Greenwich Village and Related Topics

Manhattan

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Most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City.

Pieter Schaghen's 1626 letter saying Manhattan was purchased for 60 guilders.

The Castello Plan showing the Dutch city of New Amsterdam in 1660, at the southern tip of Manhattan

Washington's statue in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street, where in 1789 he was sworn in as first U.S. president

Manhattan in 1873. The Brooklyn Bridge was under construction from 1870 until 1883

The "Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York", commonly known as the Viele Map, was created by Egbert Ludovicus Viele in 1865

Manhattan's Little Italy, Lower East Side, circa 1900

Manhattan personified, early 20th century

V-J Day in Times Square in Times Square, 1945

Flooding on Avenue C caused by Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012

Satellite image of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson River to the west, the Harlem River to the north, the East River to the east, and New York Harbor to the south, with rectangular Central Park prominently visible. Roosevelt Island, in the East River, belongs to Manhattan.

Location of Manhattan (red) within New York City (remainder yellow)

Manhattan schist outcropping in Central Park

Liberty Island is an exclave of Manhattan, of New York City, and of New York State, that is surrounded by New Jersey waters

The Empire State Building in the foreground looking southward from the top of Rockefeller Center, with One World Trade Center in the background, at sunset. The Midtown South Community Council acts as a civic caretaker for much of the neighborhood between the skyscrapers of Midtown and Lower Manhattan.

The Estonian House, the main center of Estonian culture amongst Estonian Americans

A. T. Stewart in 1870, 9th Street, Manhattan

Many tall buildings have setbacks on their facade due to the 1916 Zoning Resolution. This is exemplified at Park Avenue and 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan.

The New York Stock Exchange, by a significant margin the world's largest stock exchange per market capitalization of its listed companies, at US$23.1 trillion as of April 2018.

The Financial District of Lower Manhattan, seen from Brooklyn

The Flatiron District is the center and birthplace of Silicon Alley

Times Square is the hub of the Broadway theater district and a major cultural venue in Manhattan, it also has one of the highest annual attendance rates of any tourist attraction in the world, estimated at 50 million

The New York Times headquarters, 620 Eighth Avenue

Butler Library at Columbia University, with its notable architectural design

New York Public Library Main Branch at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue

The scene at Manhattan's 2015 LGBT Pride March. The annual event rivals the sister São Paulo event as the world's largest pride parade, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.

Madison Square Garden is home to the Rangers and Knicks, and hosts some Liberty games

A slum tour through the Five Points in an 1885 sketch

At the time of its construction, London Terrace in Chelsea was the largest apartment building in the world

Grand Central Terminal is a National Historic Landmark.

Ferries departing Battery Park City and helicopters flying above Manhattan

The Staten Island Ferry, seen from the Battery, crosses Upper New York Bay, providing free public transportation between Staten Island and Manhattan.

The Brooklyn Bridge to the right and the Manhattan Bridge towards the left, are two of the three bridges that connect Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn over the East River.

Eighth Avenue, looking northward ("Uptown"), in the rain; most streets and avenues in Manhattan's grid plan incorporate a one-way traffic configuration

Tourists looking westward at sunset to observe the July 12, 2016 Manhattanhenge

Ferry service departing Battery Park City towards New Jersey, see from Paulus Hook

Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, and the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.

Lower Manhattan

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Southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with over 8.8 million residents as of the 2020 census.

The pre-9/11 Lower Manhattan skyline in May 2001, seen from the Empire State Building. The skyline was dominated by The Twin Towers.

New Amsterdam, centered in the eventual Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it "New York".

The Cooper Union at Astor Place, where Abraham Lincoln gave his famed Cooper Union speech, is one of the area's most storied buildings.

Photo of Lower Manhattan pictured in 1931

Norman Friend. Sidney's Map Twelve Miles Around New York, 1849. Chromo lithograph, Brooklyn Museum

View from the Woolworth Building in 1913

The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, as the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern gay rights movement.

United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the original World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Picture of Lower Manhattan skyline, including the One World Trade Center; taken from Little Island at Pier 55 in November 2021

Chinatown is home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere.

The park and surrounding neighborhood of Union Square, located between 14th and 17th Streets, may be considered a part of either Lower or Midtown Manhattan.

New York City Hall in Lower Manhattan's Civic Center neighborhood

North of Canal Street and south of 14th Street are the neighborhoods of SoHo, the Meatpacking District, the West Village, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Nolita, and the East Village.

West Village

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The Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, as the site of the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

396-397 West Street at West 10th Street is a former hotel which dates from 1904, and is part of the Weehawken Street Historic District

173 and 176 Perry Street, rare examples of modern architecture in the Far West Village.

Gay Street at the corner of Waverly Place

The Cherry Lane Theatre is located in the West Village.

The annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade is the world's largest Halloween parade and takes place in the West Village.

Some 18th-century streets, such as Bedford Street (pictured), are narrow.

66 Perry Street was featured in Sex and the City as Carrie Bradshaw's house.

Jefferson Market Library, once a courthouse, now serves as a branch of the New York Public Library.

Whitney Museum of American Art under construction in 2013

The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City.

An 1893 redrawing of the 1807 version of the Commissioners' grid plan for Manhattan, a few years before it was adopted in 1811

Commissioners' Plan of 1811

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The original design for the streets of Manhattan above Houston Street and below 155th Street, which put in place the rectangular grid plan of streets and lots that has defined Manhattan on its march uptown until the current day.

The city blocks of Portland, Oregon; Savannah, Georgia; and Manhattan shown at the same scale

"A Portraiture of the City of Philadelphia" (1683) by Thomas Holme, the first map of the city.

