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Around Washington Square : an illustrated history of Greenwich Village /
"Neighborhood historian and preservationist Luther S. Harris has spent twenty years researching the real story of New York's social and cultural hub, and in Around Washington Square he has produced the definitive history of Greenwich Village, illustrated with more than two hundred photogra...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Baltimore :
Johns Hopkins University Press,
©2003.
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| Subjects and Genres: | |
| Online Access: | Contributor biographical information Publisher description |
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| Summary: |
"Neighborhood historian and preservationist Luther S. Harris has spent twenty years researching the real story of New York's social and cultural hub, and in Around Washington Square he has produced the definitive history of Greenwich Village, illustrated with more than two hundred photographs and engravings, many from his private collection. Harris's prodigious research efforts among city council minutes, real estate tax and conveyance ledgers, directories, family histories, architectural records, institutional and business inventories, newspapers, private collections, and public archives have uncovered surprising facts about the origins of Greenwich Village and its influence on the development of Fifth Avenue and upper Manhattan." "Formally established as a separate political jurisdiction - the Fifteenth Ward - in 1832, the neighborhood known today as Greenwich Village reached its social apogee in the 1850s and 1860s as the home of New York's wealthiest and most powerful citizens. Then known as the Empire Ward, it boasted Manhattan's finest churches and homes, its most exclusive clubs, its best-endowed libraries and galleries, and its grandest hotels, shops, and theaters. The neighborhood had also begun to attract artists and writers, including leading members of the Hudson River School and such prominent literary talents as Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.". "Deftly balancing architectural, cultural, political, and social history, Harris follows the quarter's history into the twentieth century. Early in the century the Village acquired its bohemian reputation and became synonymous with radical politics, revolutionary art, and idiosyncratic lifestyles. Intellectual exchanges at Mabel Dodge's Fifth Avenue salon, among others, reverberated nationwide, as did the groundbreaking plays of Eugene O'Neill, the journalism of Lincoln Steffens, and the paintings of the Ashcan School. As expertly recounted by Harris, the Village continued for the rest of the twentieth century to draw many in the arts - from Edward Hopper and Jackson Pollock to Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan - helping to make New York the art capital of the world. Preservation battles in the 1950s and 1960s over the opposing ideas of Robert Moses and Jane Jacob's left the Village fabric largely intact. Concluding with the neighborhood's decline in the 1970s and renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s, Around Washington Square captures the charm, energy, and individuality of Greenwich Village."--BOOK JACKET. |
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| Physical Description: |
xiii, 354 pages : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm |
| Bibliography: |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: |
080187341X 9780801873416 |