When NYC adopted a rigid grid plan for its streets in 1811, Greenwich Village was allowed to maintain its confusing street pattern—largely because it was isolated from the rest of the city by a yellow fever and cholera epidemic in the early-1800s. The street pattern of the Village is largely the same as the late-1700s-early-1800s with crooked cart paths better suited for foot traffic than automobiles. Greenwich St. meanders to the northeast and northwest because it was originally the westernmost street and followed the Hudson riverbank. West of Greenwich, the streets are built on landfill. W. 4th staggers northwest, intersecting other numbered streets. It was formerly Asylum St., named for the Orphan Asylum Society which stood on Asylum St. between Bank St. and Troy St. (now W. 12th St.). After the Asylum was demolished in 1833, it was decided to rename Asylum St. W. 4th, which had been an extension of Asylum St. east of Sixth Ave.
Christopher St., one of the Village’s many east-west routes, runs from 6th and Greenwich Aves. west to the Hudson River. It was originally called Skinner Rd. for Colonel Otis Skinner, who married Susanna Warren, daughter of landowner Sir Peter Warren. The change was made to Christopher St. in 1799 and was one of the first roads built through the old Warren estate.
The Jefferson Market Courthouse, now Library, visible from Christopher St.’s east end at 6th Ave. and W. 9th St., was constructed beginning in 1875 and was inspired by Ludwig II’s Bavarian castle, Neuschwanstein. Ludwig built three magnificent castles; he later went insane and was found drowned.
The story of the Jefferson Market begins in 1833, when a large market was constructed on the new 6th Ave. in the triangle also formed by Greenwich Ave. and W. 10th St., named Jefferson Market after the former U.S. President who had died in 1826. Also in the complex were a police station, a prison, and a tall octagonal fire watch tower.
Beginning in 1875, British architect Fredrick Clarke Withers built a High Victorian turreted, towered and parapet-ed Ruskinian Gothic masterpiece that served as a courthouse (with civil and police courts), with adjacent buildings along 6th Ave. serving as new housing for the market. Most notably, a 100-foot tower replaced the previous one; the bell was preserved and placed in the new tower. Its spiral staircase is periodically open for visitors.
Gay St. is a one-block, elbow-shaped alley between Christopher St. and Waverly Pl. west of 6th Ave. The name of the street predates Greenwich Village’s gay community by several decades, but the derivation’s in dispute. In Naming New York, Sanna Feirstein claims it was named for Sidney Howard Gay (1814-1888), editor of the Chicago and New York Tribunes and a prominent abolitionist, but in The Street Book, Henry Moscow says the name ‘Gay Street’ appears in the Common Council minutes of 4/12/1827—when Sidney Howard Gay was 13. The lane was likely named for a local property owner named Gay. The street has just one lamppost.
A triangular plot calls for a triangular building, and that’s what the Northern Dispensary is. In an unusual quirk, Waverly Pl. ends at the intersection of Grove and Christopher, but also turns northwest here to its real demise at Bank St. One side of the Northern Dispensary faces two streets: Grove/Christopher, while the other two sides face Waverly.
From 1831, when the building was completed by local artisans John Bayard and John Tucker, to the late-1980s, free medical treatment was available at the Dispensary. Though the clinic closed a couple of decades ago, its old signs are still there. The Greenwich Savings Bank was founded in this building in the 1830s. In that era, this was a “Northern” part of New York City. According to Dispensary records, Edgar Allan Poe was once treated for a cold here in 1837, and Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, was treated here. Sharp-eyed enthusiasts will note a slight change in the color and layout of the bricks above the second floor; the third floor was a later addition, in 1854.
7th Ave. South was created in 1912 by the extension of the original IRT subway through Manhattan’s lower west side from Greenwich Ave. south to what had been the junction of Varick, Clarkson and Carmine Sts., while 6th Ave. (which wasn’t given the suffix “South”) was rammed south from Carmine and Minetta Sts. to Franklin and Church Sts. in 1928 when the new Independent Subway needed a right-of-way. Both of these street map alterations required the condemnation and demolition of countless properties, and the alterations of almost as many.
The heroic statue depicting General Philip Henry Sheridan, by sculptor Joseph Pollia, was installed in 1936. “Sheridan’s statue… is so poorly executed one might not know the subject without his name on the plinth. The sculptor was one of those whom [Hillaire] Belloc observed, ‘We dream in fire and work in clay, and some of us puddle in butter with our toes.’”—William Bryk, New York Press, August 16-22, 2000.
