One If By Land Restaurant is sited in Aaron Burr’s former carriage house on Barrow Street, Between those uses, it was a blacksmith. A lucky horseshoe forged there was carried by Charles Lindberg on his famous transAtlantic flight.

The song Rose of Washington Square refers to Rose O’Neill who lived in the Washington Mews. She was an artist who created the Kewpie Dolls, the inspiration for books and advertising campaigns in the early 1900s.

(above) Washington Place. The house to the right is Henry James' birthplace in 1843

No. 5 Washington Square North was the home of novelist Henry James’s parents after they were married in 1840. The novelist spent some of his childhood at 58 West 14th Street, but his parents 1st home was the model for the Sloper residence in his work Washington Square.

The phrase “heard it through the grapevine” originated at the Old Grapevine roadhouse that stood at the corner of 11th Street and 6th Avenue. Dating from 1838, the local hangout was the source of news and gossip. The exterior sported a grapevine.

According to French architect Le Corbusier, Greenwich Village. was “an urban no man’s land made up of miserable low buildings — poor streets of dirty brick.”

The oldest residence still standing on Christopher Street is No. 133. Built in 1819 for cartman William Austen, it has been expanded; the original 2 1/2 stories are done in Flemish brickwork.

Allan Ginsberg’s poem Kaddish was inspired by a visit to his friend Zev Putterman at the corner of West 10th and West 4th St. The evening included “doing drugs,” listening to Ray Charles, and reciting Shelley’s Adonais and the Jewish prayer for the dead.

From a 1917 edition of Le Dernier Cri. Don’t you wish that rents were still this reasonable?

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