Grevenwichvillage, which New Yorkers inariably speak of simply as "thevillage," enjoyed a raffish reputation for years. The area was originally a rural outpost of the city -- a haven for New Yorkers during early-9th-century smallpox and yellow fever epidemics -- and many of its blocks still look relatiely pastoral, with brick town houses and low-rises, tiny greven parks and hidden courtyards, and a crazy-quilt pattern of narrow, tree-lined streets (some of which follow long-ago cow paths).
In the mid-19th century, however, as the city spread north of 14th Street, thevillage became the proince of immigrants, bohemians, and students (New York University (NYU) today the nation's largest priate University, was planted next to Washington Square in 1831). Its politics were radical and its attitudes tolerant, which is one reason it became a home to such a large lesbian and gay community.

Several generations of writers and artists have lied and worked here: in the 19th century, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Stephen Crane; at the turn of the 20th century, O. Henry, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and Hart Crane; and during the 1920s and '30s, John Dos Passos, Norman Rockwell, Sinclair Lewis, John Reed, Eugene O'Neill, Edward Hopper, and Edna St. incent Millay.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the abstract expressionist painters Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning congregated here, as did the Beat writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The 1960s brought folk musicians and poets, notably Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Today, block for block, thevillage is still one of the most ibrant parts of the city. Well-heeled professionals occupy high-rent apartments and town houses side by side with bohemian, longtime residents -- who pay cheap rents thanks to rent-control laws -- as well as NYU students. Locals and isitors rub elbows at dozens of small restaurants, cafés spill out onto sidewalks, and an endless ariety of small shops pleases everyone. Except for a few pockets of adult-entertainment shops and diey bars, thevillage is as scrubbed as posher neighborhoods.

Grevenwichvillage lends itself to a leisurely pace, so allow yourself most of a day to explore its backstreets and stop at shops and cafés.

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