General Philip Sheridan is regarded as the most dynamic and popular officer of the Union Army during the Civil War. In the summer of 1864, Sheridan oversaw the ruthless destruction of the Shenandoah Valley, eliminating the Confederate army’s major source of food and supplies. That fall, General Sheridan rode more than 20 miles to rally his troops to victory after a surprise enemy attack. After the war Sheridan fought in the Indian Wars in the Plains territories and was known for his harsh measures against Native-Americans and brutal elimination of millions of buffalo. Sheridan denied saying “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead” or its variant, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” The phrase was, though, paraphrased in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
The square was named in honor of Sheridan in 1896 and was a concrete traffic island, with the statue, for most of its existence. It wasn’t until 1982 that the local Sheridan Square Triangle Association successfully petitioned the Parks Department to excavate the site and install plantings. Native-American artifacts were discovered during the digging.
The unmistakable red and white signs of Village Cigars, on the SW corner of 7th Ave. South and Christopher St., are emblematic of the Village. The cigar shop has been here since the 1920s. Village Cigars has closed and stopped paying rent in a dispute over terms, reported property owner Jon Posner in Curbed. Posner says he hopes to keep the building’s appearance as is, including the famed red signs. Around town, there’s been a trend the past decade or so of a new business moving in and retaining old signage, even though the new business has nothing to do with the old. At Gates Ave. and Cambridge Pl. in Clinton Hill, Italian restaurant Locanda Vini & Olii retained and repaired the old Lewis Drug Store sign that was in place previously, as seen here.
The small building hosting Village Cigars has had this small mosaic triangle directly in front of the store entrance since the building was constructed shortly after 7th Ave. was built through the neighborhood against the grid in 1912. It was likely the smallest piece of private property in the city.
There used to be a five-story residential building on Christopher St. called The Voorhis. It was condemned in the 1910s to make way for the IRT subway, which also extended 7th Ave. south from Greenwich Ave.. However, the Voorhis’ owner, David Hess, refused to surrender this small plot to the city to become part of 7th Ave. South’s new sidewalk. The Hesses created this mosaic to let everyone know of their small victory against the city. Village Cigars moved to its present corner site in 1922, and bought the 500-square inch property from the Hesses for $1000. The mosaic has stayed put, while Village Cigars has become a symbol of the Village. The Hesses sold their triangle to Village Cigars in 1938, but there it remains, a monument to good old-fashioned spite.
Lucille Lortel, known as the Queen of Off Broadway, could also be called the Queen of the 20th Century; she was born in 1900, and died in 1999. The old Theatre de Lys, in a building constructed in the 1860s, was acquired by Lortel in 1955—independently wealthy, she brought works by American playwrights such as McNally and Albee and Europeans Genet, Ionesco and others to prominence for the first time in the USA. The de Lys was renamed for Lortel in 1981. There’s a mini-walk of fame outside the theater featuring famed playwrights. The Three Penny Opera had its proper USA debut here in 1954 with Lotte Lenya, Ed Asner, Jerry Orbach, Charlotte Rae, Jerry Stiller and Bea Arthur in the cast over the years.
The former Coy-Disbrow Paper Company ad has faded, but not illegibly. The company moved to this building on Greenwich between Christopher and W. 10th in 1930; the wholesale company was founded by Robert Henry Coy (1877-1942) and Hamilton Thomas Disbrow (1852-1942) in 1922 on Canal St. Disbrow was called “dean of commuters” of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad after traveling to the city from New Jersey every day for over 70 years. The building beneath it was constructed as early as 1819.
Next door, the blocky, twin-peaked St. Veronica’s Church was completed in 1903, after 13 years of construction. The parish was in existence since 1887, founded to serve Irish dockworkers along the Hudson. The site, decades earlier, was occupied by Newgate State Prison, which closed in 1829, but is depicted in the mosaic work of the IRT Christopher St. station built in 1912.
185 Christopher (right) on the corner of Weehawken St., stands on a plot originally developed by Stephen Allen, a former mayor of NYC, in 1829; Allen served from 1821-1824. Allen, a wealthy sailmaker and banker, recommended the closure of the Newgate Prison during his term. He perished in the crash of the steamboat Henry Clay in the Hudson near Riverdale in 1852. Allen first constructed a warehouse on his property here in 1837; after Allen’s death, wealthy Scottish merchant James Lee acquired the property, including the warehouse, and expanded it into the corner building seen here. The building has seen a variety of uses similar to its fellows along Weehawken St.. Allen is buried in the New York City Marble Cemetery on E. 2nd St. in the East Village.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)