Greenwich Village, Explained

Greenwich Village is a residential district of lower Manhattan, about 0.75 square kilometres between West 14th Street, Houston Street, Broadway and the Hudson River, whose 18th-century street pattern predates the city’s 1811 grid and whose history runs from a Lenape tobacco field to the Stonewall uprising of 1969.

Why West 4th Street crosses West 10th

The name comes from the Dutch Groenwijck, “green district”, first recorded as “Greenwich” in 1696. The yellow fever epidemic of 1822 sent New Yorkers up here in numbers, and many stayed. By then the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 had already drawn numbered streets over Manhattan, yet the Village had roads and houses of its own, so the plan was never forced through. The old lanes were given numbers instead: Asylum Street, named for an orphan asylum between Bank and Troy Streets, became part of West 4th; Amos Street became West 10th, Hammond Street West 11th, Troy Street West 12th. The result is a West 4th Street that runs north-south and meets three streets that, on paper, lie several blocks to its north. The full explanation is on the street grid.

Washington Square Park

The 9.75-acre park at the foot of Fifth Avenue sits where Minetta Creek once ran. Between 1797 and 1825 the ground was the city’s potter’s field. Henry James was born nearby at 21 Washington Place in 1843, and Edward Hopper lived at 3 Washington Square North from 1913 until 1967. In the 1950s Robert Moses planned to run Fifth Avenue straight through; Shirley Hayes and her neighbours opposed it, and by August 1959 the park was closed to traffic altogether.

Three eras: writers, folk singers, Stonewall

The first wave was literary. Edgar Allan Poe lived at 85 West 3rd Street in 1845, Mark Twain on West 10th Street in 1900; the Village later drew Willa Cather, Djuna Barnes, E. E. Cummings in Patchin Place and Edna St. Vincent Millay, who lived at 75½ Bedford Street.

The second wave was musical. In the 1950s and 1960s the coffeehouses and basements of MacDougal and Bleecker Streets, among them Gerde’s Folk City, The Gaslight Cafe and Cafe Au Go Go, were the rooms of the folk scene. On 9 April 1961 the parks commissioner refused permits for the Sunday singing in Washington Square, and the gathering ended in arrests, remembered as the “Beatnik Riot”. Bob Dylan’s first New York apartment was at 161 West 4th Street.

The third turn came at about 1:20 am on 28 June 1969, when a police raid on the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street set off six days of protest. The inn is a National Historic Landmark, Christopher Park opposite became the first US national monument to LGBTQ rights in 2016, and the bar still operates; details on the Stonewall Inn.

The Historic District of 1969

In the same year as the uprising, the city designated the Greenwich Village Historic District, more than 50 blocks of row houses, churches and lanes, entered on the National Register on 19 June 1979 and extended in 2006 and 2010. In 2014 all four Village ZIP codes ranked among the ten most expensive in the country by median housing value. The bohemian population has long since moved on, to SoHo, Tribeca, Dumbo and Williamsburg.

Six guided walks: the common ground and the differences

Every walk sold on GetYourGuide for the Village is on foot, led by a live guide and cancellable free of charge up to 24 hours ahead. The routes overlap heavily: four of them cross Washington Square Park, and the history walk and the ghost walk both stop at the Brown Building and the Stonewall Inn. What changes is the lens and the terms. The history walk and the ghost walk last 2 hours with a cap of 10, the ghost walk after dark. The food walks run 2.5 and 3 hours and share a bagel, a falafel, a pizza slice and a cupcake. The rock and roll walk covers about 3 miles in 3 hours with no more than 6 people, starting in the East Village. The four-neighbourhood walk continues into SoHo, NoLiTa, Little Italy and Chinatown and is the only one guided in Spanish, Italian, French or German as well as English. On access, the history walk and the first food walk state that they take wheelchairs, the six-tastings food walk and the rock and roll walk exclude them, and the other two say nothing. A full table is on all six walks.

Without a booking

Several New York companies run pay-what-you-wish walks of the Village, where the guide is paid in tips at the end; GetYourGuide does not sell these, and free walking tours explains the model. A published self-guided route of about 1.5 miles takes 90 to 120 minutes; an ordered version from Washington Square to the White Horse Tavern is on the self-guided walk.

Practicalities

West 4th Street–Washington Square, served by the A, C, E, B, D, F and M trains, is the central station; the 1 train stops at Christopher Street–Stonewall, and PATH trains from New Jersey stop at Christopher Street and 9th Street. Routes from the airports and the main stations are on how to get there. A guided walk means 2 to 3 hours on pavement, so comfortable shoes are the one requirement every listing shares. Late April to June and September to October are the mildest months; July and August are hot and humid, January and February cold, and the walks run in most weather.

Ready to book

The two-hour history walk, which starts at the Waverly Diner on Sixth Avenue, is below with live dates. The tours page sets all six walks side by side, and which walk for which visit matches them to the time, interests and mobility of the group.

Frequently asked questions