Greenwich Village- New York City, NY

This is almost certainly the best known of New York’s downtown districts and has been a focal point for alternative city living for over a hundred years. It is generally considered as being bounded by Broadway on the east, the Hudson River on the west, Houston Street on the south, and 14th Street on the north, though this varies slightly according to the source you consult – some for instance regard the West Village (west of Seventh Avenue) as a separate district. Unlike more northerly districts of Manhattan, its historic streets are laid out in a more European fashion rather than a geometric grid, with diagonals and even bends quite commonplace. This makes exploring here more of a challenge but also more fun, as getting lost is the best way to encounter unexpected sights and events.

It grew up as a distinct village and was only later absorbed into the fast-growing New York City. Perhaps because of this it has always been seen as a focal point of new movements and ideas: political, artistic and cultural. Artists were attracted to its bohemian image, and in the 1950s it saw the birth of the Beat culture, attracting writes such as Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsburg and Dylan Thomas. And growing up in the 1960s and 70s I first heard about “The Village” as the place for American folk music and my favoured musical genre, the folk-influenced singer-songwriters. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, Tom Paxton and many others lived and played here. More recently the area played a key role in the gay liberation movement – see my separate tip on the Stonewall Inn for more on this. These days this is an expensive area in which to live, so it has perhaps lost its former beatnik charm, but the presence of lots of students (New York University has its main campus here) keeps it young and lively in tone. There are still plenty of music and comedy clubs, bars and excellent coffee shops.

This is exactly the sort of area that makes exploring New York such a delight in my view. You can be walking the skyscraper-walled canyons on midtown Manhattan in the morning, and by lunch-time find yourself, as we did, on the much more human-scale streets of the Village. This is a people-watcher’s paradise. Take a seat at a pavement café or in a local bar, maybe bring along a book to fit in (although on this visit we saw as many Apple Macs as we did books!), and relax and watch the world go by. Or wander in and out of some of the more eclectic shops to be found here – left-wing bookshops, vintage clothing stores, old vinyl record shops and much more. You could easily spend the best part of a day exploring just a few streets, and still not see everything.

My photos were taken mostly around Bleecker and McDougall Streets.

Greenwich Village, New York City

New York City Hotels

Greenwich Village, New York City

Visiting New York City?

Visiting New York City?

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