2/2/13 – Greenwich Village

Up early today in order to travel downtown with our iPad fully charged to do Terry’s Tour of Greenwich Village (for details go tohttp://travelwithterrynyc.blogspot.com/2012/03/walking-tour-of-greenwich-village.html) . It was -7 degrees so we started quickly from the corner of Macdougal and W8th and Peter was not happy when he discovered one has to touch the iPad with a finger that is not covered by a glove to make it work – he! he!

Macdougal Street was named after a wealthy Scot called Mc Dougall who was a Major General fighting for the revolutionaries and the founding President of the Bank of New York. As you might tell by the mis-spelling of his name here, he never really made it in NY society. But this street did. On the corner was the bar where Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg first met in 1964.

A few steps south is the Bon Soir Cabaret where Barbra Streisand and Woody Allen first performed.

The nearby 1890s factory building had a controversial architectural history and the adjacent Macdougal Alley is another picturesque melting spot.

Artists like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Jackson Pollock have made their homes and studios in these delightful stables and gardens from the 1830s. Now these quaint little residences, that originally housed the horses that serviced the patrician homes in the neighbourhood, go for $5.5 million each, that’s if they ever come up for sale at all. But I want to know the name of the guy who built a huge square apartment block in the middle of these delightful mews in the 1950s because we had to go around the block to see the rest of it.

On the other side of the ugly apartment block was Washington Mews. Paul Manship (who created the golden Prometheus statue that overlooks the Rockefeller Centre ice rink) and Donald Deskey (who designed the interiors of the Radio City Music Hall) lived here and the original cobblestones are still adding their character and charm to this beautiful spot.

Originally this area was all a marsh where slaves and yellow fever victims were buried, later it became a duelling ground and an execution place and then, in 1850, a military parade ground called Washington Square. The Square is now chiefly famous as the centre of campus life for New York University and as the official terminus of 5^th Avenue (at the place where Washington’s Memorial Arch now stands). On the northern border of Washington Square built on Randall’s farm is one of the country’s finest examples of 19^th century Greek revival row houses.

And most importantly around the corner, we stopped for breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien.

The Square and all the surrounding area is now the main campus of New York University (est 1831 it had more than 15,000 enrolled students in 2012) and the University’s purple banners are everywhere, including on the building that was originally home to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. This was the infamous deathtrap in which 146 garment workers were incinerated or jumped to their deaths on March 25, 1911. The fire was one of the worst industrial accidents in US history and led to legislation improving working conditions and spurred the growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union and workers’ and womens’ rights

And speaking of women’s rights, it is interesting to note that across the Park from the old Triangle Shirtwaist building right next to the Washington Square Hotel is the former residence of Eleanor Roosevelt. She lived here after the death of FDR while she worked on the development of the United Nations.

At 137 Macdougal Street was the home of the Liberal Club (1913 – 1919) and the Heterodoxy Club (a radical feminist organization) and at 133 Provincetown Playhouse (Bette Davis’ NY stage debut).

At 129 was ‘Eve’s Hangout’ where Eve Addam’s ‘Queen of the Third Sex’ owned a teahouse and speakeasy from 1925 – 1926 where “men were admitted but not welcome”!

The Washington Square Hotel is chiefly famous because it has, at various times, hosted Ernst Hemingway (in 1914), Dylan Thomas (in 1950), Bob Dylan (1960), Nora Jones, Joan Baez, Bo Diddley, Bill Cosby and the B52s. The restaurant at 147 Madougal is where Paul Robeson, Marlon Brando, Ertha Kitt and Henry Millar were regular customers and the famous chess movie ‘Searching for Bobby Fisher’ was filmed near the adjacent NY Law School.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to Macdougal Street we were frozen solid, so we paused the tour for another day and took a cab up to Broadway to warm up over hot chocolate sundaes at the New York City Center before taking our seats for the matinee performance of ‘Fiorello’, a 1960s hit musical about ‘that little wap in the big hat’ – the legendary 1930s Senator and three time Mayor of NYC, Fiorello H. La Guardia. 

Each year as part of their ‘Encores Series’ the New York City Center selects a once famous Broadway musical to be revived and performed in their magnificent and now (as of 2011) fully restored building (once a masonic hall and original home of the Met Orchestra). Once the cast is selected they have two weeks to rehearse and often the performances have minimal costume and sets. The orchestra is regularly on stage and the actors frequently bring their scripts on stage with them. It all makes for lots of fun especially when the audience is invited, as we were, to meet the original creators, cast and crew for a Q&A session after the performance.

This happy experience was complete when I was seated next to Joe and Barbara McDonnell and after a short chat, I introduced them to Peter. Barbara then said, and I quote, “Look Joe – these people are Australian!” Luckily we felt confident enough not to respond with a high degree of sarcasm or break into quotes from ‘Crocodile Dundee’ or ‘Mad Max’.

We finished the night with a great dinner - Moules and Frites for Peter and Duck for Wendy with a 1998 Saint Emilion at Restaurant Jean Claude on Sullivan St. Then it was home by cab as the snow started to fall.