On a bitterly cold January morning in 1917, the painters John Sloan and Marcel Duchamps, along with friends, climbed to the top of Washington Square Arch to proclaim the secession of Greenwich Village from the United States. Thenceforth the neighborhood that stood as America’s repository of avant-garde art, literature and social enlightenment would be known as the Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square. The stunt defined the character of the Village, as it is popularly known to New Yorkers, for the ensuing half century.

In the 1930s, a creative effervescence took hold in Manhattan. At the southern reaches of the island, where ancient cobbled streets and leafy squares mirrored the Bohemian character of Greenwich Village, one could hardly set forth in any of the lively watering holes and coffee houses without spotting local artists like Edward Hopper, Willem de Kooning or Jackson Pollock, propping up the bar at the White Horse Tavern or Caffè Reggio, the first place in America to serve cappuccino.

Originally an Indian fishing village with a stream running through it known as the Minetta (hence the still-thriving Minetta Tavern), the area was transformed into a tobacco plantation by the Dutch, while under the English it became a country village known as Grinwich. Thanks to its isolation, most of the Village was spared inclusion in the Manhattan grid plan and retained its twisting 18th century street layout.

‘The neighborhood is intriguing because of the unfamiliar street pattern,’ says art deco historian and former Greenwich Village tour guide Anthony W. Robins. ‘For instance, it was fun discovering the intersection of West 4 th and West 12 th streets, thoroughly unintuitive to a New Yorker accustomed to the usual Uptown grid, where numbered streets are always parallel to one another.’

In the 1930s any self-respecting Villager could proudly claim that almost every cultural amenity a person might want was to be found within the confines of an area bounded by Bleecker and 14th Street, Second Avenue and Greenwich Street. No other residential section of New York could hold a candle to the cultural vibrancy of Greenwich Village. Those who lived outside this privileged enclave scarcely existed. Wall Street might just as well have been in Illinois, and Madison Avenue a road in Ohio.

In the 1930s world celebrities like Albert Einstein, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charlie Chaplin and Joseph Conrad sat for the sculptor Jo Davidson in his Village studio. In that decade, the Village became a powerful symbol of cultural rebirth, a community that set its sights beyond the desolation of the Depression, keeping alive and cultivating the arts in all their manifestations. Many Village residents, as well as those who came to partake of its nonconformist culture, became leading activists in the social-reform movement. Barney Josephson, the son of a Jewish Latvian immigrant, was a jazz fan and frequent visitor to the Cotton Club in Harlem. Much as he enjoyed the music, Josephson was troubled by the club’s racial segregation policy. Determined to put right this injustice, in 1938 he opened Café Society in the heart of the Village, a dark and cosy basement meeting place. This became America’s first racially integrated nightclub, where top performers like Billie Holiday and jazz pianist Teddy Wilson lost no time in showing Josephson their support and gratitude, both putting in regular appearances at the Sheridan Square venue.

Always in the vanguard of progressive thought, at the time of Hitler’s ascendancy the Village became a beacon of hope for persecuted German academics, guiding them to a safe harbour of promise. By the 1930s The New School for Social Research had set up its ‘University in Exile’ in West 12th with the backing of a diverse group of luminaries, including Supreme Court chief justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union Felix Frankfurter, philosopher John Dewey and newspaper editor Herbert Bayard Swope. By 1934, they had raised enough funds to bring a dozen highly regarded German Jewish academics to New York. In the ensuing decade, nearly 200 European intellectuals had joined the faculty at the New School’s Village campus.

Even at that time change was beginning to take hold of Village life. The British photographer Sir Cecil Beaton noted in his travels to New York in the 1930s that the Village had become ‘more bourgeois than

Bohemian’. What he saw was a neighborhood in which ‘the artists’ quarter had yielded to slums or commercialism…the aspiring poets, working in gas-lit rooms with splintered floors, unable to pay their six dollars a week rent, have moved elsewhere’.

