1910's The Arts | "The Village," the Salons, and Other Gatherings

The Birth of "The Village."

When the Greenwich Village section of New York City (the part of Manhattan below Fourteenth Street and above Houston Street) was officially designated a residential area in 1916, it was already home to some of the most influential artists and intellectuals in the city. They had moved there partly because the neighborhood was inexpensive—rent for a single room was typically eight dollars a month, or an entire floor of a brownstone house was available for about thirty dollars a month—and partly because of its bohemianism, the prevailing tolerance of a wide variety of lifestyles. The Village was also gaining a reputation as the American Left Bank, a place like the section of Paris where the brightest minds in politics, journalism, and the arts came together. Between 1913 and 1919 Greenwich Village, less than a mile square in size, included the homes of playwrights Eugene O'Neill, George Cram Cook and...