Greenwich Village

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Greenwich Village, by Anna Alice Chapin

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Title: Greenwich Village
Author: Anna Alice Chapin
Illustrator: Alan Gilbert Cram
Release Date: October 19, 2005 [EBook #16907]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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[Illustration: MILLIGAN COURT. A typical, fragmentary survival of Old Greenwich.]
GREENWICH VILLAGE
By
ANNA ALICE CHAPIN
Author of "Wonder Tales from Wagner," "Masters of Music," etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALLAN GILBERT CRAM

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1925
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

To
VINCENT C. PEPPE
WHO FIRST SUGGESTED THE WRITING OF THIS BOOK, AND WHOSE UNTIRING EFFORTS HAVE HAD MUCH TO DO WITH THE SUCCESS OF GREENWICH VILLAGE AS A POPULAR RESIDENCE SECTION,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
THE CHEQUERED HISTORY OF A CITY SQUARE
II. THE GREEN VILLAGE
III. THE GALLANT CAREER OF SIR PETER WARREN
IV. THE STORY OF RICHMOND HILL
V. "TOM PAINE, INFIDEL"
VI. PAGES OF ROMANCE
VII. RESTAURANTS, AND THE MAGIC DOOR
VIII. VILLAGERS
IX. AND THEN MORE VILLAGERS
A LAST WORD

ILLUSTRATIONS
Milligan Court Frontispiece
Map of Old Greenwich Village
Oldest Building on the Square
Jefferson Market
The Cradle of Bohemia
Old St. John's
Washington Arch
The Butterick Building
59 Grove Street
Grove Court
The Brevoort House
Grove Street
The Dutch Oven
Patchin Place
Washington Square South
Macdougal Alley
A Greenwich Studio

A FIRST WORD
"'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,"--and, to my mind, Greenwich Village has a very personal soul that requires very personal and very careful handling. This little foreword is to crave pardon humbly if my touch has not been light, or deft, or sure. There are so many things that I may have left out, so many ways in which I must have erred.
And I want to thank people too,--just here. So many people there are to thank! I cannot simply dismiss the matter with the usual acknowledgment of a list of authorities--to which, by the bye, I have tried to cling as though they were life-buoys in a stormy sea of research!
There are the kindly individuals,--J.H. Henry, Vincent Pepe, William van der Weyde, J.B. Martin, and the rest,--who have so generously placed their own extensive information and collected material at my disposal. And there are the small army of librarians and clerks and secretaries and so on, who have given me unlimited patience and most encouraging personal interest.
And finally, beyond all these, are the Villagers who have taken me in, and made me welcome, and won my heart for all time. Everyone has been so kind that my "thank you" must take in all of Greenwich.
It is said that hospitality, neighbourliness and genuine cordiality are traits of any well-conducted village. Then be sure that our Village in the city is not behind its rustic fellows. For, wherever you stray or wherever you stop within its confines, you will always find the latch-string hung outside.

"Does a bird need to theorise about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is essentially done that way--without hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting.... And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts and labours of life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of their lessons--that the more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the work of people who ... are striving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not yet attained.... Whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilled in this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have to do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as much as seems possible to the nature of man."
--JOHN RUSKIN.
CHAPTER I
The Chequered History of a City Square
... I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early association, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare--the look of having had something of a social history.--HENRY JAMES (in "Washington Square").
There is little in our busy, modern, progressive city to suggest Father Knickerbocker, with his three-cornered hat and knee-breeches, and his old-world air so homely and so picturesque. Our great streets, hemmed by stone and marble and glittering plate glass, crowded with kaleidoscopic cosmopolitan traffic, ceaselessly resonant with twentieth century activity, do not seem a happy setting for our old-fashioned and beloved presiding shade. Where could he fall a-nodding, to dream himself back into the quaint and gallant days of the past?