But Beaton acknowledges that ‘Washington Square, with charming, uniform houses of red brick, retains what Henry James described as “established repose”. Bobbles, like the fringes of Edith Wharton’s antimacassars, still hang from the plane trees with their artificially sun-dappled bark.’

‘There are few places in New York that could be said to be anything less than dramatically changed from the 1930s to the present,’ says Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. ‘In many cases, parts of New York have in fact unrecognisably changed over the last eighty years. Yet in spite of that the Village, while clearly a vastly different place than it was eighty years ago, or even eight years ago, shares a remarkable amount in common with its inter-war self.’

Berman says that today, as in the 1930s, the Village still feels like an intimate, tucked away neighborhood, and yet ironically a place where people come from all over the city, region, and world for a taste of charm, history, excitement, drama, and culture. ‘This has always been and remains a paradox of the Village – it is at once one of New York’s quietest and liveliest of neighborhoods,’ he says. ‘Vast stretches of the Village, from its charming row houses to its evocative tenements and grand pre-war apartment buildings, remain intact. Some houses have gone full circle over the past century, once turned into multi-family dwellings and now converted back to single-family houses.’

In the 1960s, Bob Dylan pitched up in the Village to launch his career. Beatniks, New York University students and hippies huddled in the candle-lit premises of The Bitter End, the Village Gate and Café Wha’ to listen enraptured to the future megastar. Today tourists are offered the Bob Dylan Greenwich Walking Tour. They are guided through a warren of narrow streets, whose four postcodes rank amongst the ten most expensive property sites in the US.

The 1960s witnessed a flowering of Village counterculture, epitomized by literary icons like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Borroughs, the founding fathers of the Beat Generation. They are gone, yet many traditions endure: The New School remains a center of academic excellence, The Village Vanguard continues to bring in dazzling jazz ensembles and Caffè Reggio, the last of a vanished breed, is still serving cappuccino in its baroque salon to the Village literati and tourists, as it has done for nearly a century.

‘Washington Square has been rebuilt as a family-friendly park, though students still seem to be its major population,’ says Robins. ‘New York University has continued to expand — it replaced the house where Edgar Allen Poe lived with a new building for the Law School. Yes, the Village remains a tourist draw, but still a wonderful place to wander around. The presence of NYU guarantees the survival of a few restaurants catering to students, and even the occasional bookshop. But hippies? Radical politics? Resident artists, musicians and writers? Not at these prices — they are few and far between.’

Berman says one thing today’s Village shares most distinctly with that of the 1930s are the doomsday forecasts: the Village is ‘finished’, no longer what it once was or what defined it.  ‘Not only was this being said in the 1930s and in every decade that followed, you can find literature asserting the same in the 1890s, when the Village first started to become a tourist destination for those seeking to enjoy how the other half lived,’ he says.  ‘However, then as now the Village continues to attract residents and visitors drawn by its almost impossibly charming and anachronistic streets, its strong sense of community, its shockingly low scale, its quiet streets, lively thoroughfares, and unrivaled array of places to eat, shop, be entertained, laugh, and be seen. This is as true today as it was a hundred years ago.’

Before Washington Irving published ”The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.,” containing ”Rip van Winkle,” and ”The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” together with accounts of life in England, British opinion of American literary effort could be summed up in the words of an anonymous English critic writing in 1818 who said, ”The Americans have no national literature and no learned men.” Another observed, ”In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?”

As Washington Irving became known in the world, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow all joined his crowd of admirers.

In his own country, Irving ”became a contemporary hero just as our culture was looking for heroes,” Dr. Myers said. ”He was,” Dr. Myers added, ”a writer whose Americanism is something his contemporaries were more conscious of than we are.”

America at the beginning of the 18th century found itself the proud winner of a revolution and the proud possessor of a new republic but without a national culture. ”Irving was conscious that if we don’t preserve the past, it gets lost,” Dr. Myers observed, adding, ”Our mythology was there to begin with. He simply magnified its importance.”

