Two of New York's best neighborhoods for walking are Soho and Greenwich Village, and in this
segment we're going to take you on a stroll through the area, starting out with several
minutes wandering through Soho, which is the neighborhood south of Houston Street, and
it had been a rundown industrial neighborhood with factories, warehouses and truck-loading
ramps, but in the last 40 years, it became New York's supreme cutting-edge, artistic
neighborhood.
Soho got more and more popular as lots of artist moved in, attracted originally by cheap
rents in illegal lofts.
Some excellent streets to meander include Spring, Prince, Broome, West Broadway and
Mercer.
The map gives you a rough idea of where we're going.
Walk a couple blocks along Green Street to find the thickest concentration of galleries,
cafés and hip shops, and the largest collection of cast-iron façades.
Designer shops, pricey art galleries, fancy fashion emporiums have definitely moved in
and taken over, and yet there are still many clever small shops here that appeal to the
discriminating tastes of hip clientele.
Or for cheaper bargains, sidewalk stands and sometimes parking lot flea markets sell all
kinds of useful junk.
Here and there streets are still paved in the original Belgian cobblestones, imparting
a strong European feeling to the neighborhood.
Soho is very distinct with these cast-iron façades.
It has the largest collection of cast-iron buildings in America, constructed mostly in
the last half of the 19th century.
From the late 1960s, art galleries came in, and then restaurants and trendy shops followed.
Prices skyrocketed to a point where only the wealthiest dot-comers can live there now.
The artists have been squeezed out and relocated to Brooklyn, Jersey, the East Village and
Lower East Side, but with a similar sequence of changes now happening there too in that
never-ending process of gentrification.
Big money has taken over most parts of the city.
If only you had the foresight and the money to purchase some property here, back 40 years
ago, you would be a zillionaire today.
The most famous Soho food shop is the original Dean and DeLuca, on Broadway at Prince Street,
which is gourmet heaven.
They started out as a small sandwich bar and grew into the city's trendiest food market,
but you can still get sandwiches, coffee and snacks to nibble on.
It's busy all day and lively right into the evening.
They have expanded now with some branches outside of New York, but this is the original
location.
From Dean and DeLuca we walk north to the Village along Broadway, cross Houston Street.
It just takes a few minutes passing more interesting blocks of the city with coffee shops and little
markets, which soon brings us to the NYU student section.
Since the 1830s, New York University has had a campus here which grew much larger in 1973
when their Bronx campus was relocated and now NYU owns large sections of the area and
most of the buildings around Washington Square Park.
NYU is the largest private college in the country and one of the best.
We'll go through Washington Square Park, down McDougall, over to Bleecker Street and into
the West Village where we will spend most of our program, especially walking along Bleecker
Street.
You can walk almost anywhere, any which way you want in the Village and have a great time,
but we're going to show you a suggested route that hits a lot of the highlights.
Relatively quiet neighborhood, but in Manhattan the possibility of action is always waiting
right around the corner with that blend of exciting, high-energy and peaceful, little
shops, cafés and streets.
The central gathering place of the Village is Washington Square Park, a leafy green space
with benches, fountains, many people going by, and sometimes some wonderful musical entertainment.
(Music plays) The village has always been a hotbed of jazz,
and that tradition continues with musicians in the streets and in the parks.
And watch this passerby turn his coffee cup into a bongo drum and play along.
Notable performers in the jazz clubs here included Pearl Bailey Count Basie, Nat King
Cole, John Coletrain Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Leadbelly,
Charlie Parker, Dinah Washington and the folk scene with The Weavers and especially Bob
Dylan.
The white marble Washington Arch dominates the park, 86 feet high with a span 30 feet
wide, designed by Stanford White.
It was completed in 1895 and commemorates the first inauguration of George Washington,
namesake of the park.
Photographed in early June, you can see how pleasant the weather can be great, and great
to see sitting outdoors on the benches, but here's how it can look in the winter on a
snowy day in February.
In the 18th century this was a cemetery for poor people, 20,000 of them are still underground
here.
