Yeshiva University Observer

Issue date: 10/30/09 Section: Features

Today, a visitor to Greenwich Village is much more likely to see businessmen and college students walking around the neighborhood than to see an array of hippies and black-clad poets. Thanks to the effects of gentrification on the Village, the entire area has a much more upscale feeling. The streets are lined with high-priced boutiques as much as they are with small, aged cafes. Furthermore, preservation efforts initiated in 1969 resulted in designating the Village as a historic district, which currently protects an area encompassing 6th Avenue all the way to Hudson Street; this area contains over 2,035 structures that played an important role in the cultural development of the neighborhood. In 2003, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission selected for preservation the Gansevoort Market Historic District, an area adjoining the Village that also includes the waterfront among the historic neighborhoods. Currently, the Village houses the main campus of New York University, Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law, Parsons School of Design, and The New School. Highlights throughout the neighborhood also include many buildings commissioned by the federal government for archives, the Manhattan Refrigeration Company, and Bell Laboratories that have been converted into residential buildings thanks to the preservation movement.

Greenwich Village's history makes it difficult to be characterized as a single type of neighborhood, because it has played a role in so many different social and cultural movements throughout time. However, its many different social, cultural, and intellectual points of interest are exactly what makes it so fascinating for tourists to visit and learn about.

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