With the publication of the fictitious Diedrich Knickerbocker’s ”A History of New-York” in 1809, a spoof of 17th-century Dutch traditions, Irving had his first success. Among the most famous caricatures: the renowned Wouter van Twiller, first Governor of the province ”exactly five feet six inches in height and six feet five inches in circumference … His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel in skids.”

Originally presented as an advertising hoax, the fictitious author, Diedrich Knickerbocker, became a symbol for New York, a symbol which remains familiar today.

Ten years later, Irving achieved international fame with ”The Sketch Book,” which also contained in addition to ‘The Hudson River Tales’ descriptions of old English Christmas customs which were largely responsible for popularizing those traditions in this country.

”The Sketch Book” also achieved the unusual goal of providing a positive view of America for Europeans and making some European cultural traditions acceptable at home.

Washington Irving performed that function himself. Living abroad for much of his adult life as a member of the diplomatic corps in both the Court of St. James’s and in Spain and as an equally acclaimed author. After 17 years, he returned triumphantly to his native New York for more honors and an invitation to run for mayor, which he declined. Following a trip to the American West, Irving settled in Westchester in a small Dutch farm house that once had been a tenant farm, part of the Philipsburg Manor. The farm had also once been owned by the Van Tassel family, immortalized in ”The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Sunnyside embodied several major influences in Irving’s life, including his attachment to romantic history and his appreciation of European influences. It is considered a unique example of American romantic architecture. Mr. Irving had the simple farm house remodeled until, he said, it was ”all made up of gabled ends and as full of angles and corners as an old cocked hat … of mighty spirit.”

During his lifetime, Irving’s popularity drew hundreds of visitors to Sunnyside, a tradition carried on today through the efforts of the nonprofit Sleepy Hollow Restorations.

Irving revered the past and the stability that a sense of the past provides, and he gave his country that sense. No doubt he would be pleased to see that Sunnyside remains today much as he left it. He added a romance to the history of the Hudson Valley, a place of which he said, ”It is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great state of New York that population, manners and customs remained fixed while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.”

In 1834,Henry Brevoort built a mansion at 24 5^thAvenue, at the northwest corner of 9^th Street. Mr. Brevoort was descended from Dutch settlers and since 1701, his earlier ancestors had retained their farm, stretching from 5^th Avenue to the Bowery and extending north of 14^th Street. He was a lifelong friend of Washington Irving, with whom he corresponded by letters for over 50 years. His son, James Carson Brevoort, was a world famous collector of rare books and coins and was very involved with the Astor Library.J. Carson Brevoort also studied with his uncle, James Renwick. Mr. Renwick built the house at 21 5^th Avenue, which would become the home of Mark Twain. According to Nathan Silver’s book Lost New York, the Brevoort House was probably designed by the firm of Ithiel Town and A.J. Davis. Its classic Greek Revivalelements made it a model for later homes in the City.

In 1845,directly across the street from the Brevoort House, a large, stately hotel was erected by the family, stretching the Avenue between 8^th and 9^th Streets.Called the Hotel Brevoort, it kept alive the family’s name after the mansion was torn down in 1925 to make way for another hotel.

In 1902, restaurateur Raymond Orteig purchased the Hotel Brevoort along with the nearby Hotel Lafayette, located at University Place and 9^th Street. A native of France, Mr. Orteigmodeled both hotels on French precedents. The Café Brevoort, which he opened on the ground floor and basement of the hotel, served up haute French cuisine to notables of the day including Mark Twain, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O’Neill and George F. Baker. It included a Parisian sidewalk café, a new feature for the time. A deep interest in aviation had led Orteig to donate the $25,000 prize which inspired Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight, another venture that made him an international figure.Charles Lindbergh collected his prize at the Brevoort Hotel. Raymond Orteig would run the hotel until 1933 when it was taken over by the Knott Management Corporation.

From 1901-1938 Henri Grechen operated a barber shop out of the hotel where, according to the Times, he “cut the hair and shaved the beards of many famous persons.” This included Mark Twain, who used Mr. Grechen’s services for the 4 and ½ years that he lived nearby at 21 5^thAvenue.