There are lots of squirrels in the park, and typical of city squirrels, they’re used
to people.
These guys are pretty friendly.
Maybe they were extra hungry because the snow was covering their usual feasting grounds.
So, these young gals were feeding them, three at a time.
Looking towards Washington Square North just beyond the arch.
You'll see a stately row of brick townhomes.
These been here since the 1830s.
Like most of the buildings around Washington Square Park, they’re now owned and occupied
by NYU.
On the map you can see how many buildings NYU has all around Washington Square Park,
enough space to take care of its 26,000 undergraduates.
We are going to walk out the southwest corner of the park onto McDougall Street, one of
the great spots in the village.
It was the epicenter of bohemian life throughout most of the 20th century with jazz singers
and poets and writers such as Bob Dylan, James Baldwin, Jackson Pollock, Ernest Hemingway,
Eugene O'Neill, a host of famous writers, painters and beatniks.
It’s still considered a colorful and magnetic venue, a great place to stroll and maybe get
an exotic bite to eat.
In spite of the gentrification of most of the village, McDougall Street still seems
like a working-class neighborhood.
The cuisines of the world are on display here, ranging from Ethiopian, Egyptian, Italian,
falafels, French crepes, and of course there's always pizza.
This one block between West 3rd and Bleecker is among the best that New York has to offer.
And then it gets even better as you take a turn on Bleecker Street, which is the longest
interesting street in the village.
It even has a couple of tiny parks with fountains.
As you stroll along Bleecker you'll be tempted by the side streets as well.
It's a terrific place to meander.
The streets here are well adapted to the mood of the random rambler for they lead everywhere
and nowhere, and just wind about in the most irregular ways.
The route does get pretty twisted, which is a big part of the charm of this area, so you
could just play it by ear, and improvise to pick your walking route.
However, the streets can be confusing to navigate.
You don't have to have a plan, but it can help to use a map to ensure you don't get
too lost and miss out on some worthwhile streets.
Our route so far to Bleecker, and then we will continue on down to Hudson Street, kind
of the western limits of the Village.
Hudson is a broad commercial street with a nice neighborhood feeling of shops and restaurants
and apartments.
From there we swing back into the main part of the Village along a street named Grove,
and along Grove we see a place called Grove Court, with attractive old houses built around
a courtyard.
Grove is another one of those fascinating streets with a mix of commercial and residential.
It would be a great place to live if you could afford it.
Crossing Bleecker Street and continuing along into a very intricate part of the street network
of Greenwich Village.
It has to be the most complicated intersection in Manhattan.
We take a look at 8th Street.
You might try 10th Street, and then double back all along Christopher Street, which is
another one of those don't-miss-it places worth your time for a walk along.
It's a place that became an international symbol of gay liberation – returning to
Bleecker.
The Village is one of America's most expensive neighborhoods, costing over two million for
the average thousand square-foot apartment.
Residents of the Village still possess a strong community identity and are proud of their
neighborhood’s unique history and fame, and its well-known liberal live and let live
attitudes.
The village is a world unto itself.
It's a little escape from the action in midtown Manhattan that shouldn't be missed.
Residents and preservation groups have been concerned about developments in the Village
and have fought to preserve its architectural and historic integrity.
More than 50 blocks of the Village are part of a historic district.
Redevelopment in that area is severely restricted and developers must preserve the main façade
and aesthetics of the building during renovation.
When done with the Village, if you're heading back to Midtown, the easiest way to get there
is take the subway, and you'll find a convenient stop at Washington Square with several lines
running through it.
You'll need a Metro Card to get into the station and you can buy those from vending machines.
If you're in town for five or six days, buy the one-week pass.
It's really a good value for unlimited travel on subway and city bus.
With that one pass, you don't have to bother purchasing a ticket every time you enter the
subway.
It's a lot more convenient, and cheaper in the long run for the normal traveler.
Especially if you're seeing as much of the city as we are presenting to you in our series
on New York, that you can find in our collection.