Editing Greenwich Village (section)

===Early years===
[[File:Greenwich Village map circa 1760 - Project Gutenberg eText 16907.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Map of old Greenwich Village. A section of [[Bernard Ratzer]]'s map of New York and its suburbs, made {{Circa|1766|lk=no}} for [[Sir Henry Moore, 1st Baronet|Henry Moore]], royal governor of New York, when Greenwich was more than 2 miles (3 km) from the city.]]
In the 16th century, [[Lenape]] referred to its farthest northwest corner, by the cove on the Hudson River at present-day Gansevoort Street, as [[Sapokanikan]] ("tobacco field"). The land was cleared and turned into pasture by the Dutch and their enslaved Africans, who named their settlement {{lang|nl|Noortwyck}} (also spelled {{lang|nl|Noortw[[IJ (digraph)|ij]]<nowiki />ck}}, "North district", equivalent to 'North[[wikt:-wich|wich]]/Northwick'). In the 1630s, Governor [[Wouter van Twiller]] farmed tobacco on {{cvt|200|acre|km2}} here at his "Farm in the Woods".<ref>{{harvnb|Gold|1988|p=2}}</ref> The English conquered the Dutch settlement of [[New Netherland]] in 1664, and Greenwich Village developed as a hamlet separate from the larger New York City to the south on land that would eventually become the [[Financial District, Manhattan|Financial District]]. In 1644, the eleven Dutch African settlers in the area were granted half freedoms after the first Black legal protest in America.{{efn|The eleven freed Blacks were [[Paulo d'Angola]], Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Manuel de Gerrit de Rens, Simon Congo, Anthony Portuguese. Gracia, Peter Santome, John Francisco, Little Anthony and John Fort Orange.<ref name="Asbury 1977"/>}} All received parcels of land in what is now Greenwich Village,<ref name="Asbury 1977">{{cite news |last=Asbury |first=Edith Evans |title=Freed Black Farmers Tilled Manhattan's Soil in the 1600s |website=The New York Times |date=December 7, 1977 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/07/archives/freed-black-farmers-tilled-manhattans-soil-in-the-1600s-blacks.html |access-date=October 11, 2018}}</ref> in an area that became known as the [[Land of the Blacks (Manhattan)|Land of the Blacks]].

The earliest known reference to the village's name as "Greenwich" dates back to 1696, in the will of Yellis Mandeville of Greenwich; however, the village was not mentioned in the city records until 1713.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Stokes |first1=I.N. Phelps |title=The iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909 (v. 6) |date=1915–1928 |publisher=Robert H. Dodd |location=New York, NY |page=159 |url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_5800727_006/ |access-date=January 3, 2015}}</ref> [[Peter Warren (Royal Navy officer)|Sir Peter Warren]] began accumulating land in 1731 and built a frame house capacious enough to hold sittings of the [[New York General Assembly]] when smallpox rendered the city dangerous in 1739 and subsequent years; on one occasion in 1746, the house of Mordecai Gomez was used.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B0aYbfeXH5cC&pg=PA89 |title=Everyday Nature: Knowledge of the Natural World in Colonial New York |date=January 23, 2024 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-0-8135-4379-6 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Mordecai Gomez - The Peopling of New York City |url=https://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/wills08/articles/m/o/r/Mordecai_Gomez_d154.html |access-date=2022-02-05 |website=macaulay.cuny.edu}}</ref> Warren's house, which survived until the [[American Civil War|Civil War era]], overlooked the [[Hudson River|North River]] from a bluff; its site on the block bounded by Perry and Charles Streets, Bleecker and West 4th Streets,<ref>{{harvnb|Gold|1988|p=3}}</ref> can still be recognized by its mid-19th century rowhouses inserted into a neighborhood still retaining many houses of the 1830–37 boom.

====Newgate Prison====
From 1797<ref name=goth366>{{harvnb|Burrows|Wallace|1999|pp=366–367}}</ref> until 1829,<ref>{{harvnb|Burrows|Wallace|1999|p=448}}</ref> the bucolic village of Greenwich was the location of New York State's first [[Prison|penitentiary]], Newgate Prison, on the Hudson River at what is now [[10th Street (Manhattan)|West 10th Street]],<ref name=goth366/> near the [[Christopher Street]] pier.<ref name=inside/> The building was designed by [[Joseph-François Mangin]], who would later co-design [[New York City Hall]].<ref>{{harvnb|Burrows|Wallace|1999|p=369}}</ref> Although the intention of its first warden, [[Quaker]] prison reformer [[Thomas Eddy]], was to provide a rational and humanitarian place for retribution and rehabilitation, the prison soon became an overcrowded and pestilent place, subject to frequent riots by the prisoners which damaged the buildings and killed some inmates.<ref name=goth366/> By 1821, the prison, designed for 432 inmates, held 817 instead, a number made possible only by the frequent release of prisoners, sometimes as many as 50 a day.<ref>{{harvnb|Burrows|Wallace|1999|pp=505–506}}</ref> Since the prison was north of the New York City boundary at the time, being sentenced to Newgate became known as being "sent up the river". This term became popularized once prisoners started being sentenced to [[Sing Sing Prison]], in the town of [[Ossining (town), New York|Ossining]] upstream of New York City.<ref name=inside>{{cite inside}}, p. 53</ref>

====Isaacs-Hendricks House====

The oldest house remaining in Greenwich Village is the Isaacs-Hendricks House, at 77 Bedford Street (built 1799, much altered and enlarged 1836, third story 1928).<ref>{{cite book |first=Kevin |last=Walsh |title=Forgotten New York: The Ultimate Urban Explorer's Guide to All Five Boroughs |year=2006 |page=155}}</ref> When the [[Church of St. Luke in the Fields]] was founded in 1820, it stood in fields south of the road (now Christopher Street) that led from Greenwich Lane (now [[Greenwich Avenue]]) down to a landing on the North River. In 1822, a [[yellow fever]] epidemic in New York encouraged residents to flee to the healthier air of Greenwich Village, and afterwards many stayed. The future site of [[Washington Square Park|Washington Square]] was a [[potter's field]] from 1797 to 1823 when up to 20,000 of New York's poor were buried here, and still remain. The handsome Greek revival rowhouses on the north side of Washington Square were built about 1832, establishing the fashion of Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue for decades to come. Well into the 19th century, the district of Washington Square was considered separate from Greenwich Village.

In 1825, the ''Commercial Advertiser'' was writing that "Greenwich is no longer a country village. Such has been the growth of our city that the building of one block more will connect the two places" of Greenwich and New York.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Strausbaugh |first1=John |title=The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village |date=April 2013 |publisher=Ecco |location=New York City, USA |isbn=978-0062078193 |page=13}}</ref> By 1850, the city had developed entirely around Greenwich Village such that the two were no longer considered separate.