Greenwich Village

  Greenwich Village is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The neighborhood is bordered by Broadway to the east, the Hudson River to the west, Houston Street to the south, and 14th Street to the north, and roughly centered around Washington Square and New York University. The neighborhoods surrounding it are the East Village and NoHo to the east, SoHo to the south, and Chelsea to the north.

    A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families. Greenwich Village, however, was known in the late 19th to mid 20th centuries as an artists' haven, the bohemian capital, and the East Coast birthplace of both the Beat and '60s counterculture movements. What provided the initial attractive character of the community eventually contributed to its gentrification and commercialization.The name of the village was Anglicized from the Dutch name Groenwijck, meaning "Green District",into Greenwich, a borough of London.