Memory Lane
As US Vice President, John Adams lived at Richmond Hill which stood on a hill near Charlton Street. It was Washington’s headquarters when he planned the battle of Long Island and where Life Guardsman Hickey tried to poison him. Aaron Burr owned Richmond Hill when he fought his duel with Alexander Hamilton. The marker on the Butterick Building is misplaced; the house was located on the site of the present day Elizabeth Irwin School

Commodore Matthew Perry—for whom Perry Street is named—was supposedly buried at St. Mark’s in the Bouwerie. In the 1920’s a fewJapanese gentlemen from the Consulate placed a wreath at the Slidell crypt in which the Commodore’s remains were thought to be interred — Perry had opened Japan to the world. After a state funeral in New York the body was to have been moved to the Perry vault in Newport RI; no documentation exists for this removal so the Slidell vault was inscribed Matthew Calbraith Perry—1794-1858. When the Slidell vault was opened, Perry’s body wasn’t there.

Commodore Perry's brother was Oliver Hazard Perry of Battle of  Lake Erie fame (commanding American officer).
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Eleanor Roosevelt lived at 29 Washington Sq. West during the 1950s and was a member of the Village Independent Democrats.   Theodore Roosevelt was baptized at the First Presbyterian Church at 12th St. and 5th Ave

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt - A shy, awkward child, starved for recognition and love, she grew into a woman with great sensitivity to the underprivileged. "Her constant work to improve their lot made her one of the most loved--and for some years one of the most reviled--women of her generation."

Washington Square Park served as a place of execution during the early 1800s; public hangings were festive affairs. On one occasion 20 highwaymen were hung with General Lafayette as a witness.

President John Tyler married Julia Gardner, who was thirty years his junior, at the Church of the Ascension at Fifth Avenue and 10th Street in July, 1844. Secretly wed to avoid the opposition of his grown children, the newlyweds left the church in an open barouche with four white horses.....the secret was out!

Dubbed "His Accidency" by his detractors, John Tyler was the first Vice President to be elevated to the office of President by the death of his predecessor.

The YMCA was organized June 30, 1852 in the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church; its first rooms were opened that September at the Stuyvesant Institute––located on Broadway near Bleecker Street. The Y’s headquarters remained in the Village for the next 12 years.

Famous screen and stage star, John Barrymore lived at 132 W. 4th Street.

Barrymore's "Richard III and Hamlet stand as high water marks of 20th century Shakespearean interpretation. Many conventions of modern practice can be traced to Barrymore: he was the first actor to bring the vocal and physical manner of a postwar gentleman to Shakespeare's tragic protagonists and was the first to reinterpret time-honored roles in light of Freudian psychology."

The first murals painted by Thomas Benton are installed at the New School.

Nathaniel Currier of Currier and Ives fame lived for 17 years at 137 MacDougal Street.

Currier had many friends including Horace Greely and P.T. Barnum. He "heard that one day the great showman, had rushed into the barber shop of the old Park Hotel... to get a shave. Barnum had hurried up to Tom Higginson, the barber, and said, 'Tom, I'm in a hurry.' 'Sorry for it,' said Tom, 'but it's that gentleman's turn next.' 'That gentleman' was an unshaven Irishman waiting for a 10 cent shave. Barnum said, 'My friend, if you will let me have your turn, I'll pay for what you have done.' The gentleman consented and had a full job done - absolutely everything the house had. The check was for a dollar and sixty cents. When Currier heard this story he found the very Irishman and had him pose. The result was the famous cartoon, "The Man that Gave Barnum 'His Turn.'"
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The courtyard houses at 33 Cornelia Street are typical of many out of the way studios that were once scattered throughout the Village. Until 1947 the shop in front was the Village Blacksmith with an authentic anvil and forge.

New York’s narrowest house at 9 1/2 feet wide is at 75 1/2 Bedford Street. This was the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay after her marriage to Eugene Boissevain.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her book The Harp-Weaver and other Poems. "In her lifetime Millay (1892-1950) was renowned for her traditional poetic and her bohemian living. She infused conventional forms with a fervent contemporary spirit. Early in her career Millay wrote fiction under the pseudonym of Nancy Boyd; later she wrote several plays and an opera libretto. In later years she applied her art to the Allied war effort and other social causes.