Isaacs-Hendricks House, at 77 Bedford Street (built 1799, much altered and enlarged 1836, third storey 1928). In 1822, a yellow fever epidemic in New York encouraged residents to flee to the healthier air of Greenwich Village, and afterwards many stayed. The future site of Washington Square was a potter's field from 1797 to 1823 when 10 to20,000 of New York's poor were buried here, and still remain. The handsome Greek revival rowhouses on the north side of Washington Square were built about 1832, establishing the fashion of Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue for decades to come. Well into the 19th century, the district of Washington Square was considered separate from Greenwich Village.
Greenwich Village is generally known...