A portion of a map of the city from 1776; De Lancey Square and the grid around it can be seen on the right

The Mangin–Goerck Plan of 1803; the "warning label" can be seen at the bottom under "Plan of the City of New York"

The only known image of John Randel Jr., the Commission's chief surveyor, by an unknown artist, probably Ezra Ames.

The park-like grounds of the American Museum of Natural Historycalled "Theodore Roosevelt Park" since 1958, but officially part of Central Parkis the only one of the planned public spaces of the Commissioners' Plan which still exists; it was to be "Manhattan Square".

This one of John Randel's survey bolts marked the location of what would have been Sixth Avenue and 65th Street; the location later became part of Central Park

One of Randel's 92 detailed "Farm Maps", showing how the Manhattan grid would sit on the island's topography and extant farms and homesteads. This one is bounded by West 36th Street, Sixth Avenue, West 15th Street, and the Hudson River.

Central Park is by far the largest interruption of the Commissioners' grid, running from Central Park South (59th Street, at the right) to 110th Street (on the left), and from Fifth Avenue (at the top) to Central Park West (Eighth Avenue, at the bottom), and at 843 acre, taking up a little over 6% of the area of Manhattan island.

Andrew Haswell Green, a critic of the Commissioners' Plan, headed the Central Park Commission, which created the street plan for Manhattan above 155th Street

The Knapp map of 1870 shows the progress made in laying out streets above 155th Street as called for in the Central Park Commission's 1868 plan

In 1945, Sixth Avenue was officially renamed "Avenue of the Americas", and was adorned with circular signs for each member country of the Organization of American States, such as this one for Venezuela. The name never caught on with New Yorkers, though, who still insist on calling it "Sixth Avenue". After decades of requiring only one official name, the city at last began to co-sign the avenue with both names. Currently, "Avenue of the Americas" is generally only seen on business stationery and official city documents, or heard from the mouths of tourists.

Frederick Law Olmsted, vociferous critic of the Commissioners' Plan (c.1860)

Clement Clarke Moore objected to the Plan, but made a fortune developing his estate once the Plan's streets were laid down through it. (1897)

Lewis Mumford, a vehement critic of the Commissioners' Plan

Thomas Janvier, an illustration from In Old New York (1894)

Dutch artist Piet Mondrian drew inspiration from the vibrancy of the grid, displaying it in paintings such as Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942).

The Bayard streets still exist as the core of SoHo and part of Greenwich Village: Mercer, Greene, and Wooster Streets, LaGuardia Place/West Broadway (originally Laurens Street), and Thompson, Sullivan, MacDougal, and Hancock Streets, although the last has been subsumed by the extension of Sixth Avenue.

The "skyscraper alley" of International Style buildings along the avenue looking north from 40th Street to Central Park

Sixth Avenue

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Seldom used by New Yorkers – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown".

Looking north from 14th Street in 1905, with the Sixth Avenue El on the right

The historic Ladies' Mile shopping district that thrived along Sixth Avenue left behind some of the largest retail spaces in the city. Beginning in the 1990s, the buildings began to be reused after being dormant for decades.

Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village

From this beginning, Sixth Avenue traverses SoHo and Greenwich Village, roughly divides Chelsea from the Flatiron District and NoMad, passes through the Garment District and skirts the edge of the Theater District while passing through Midtown Manhattan.

Peretz Square, Houston Street on left; 1st Street on right

List of numbered streets in Manhattan

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The New York City borough of Manhattan contains 214 numbered east–west streets ranging from 1st to 228th, the majority of them designated in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811.

Little West 12th Street as viewed from the rooftop of The Standard, High Line

Irving Place Theatre, from Northeast corner of Irving Place and East 15th Street

The Center for Jewish History at 15 West 16th Street

Korea Way in Koreatown, as seen on 32nd Street, with ubiquitous street signage in Hangul (한글)

A view of the Empire State Building from 33rd Street and Park Avenue Subway Station

Mount Vernon Hotel Museum on East 61st Street

Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity

120-130 East 80th Street, with three of the four East 80th Street Houses; the Astor House is on the left, the Whitney House on the right, and the Dillon House is between them.

West 187th Street stairs to Ft. Washington Avenue

Although the numbered streets begin just north of East Houston Street in the East Village, they generally do not extend west into Greenwich Village, which already had established, named streets when the grid plan was laid out by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811.

Dylan at Azkena Rock Festival in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, in June 2010

Bob Dylan

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American singer-songwriter.

The Zimmerman family home in Hibbing, Minnesota

Dylan with Joan Baez during the civil rights "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom", August 28, 1963

Bobby Dylan, as the college yearbook lists him: St. Lawrence University, upstate New York, November 1963

The cinéma vérité documentary Dont Look Back (1967) follows Dylan on his 1965 tour of England. An early music video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was used as the film's opening segment.

Bob Dylan and the Band commenced their 1974 tour in Chicago on January 3.

Bob Dylan with Allen Ginsberg on the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Photo: Elsa Dorfman

Dylan performing in the De Kuip Stadium, Rotterdam, June 23, 1978

Dylan performs during the 1996 Lida Festival in Stockholm

Bob Dylan performs at Air Canada Centre, Toronto, November 7, 2006

Dylan and the Obamas at the White House, after a performance celebrating music from the civil rights movement (February 9, 2010)

Dylan performing at Finsbury Park, London, June 18, 2011

President Obama presents Dylan with a Medal of Freedom, May 2012

Dylan mural in Minneapolis by Eduardo Kobra

From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village, befriending and picking up material from folk singers there, including Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers and Irish musicians the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.