The Houses of Greenwich Village:

Preserved Buildings Tell the History of a Neighborhood

In its storied past, Greenwich Village has been many things—a home for wealthy merchants, an enclave of artistic experimentation, and an important cultural and political site for gays and lesbians. Throughout these changes, many of the houses built there in the 18th and 19th centuries for the then New York elite have remained. According to Kevin D. Murphy, looking closely at these structures can tell us a lot about the culture and history of “the Village.”

“I'm exploring the way that the history of the building fabric itself compares to the history of the people who lived there,” says Murphy, a professor in the art history Ph.D. program at The Graduate Center who is working on a book about the houses of Greenwich Village. He is researching the architectural styles in which the houses were built, how the houses and streets came together to form neighborhoods, how floor plans influenced inhabitants' lifestyles, and ways in which the buildings were eventually renovated to accommodate the changing demographics of the Village.

Murphy became interested in the Village while doing research for his last book, The American Townhouse (Harry N. Abrams, 2005). He says he was struck by the contrast between the high-society sector that the Village's original residences suggest, and the people who later came to be associated with a neighborhood that would be christened the “corner of cool.”

“This one neighborhood is so interesting, not only architecturally but also culturally,” he says. “As Manhattan moved further north and the Village became less fashionable for the wealthy, it started to take on this artistic identity and then it became a very important place in the gay and lesbian community. There is a whole range of social developments that you can study by looking at how the community and its edifices have changed.”

Take, for example, the Merchant's House in the East Village, one of the homes featured in The American Townhouse. New York City's only family home preserved intact from the 19th Century, the house, with its formal double parlors on the first floor, its grand columns and mahogany veneers, conjures images of an aristocracy far removed from the hipsters and young professionals who inhabit the East Village today.

It was purchased — for $18,000 — by Seabury Treadwell, a merchant who, like many of his peers, was seeking a refuge for his family from an increasingly congested and commercial lower Manhattan. With their 10 children, the Treadwells maintained a cultured home complete with brass servant bells and exquisite plaster ceiling cornices. The house was constructed in 1832 and built in the late Federal and Greek Revival styles favored by the architects who designed much of the Village.

“In the 1830s and 1840s there was a preference for uniformity in row houses,” he says. “That idea fell by the wayside later but it was an interesting moment in architectural history, this idea of prestige coming not from having your own distinctive house but from a group of houses that together present a unified appearance.”

Murphy theorizes that such uniformity, coupled with the dense streets that define a good part of the Village, helped not only to attract families in the 19th Century — “people could easily watch each others' kids playing in the street,” he explains — but also to foster the cozy artistic community that would later take over the Village.

“I want to find out what kind of urban environment lends itself to creating the kind of close-knit community that has always existed there,” he says.

While many of the houses were later subdivided into apartments and rented to the young students, artists, and bohemians who would move in, certain original features of the neighborhood — its narrow streets, the close proximity of the homes to the street, for example — have endured. Murphy says he wants to see if there is a link between those intrinsic idiosyncrasies and many of the important social and political movements that were born from the Village.

“A society's interest in preserving history and its tangible remains in buildings has always reflected the contemporary political and social issues,” says Murphy, who plans to teach a graduate seminar on the topic this fall. “In other words, images of history in buildings are there for particular ideological reasons. It's not accidental that certain things are preserved and certain things are not.”

–Jamilah Evelyn