Stan O'Connor's Greenwich Village Comprehensive Tour
This is my personal favorite tour to give because it’s pleasant in every way. The neighborhood is completely different from your perspective of Manhattan as a whole. The Village is, first off, QUIET. Its cobblestone paving, coupled with non-systematic streets and alleys, don’t lend themselves to motoring. Traffic is so much lighter than, say, in Midtown. One has to know one’s way around. Trees and shade the streets in summer, and bright autumn sunlight comes slanting in off the nearby Hudson in November and December (remember, the seats are heated).
Many great writers lived and worked in the Village. You’ll stop at a tiny closed street where e.e. cummings and Theodore Dreiser lived. You’ll learn where the “cherry lane” in the song, Puff, The Magic Dragon came from. You will see tiny theaters, the directors’ walk of fame, and “mothers’ helpers” that kept mud off the floors of 19th-century homes. We may also look in on a writers’ bar that stayed open during Prohibition, serving alcohol and sandwiches to starving authors, in return for permission to place the first-edition hardback covers of those writers’ books on the walls of the bar. (And another bar where a writer is said to have died after taking credit for downing a record number of whiskeys!)
The tour also goes into the history of America and our rights. Three major events occurred in the Village, in 1775, 1871, and 1969: The right to independence, rights for women and, finally, rights for Gay men and Lesbians. You will be taken to the spots where the historic events that spurred those changes actually occurred. You’ll even sit outside the house where the American revolutionary printed, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
You owe it to yourself to see all of this, in less than two hours.
A riverfront park
Gay and Lesbian historic sites (and bars)
A jazz club
Folk/rock/live music clubs
Schoolchildren’s memorial to the 9/11 victims
The Directors’ Walk Of Fame
18th and 19th-century townhouses, one of which was blown up by student revolutionaries.
A top-quality chocolate shop
The homes of…
The TV series “Friends,” Kim Hunter, e.e. cummings, Cary Grant, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others
A park built over a graveyard for criminals, complete with a hangman’s tree
An English grocery store
Tiny cobble-stoned streets and alleys
A 1920’s speakeasy and writer hangout
NYC’s last bar where drinkers can smoke!
Duration: 1 to 1.5 hours
Charge $1 per minute
