West 4th Street (Manhattan)
Encyclopedia
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
and then turns north at Sixth Avenue
Sixth Avenue (Manhattan)
Sixth Avenue – officially Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown"...
to intersect with West 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th Streets in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
. Most of the street has the same 40 foot (13 m) width between curbstones as others in the prevailing street grid, striped as two curbside lanes and one traffic lane, with one-way traffic south- and eastbound. The portion from Seventh to Eighth Avenues is approximately 35 feet (11 m) wide, a legacy of the original Greenwich Village street grid, striped as one parking lane on the west and one wide traffic lane, northbound only. The approximate three block section of West Fourth on the southern border of Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
is also called Washington Square South. The north/south portion was formerly called Asylum Street.
Landmarks
Located near Washington Square Park's south-west corner, between Macdougal StreetMacDougal Street
MacDougal Street is a one way street in Greenwich Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The approximate six-block street is bound by Prince Street and West 8th Street. It has been the subject of many songs, poems, and other forms of artistic expression. MacDougal Street has been...
and Sixth Avenue
Sixth Avenue
Sixth Avenue may refer to:*Sixth Avenue , in New York City*Sixth Avenue , in Tacoma, Washington*6th Ave , in the Denver metropolitan area...
, The Washington Square Methodist Church (135 West Fourth) is an early Romanesque Revival marble edifice designed by Gamaliel King and built in 1859-60. Dubbed the "Peace Church" for its support of Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
protesters, Washington Square Church long provided a neighborhood base for activist groups such as the Black Panthers and Gay Men's Health Crisis
Gay Men's Health Crisis
The Gay Men's Health Crisis is a New York City-based non-profit, volunteer-supported and community-based AIDS service organization that has led the United States in the fight against AIDS.-1980s:...
. The church was sold in 2005 to a developer for conversion into residential units.
Judson Memorial Church
Judson Memorial Church
The Judson Memorial Church is located on Washington Square South between Thompson and Sullivan Streets, opposite Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York City...
, located at the corner of Thompson Street
Thompson Street
Thompson Street is the third solo album by American country music singer Brady Seals. It was released in February 2003 via Image Entertainment...
and Washington Square South, was designed by architect Stanford White
Stanford White
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...
and stained glass master John La Farge.
The West Fourth Street subway station ( trains) at Sixth Avenue
Sixth Avenue (Manhattan)
Sixth Avenue – officially Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown"...
is one of the major transfer points in the IND
Independent Subway System
The Independent Subway System , formerly known as the Independent City-Owned Subway System or the Independent City-Owned Rapid Transit Railroad, was a rapid transit rail system in New York City that is now part of the New York City Subway...
portion of the New York City Subway
New York City Subway
The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, a subsidiary agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and also known as MTA New York City Transit...
.
The street is also home to "The Cage" basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
and handball
American handball
American handball is a sport in which players hit a small rubber ball against a wall using their hands.- History :...
courts, a hangout for some of New York's best basketball players and the site of a city-wide streetball
Streetball
Streetball or street basketball is a variation of the sport of basketball, typically played on outdoor courts and featuring significantly less by way of formal structure and enforcement of the game's rules...
tournament.
Historic locations and residents
West Fourth Street has always been a center of the Village's bohemian lifestyle. The Village's first tearoom, The Mad Hatter, was located at 150 West Fourth Street and served as a meeting place for intellectuals and artists.
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
and the setting and inspiration for his play The Iceman Cometh
The Iceman Cometh
The Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939. First published in 1940 the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on 9 October 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling where it ran for 136 performances to close on 15 March 1947.-Characters:* Night Hawk-...
. Writer Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
's first NY residence was at 60 Washington Square South (Fourth Street between LaGuardia Place and Thompson Place) and radical journalists John Reed and Lincoln Steffens
Lincoln Steffens
-Biography:Steffens was born April 6, 1866, in San Francisco. He grew up in a wealthy family and attended a military academy. He studied in France and Germany after graduating from the University of California....
lived nearby at 42 Washington Square South. Reed later worked in a room in the Studio Club building to complete the series of articles that became his account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World
Ten Days that Shook the World
Ten Days that Shook the World is a book by American journalist and socialist John Reed about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 which Reed experienced firsthand. Reed followed many of the prominent Bolshevik leaders, especially Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek, closely during his time in Russia...
, later the source for the movie Reds.
Sculptor and art patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was an American sculptor, art patron and collector, and founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City...
established the Whitney Studio Club in a brownstone
Brownstone
Brownstone is a brown Triassic or Jurassic sandstone which was once a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States to refer to a terraced house clad in this material.-Types:-Apostle Island brownstone:...
at 147 West Fourth Street in 1918 as a place for young artists to gather and show their work. The facility operated for ten years and was the second incarnation of what would later become the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
. It started the careers of such artists as Ashcan school
Ashcan School
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. The movement grew out of a group...
painter John Sloan
John French Sloan
John French Sloan was an American artist. As a member of The Eight, he became a leading figure in the Ashcan School of realist artists. He was known for his urban genre painting and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often through his window...
, Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
, whose first one-man exhibit was held there in 1920, and social realists Reginald Marsh
Reginald Marsh (artist)
Reginald Marsh was an American painter, born in Paris, most notable for his depictions of life in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Crowded Coney Island beach scenes, popular entertainments such as vaudeville and burlesque, women, and jobless men on the Bowery are subjects that reappear...
and Isabel Bishop
Isabel Bishop
Isabel Bishop was an American painter and graphic artist, who produced numerous paintings and prints of working women in realistic urban settings...
. Sloan lived at 240 West Fourth St and painted locations on the street including the Golden Swan.
The street was later home to the famous folk club Gerde's Folk City
Gerde's Folk City
Gerdes Folk City was a music venue in the West Village in New York City. Initially opened as a restaurant called Gerdes, by owner Mike Porco, it eventually began to present occasional incidental music. It was located at 11 West 4th Street , having moved in 1970 to 130 West 3rd Street before finally...
(11 West Fourth Street), which hosted the NY debuts of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
in 1961 and Simon & Garfunkel. Dylan also lived from early-1962 until late-1964 in a small $60-per-month studio apartment at 161 West Fourth Street; the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in May 1963 by Columbia Records. Whereas his debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, Freewheelin initiated the process of writing contemporary words to traditional melodies....
was photographed at nearby Jones Street
Jones Street (Manhattan)
Jones Street is a street located in Greenwich Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs between Bleecker Street and West 4th Street. Jones Street is often confused with Great Jones Street in NoHo, located a little more than a half-mile to the east.What is now Jones Street predates...
at West Fourth, and the street may have inspired his 1965 hit song "Positively 4th Street
Positively 4th Street
"Positively 4th Street" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan, first recorded by Dylan in New York City on July 29, 1965. It was released as a single by Columbia Records on September 7, 1965, reaching #1 on Canada's RPM chart, #7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and #8 on the UK Singles Chart...
".