The Hotel Brevoort was extremely popular for the European elite and royalty. Congressmen, Senators, Mexican and Turkish heads of state, past U.S. presidents, army generals, and even Prince Arthur all frequented the hotel. It was a popular spot for book readings, luncheons for nearby churches, dinners for the likes of Gertrude Whitney, and big fundraisers for institutions like St. Vincent’s. On January 18, 1916, the day before she was tried in Federal Court for sending her articles on birth control through the mail, Margaret Sanger gave a rousing speech at the hotel during a dinner held to support her. The New York Times captured the event saying it had, “the flavor of Bohemia and Greenwich Village.”

In 1954 the hotel was demolished to make way for a large apartment building. Built by architects Corbet and MacMurray and completed in 1956, this 19-story building has 296 apartments that were converted to co-ops in 1981. It features a limestone and polished brick façade, interior courtyard garden, and lobby complete with murals painted by Paul Sample. One of the building’s earliest residents was Buddy Holly and, interestingly, Judge Judith Scheindlin lived there before she became television’s Judge Judy. The building was named the Brevoort, a lasting reminder of this prominent Dutch family and the hotel that anchored the Village

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzJJVL-aMhE brev

noble

http://streeteasy.com/building/the-brevoort

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/t-magazine/greenwich-village-artists-townhouse.html

http://www.golob-gm.si/5-marcel-duchamp-as-rectified-readymade/p-rrose-selavy-is-marcel-duchamp.htm

https://books.google.com/books/about/Marcel_Duchamp_mine_de_rien.html?id=zWz9twAACAAJ

http://gvshp.org/blog/2015/07/28/happy-birthday-marcel-duchamp/

Jackson Pollock 47 Horatio St46 Carmine St76 W Houston St46 East Eigth StPollock moved to NY in 1930. Too unstable to live by himself, he shared small, cheap, unheated apartments with one or the other of his brothers. In 1935, Pollock moved into a large floor-through at 46 E 8th with brother Charles. When Charles and his wife moved out, Lee Krasner moved in. The couple moved to Springs, NY in 1945.

http://rightherenyc.com/THEYLIVEDHERE_artist.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Square_Arch

http://www.salmagundi.org/index.cfm

http://www.salmagundi.org/membership.htm

http://www.salmagundi.org/history.htm

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/realestate/a-timelessness-for-seven-blocks.html

https://jeanzimmerman.com/bio/savage-girl/mansions-of-fifth-avenue/

One of the more outraged citizens was Brevoort, who, Patterson noted, was related to the Astors, already one of the city’s richest families. Brevoort objected to a street crossing part of his property and as a result 11th Street does still does not go through Broadway to Forth Avenue. Grace Episcopal Church would later be built on the property and its architect, James Renwick Jr., was a grandson of Brevoort. At his death at the age of 94 in 1841, Brevoort was one of the city’s wealthiest citizens and he then owned 11 acres north of Washington Square Park, which by then was the most desirable residential section in the city, Patterson wrote. Brevoort’s son built a free-standing house on the northwest corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue in 1834 “perhaps designed (no positive evidence exists) by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, masters of the Greek Revival style. The house was sold to the de Rham family who lived in it until 1921, four years before it was replaced by the Fifth Avenue Hotel that itself was subsequently converted into apartments.

http://tarpreport.blogspot.com/2011/10/buddy-hollys-apartment-is-for-sale.html

http://untappedcities.com/2016/03/25/the-top-10-secrets-of-the-washington-square-arch-in-nyc/

Editor’s Note: Jules Stewart will be giving a talk at the 92nd Street Y in February about New York in the 1930s. More information is available here.

http://streeteasy.com/building/the-brevoort

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/t-magazine/greenwich-village-artists-townhouse.html

http://www.freetoursbyfoot.com/bob-dylan-greenwich-village-walking-tour/

https://projectrowhouses.org/public-art/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgrLnuOe_1QIVRF9-Ch2qawoREAAYAiAAEgJDtfD_BwE