Public Spaces, Infrastructure & Organizations

Greenwich Village provided many public spaces for tourist and residents to wonder. The most notable, is Washington Square, a public park filled with nature, art, and history. After the Revolutionary War, it became a potter’s field, where many yellow fever victims were laid to rest (Folpe, 2002). Hudson Park Playground was also once the home of a graveyard, located in the westmost area of the Village.

Organizations such as settlement houses, schools, and hospitals scattered the Greenwich Village. St. Vincent Hospital located on West 11th Street, was the third-most oldest hospital in New York City. A Catholic hospital, St. Vincent admitted patients regardless of religion or ability to pay and was run dependably on voluntary contributions (Village Preservation, 2018). The Northern Dispensary was also located in Greenwich intersecting Waverly Place and Christopher Street. Most notable for its triangular infrastructure, it was also a volunteer-based clinic and provided medical care to the poor. The dispensary served ten to twenty thousand patients a year in its early development (Village Preservation, 2021). Greenwich House, another settlement house, held social and educational activities and even founded a nursery school in 1921 for working mothers (NYC Guide, pp. 141).

Most notably, New York University occupies Greenwich Village, near Washington Square. Other schools such as the Little Red School House was founded in 1921, starting as a public-private school experiment by Elisabeth Irwin (Wikipedia, 2024).

Great well-known infrastructure scattered Greenwich Village. Holland Tunnel, under the Hudson River, connects lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) to New Jersey. The building was built in the early 1920s and opened to vehicles in 1927 (PANYNJ). St. John’s Park Freight Terminal was built in 1934 by New York Central Railroad, and was created to transport manufacturing goods (Wikipedia 2024).

In this tour, you’ll gain insight into popular public spaces, infrastructure, and organizations relevant to the 1930s in Greenwich Village.